Requirements checklist
What to ask for when choosing software for herbal product manufacturers.
A checklist built from how herbal product manufacturers work, to print or save as a PDF and bring to any supplier meeting.
What the software should cover
Tick each one that matters to your business.
- Raw material intake and quarantine
- Formulations
- Batch manufacturing records
- Quality testing and release
- Stock, lots and expiry
- Supplier and grower records
- Distributor orders and dispatch
Roles that need their own access
Who logs in, and what each person may see or change.
- For stores
- For the quality team
- For production and packing
- For sales and the owner
Reports to ask for
Ask to see each one with your own sample data.
- Lots in quarantine, released and rejected
- Batch yield and marc by product
- Stock by lot and bin with expiry dates
- Material shortages against planned batches
- Grower lots and certificate of analysis history
- Orders and dispatch by customer and batch
- Customers who received a given batch
Systems it may need to connect to
Note which ones you already run.
- Barcode and label printer
- Weighing scale input
- Accounting software export
- Email and SMS
- Online shop
- Courier and shipping labels
Questions for any vendor
Put these to every supplier you are comparing.
- Is this herbal software or general manufacturing software?
- How does it handle raw material that varies in strength?
- Is a batch traceable to its raw materials?
- Is the oldest stock issued first?
- Can it print labels?
- Does it replace our quality procedures?
- Can it handle contract manufacturing?
- Can we import our current stock?
- What does it cost?
- Does a very small herbal unit need this?
Where the work usually breaks today
Circle the ones you recognise. They set the order of the project.
- Raw material varies and is hard to trace
- Formulas are adjusted by hand
- Quality results are filed apart
- Expiry dates are watched manually
- Distributor orders cannot be matched to batches
Prefer to talk it through? See the herbal product manufacturers page.