Before you change software, it helps to see your own process on one page. Mapping it shows where information is lost between people and tools, and what each step must pass on to the next.
The steps most businesses share
- Lead: an enquiry arrives and someone records what the customer wants.
- Quotation: prices, tax and terms are sent to the customer.
- Order: the customer confirms what they will buy.
- Delivery: goods leave the godown, often in more than one lot.
- Invoice: what was delivered is billed, with GST.
- Payment: money comes in, sometimes in parts or in advance.
- Ledger: every one of these steps lands in the books and the GST reports.
For each step, write down three things
- Who does it, and in which tool or register.
- What information it needs from the step before.
- What it must pass on to the step after.
Look for the hand-offs
The costly problems sit between steps: an invoice typed again from a challan, a payment that nobody matches to an invoice, a GST report rebuilt from a sales register. Mark each hand-off where information is re-entered, and each one where nobody owns the check.
Those marks are what a connected system should remove. They are also where to look first when numbers do not agree.