Custom software · Multi-location businesses

Build one system for a business doing the same work in several places.

The second branch is an experiment. The fourth is a different company.

What breaks is rarely billing, stock or attendance on its own. It is the join between them. Whose number is right, who may change a price, and how long head office takes to find that one branch is selling at last year’s rate.

A system built for a network by GullySystem holds the masters centrally, lets each branch work its own day without waiting for permission, and sends the exceptions upward. Nobody should have to ring five managers to learn what happened yesterday.

Share your requirements

Who this is for

Networks we can build for.

This page is about the shape of the problem rather than the trade, so the build follows whatever work your branches actually do. Most of those trades have a page of their own here. If you run one kind of business in several places, read that page first and this one after.

Retail chains running one system across every store
Restaurant and cafe chains
Diagnostic and clinic groups with branches in several cities
Hospital groups with several units
Salon, spa and wellness chains
Gym and fitness chains
Coaching groups running centres under one management
Service companies with city branches
Distribution and depot networks
Dealer and showroom networks
Finance and lending branch networks
Logistics companies with branch offices
Manufacturers with several plants
Franchise networks whose owned branches share the system
Companies with sales offices in several regions

What can be built

The modules, and what each one covers.

Nothing here is a fixed package. Each module is built, left out or changed to match how your organisation already works.

What actually breaks at the third branch

The failures are the same whatever the trade, so they are named before any module list.

Two branches selling the same item at different prices
Stock that left one branch and never arrived anywhere
A discount somebody gave without approval
Cash sitting in a manager’s drawer over a long weekend
A customer treated as new because he walked into a different branch
Three versions of yesterday’s number

The branch record

Head office needs to know what a branch is before it can judge what a branch does.

Branch code and name
Address, city and region
Opened on
Format and size
Owned, leased or franchise
Manager and reporting line
Staff strength
Working hours and weekly off

One set of masters

Items, services, prices, rates and customer categories are defined once. Branches do not invent their own codes.

Item and service catalogue
Codes and descriptions
Standard rates and price lists
Discount slabs
Tax rates
Customer categories
Document numbering series per branch

What a branch may decide for itself

Not everything should be central. A network that approves every small thing from head office moves slowly.

Local price within a band
Discount up to a limit
Petty purchases up to a limit
Staff roster and shifts
Local offers with approval
Vendor choice for small jobs

How much autonomy a branch gets is a management decision, and software cannot make it for you. What the system can do is apply the rule you set and record every exception to it.

Who sees what

Branch staff see their own branch
Branch manager sees his branch in full
Area manager sees his cluster
Functional heads see their function across branches
Directors see everything
Auditors get read-only access
Franchisees see only their own outlet

Approvals that travel upward

Request at the branch
Rule checked
Within limit and done
Or sent for approval
Approver notified
Approved or rejected with a reason
Action recorded

Discounts beyond the slab
Credit beyond the limit
Write-offs and stock adjustments
Refunds and cancellations
Purchases above a value
Rate changes

An approval that takes a day gets worked around. The approver needs it on a phone with enough context to answer.

A day at a branch

Open
Opening checks
Work of the day
Collections
Day close
Cash handover
Data reaches head office

Head office should not have to ask for the day’s figures. If a branch has to send anything by email, the design has already failed.

Cash and day close

Cash discipline is the first thing a growing network loses and the last it recovers.

Collections by mode
Expected against counted cash
Short and excess with a reason
Petty cash issued and spent
Cash handed to the manager
Bank deposit with a slip

Stock across branches

Stock at each branch
Stock at the warehouse
Total network stock by item
Branches out of an item while another is overstocked
Ageing stock by branch
Stock value by branch

Transfers between branches

Transfers are where many networks lose track: goods leave on a phone call and arrive without a signature.

Transfer request with a reason
Approval
Delivery note or transfer note
Dispatched and by whom
In transit
Received and counted

Transfers across tax regions can carry their own documents and tax treatment. Your accountant decides the wording, and the transfer form simply prints it.

Buying centrally or locally

Central rate contracts
Vendors approved for the network
Branch indents
Consolidation before ordering
Direct branch purchase within a limit
Goods receipt at the branch

One customer, several branches

A customer who bought at one branch and complains at another does not have to start again.

Single customer record across the network
Branch where he was first served
Purchases or visits at any branch
Payments and dues across branches
Credit limit for the network, not per branch
Loyalty earned anywhere, redeemed anywhere
Complaints raised at any branch

Whether a branch is paid for a sale it did not close is a commercial question. The decision is taken before the build.

Leads and enquiries

Enquiries arriving centrally
Routed by postcode or city
Assigned to a branch and a person
Response time at each branch
Follow-ups due
Conversion by branch

Staff across branches

Nothing here is payroll. It covers the few things that break once a person works at more than one address.

One employee record, not one per branch
Transfer between branches with advances and dues carried across
A person working two branches in the same week
Attendance marked at whichever branch he actually stood in
Sanctioned strength per branch against who is on the rolls
Local hiring approved against that strength
Area manager coverage and travel
Attrition by branch rather than by company

Targets and performance

Targets by branch and by month
Targets by category or service
Achievement against target
Same-branch comparison against last year
New branches measured against their own plan

Ranking a branch opened last quarter against one running for nine years tells you little. Comparisons are set up like for like.

Branch profitability

Branch profitability is the number every owner wants, and it is hard to get because costs are scattered.

Revenue by branch
Direct cost
Staff cost
Rent and utilities
Local marketing
Share of head office cost
Stock losses and write-offs

The central dashboard

What a director can open on a phone at half past nine, without anyone preparing it.

Business done yesterday by branch
Against target and against last year
Branches not closed for the day
Cash not deposited
Stock-outs on important items
Transfers pending receipt
Approvals waiting
Complaints open and ageing

Exceptions rather than reports

Nobody reads twenty branch reports. The exceptions are the few lines that are wrong.

A branch that has not closed its day
Cash held beyond the limit
A discount above the slab
A price changed locally
Negative stock
A transfer in transit too long
A customer over his credit limit

Consolidated reporting

Network totals
By region and cluster
By branch
By category, service or product
Month and year comparisons
Like-for-like branches only

A consolidated number is only as honest as the entries under it. The dashboard shows the gap and does not smooth it.

Opening a new branch

The eighth branch should open faster than the third, which needs a checklist and not a project.

Branch created with masters already applied
Price list and tax settings
Staff and logins
Opening stock loaded
Document numbering series
Local licences recorded
Equipment and devices registered

Branches in other regions

Separate tax registration per region
Region-specific tax treatment
Cross-region transfer documents
Local language on screens and receipts
Region-specific holidays
Local licences and renewals

Registration, filing and cross-region treatment are matters for your accountant. The system records what he tells it to and does not decide tax questions.

Franchise branches

A franchisee is not an employee, so the system treats him differently.

Franchise agreement and territory
What head office controls
What the franchisee decides
Supply and stock from head office
Royalty or margin calculation
Franchisee dues
Performance against agreed targets

When the internet does not cooperate

A branch on a bad connection still has to serve the customer in front of it.

Billing and entry continue offline
Sync when the line returns
Conflicts flagged rather than silently overwritten
Which data must be live and which can wait
Local printing without the server
Branches with repeated connectivity trouble

Offline working is a design decision taken at the start, not a feature added later. Retrofitting it into a system built assuming a good connection is close to a rebuild.

Audits and head office visits

Visit schedule by area manager
Checklist by branch type
Observations with photographs
Stock count during the visit
Cash verification
Action points raised

Month close across the network

Branch closing checklist
Stock counted and adjusted
Cash and bank reconciled
Expenses booked
Pending approvals cleared
Branch sign-off

What it connects to

Accounting software such as QuickBooks or Xero
Existing branch software
Payment gateways, cards and wallets
Bank statements
WhatsApp and SMS
Attendance devices

A branch running software you cannot replace yet can sometimes be read from instead. Whether that works depends on what the software exposes, and we check it before designing around it.

The journey

One connected workflow, end to end.

Every stage below can sit in one system, so nobody re-enters what the last stage already captured.

Branch set up
Masters and prices applied
Branch works its day
Approvals where needed
Day close
Data reaches head office
Exceptions flagged
Transfers and rebalancing
Consolidated view
Review with the branch
Action taken
Month close

Built in phases

You do not have to replace everything at once.

Each phase is usable on its own, so the system earns its place before the next part is built.

1
Masters and branch working
The branch record, one catalogue, one set of prices, document numbering and whatever the branch does all day.
2
Control without delay
Roles, approval limits, day close, cash discipline and the exceptions that travel up instead of waiting to be asked for.
3
Stock, customers and transfers
Stock across branches, transfers that get signed for, one customer record for the network and leads routed by location.
4
The network view
Targets, branch profitability, like-for-like comparison, the central dashboard and the checklist for opening the next branch.

How we work

How a build actually runs.

01
Understand
We visit your best branch and your worst one. The difference between them is the actual brief.
02
Map
What is genuinely common across branches, what is local for a good reason, and what is local only because nobody standardised it.
03
Design
Screens for the branch, for the area manager and for head office, with the approval rules drawn before a single screen.
04
Build
Branch working first, consolidation second. A dashboard built before the branches enter clean data is a picture of nothing.
05
Test
Two branches run on it together for a month, ideally one strong and one struggling, and a real month close is done.
06
Deploy
Branch by branch, never all at once, with each branch manager trained on his own screens and his own numbers.
07
Improve
Exception rules, branch profitability and the reports a review meeting keeps asking for once the numbers are believed.

What you bring

What you bring, and when.

The build moves at the speed of the answers. These are the things we ask for, in the order we ask.

01
Item lists, price lists and branch reports
Send the item master, price lists, a branch day report and a transfer slip. They reveal where branches differ.
02
A manager from each branch type
Head office cannot answer for each branch. A manager per branch type confirms screens. The owner decides which local variation is acceptable.
03
Local discount and credit limits
Which prices, discounts and credit a branch may set alone is settled as the screens appear. Branch managers test them on a normal day. Their answers move work along.
04
Rollout order and stock at each branch
You choose the order of branches. Stock is counted at each before the switch. The owner approves branch by branch.

What we can build

Systems we can put together for you.

Multi-branch management systems
Central dashboards for owners
Branch operations software
Head office and branch approval workflows
Multi-location inventory systems
Inter-branch transfer systems
Network-wide CRM
Lead routing systems
Branch profitability reporting
Franchise management platforms
Consolidation and reporting layers over existing software
Offline-capable branch applications
Audit and branch visit apps
Multi-tenant platforms for branch networks

Common questions

Questions owners ask before starting.

What is multi-location business software?

It is a system where each branch works its own day and head office sees the whole network without asking anyone for a file. The hard part is the rules between the two, not the screens at either end.

When does a business actually need this?

Usually at the third or fourth location. Two branches can be run by one person who knows both. At four, the owner starts learning about problems from customers.

Can we keep the software each branch already uses?

Sometimes, as a first step. A reporting layer can read from existing branch software and give head office a consolidated view. It depends entirely on what that software exposes.

Should every branch work the same way?

No. Decide what must be identical, such as prices and codes, and allow the rest to be local within limits the system applies.

Can branch managers still give discounts?

Yes, up to a limit you set. Beyond that it goes for approval, on a phone, with enough detail for the approver to answer in a minute rather than call back.

How do we stop stock disappearing between branches?

By never letting stock move without a transfer document and a receipt at the other end. Transfers sitting in transit too long become an exception on the dashboard rather than a discovery at stock count.

Can one customer be served at any branch?

Yes. One customer record for the network, with purchases, dues, loyalty and complaints visible wherever he walks in. Which branch is credited for the sale is a rule you decide.

What happens when a branch loses its internet?

Billing and entry can continue offline and sync later, if that is designed in from the start. Adding it afterwards to a system that assumed a good line is close to a rebuild.

Can we see profitability branch by branch?

Yes, once the costs are captured against the branch rather than dumped at head office. Deciding how head office cost is shared is a management question we will not answer for you.

Will a dashboard fix our reporting problem?

Not on its own. If branches enter figures late or wrongly, the dashboard shows that faster and more publicly. That is useful, but it is not the same as a fix.

Build one system your whole network runs on.

Growth makes a business harder to see. Every new location adds a version of the truth, and somebody spends a morning reconciling them.

List what each branch is allowed to decide on its own: price, discount, purchase, hiring. That list, and not the software, is the real design, and it is the conversation we would want first.

Tell us how you work

Tell us how your multi-location businesses runs today.

We will tell you what can be digitised, what can be connected, what is worth automating, and what you should leave alone.

What happens after you share your requirements

A senior engineer reads your answers. Nobody phones first.
Within one business day you get a written note: what we understood, what we would start with, and the questions we still have.
If it fits, a proposal follows with the order of work, what we need from you and what you receive at each step.
No call is booked and nothing is paid until you have read the note. Your details stay with us.

Start with your requirements

Seven short steps that tell us what you need. A senior engineer reads them before anyone gets in touch.