Cashflow OS for showrooms

How a showroom sale really happens

Showrooms selling furniture, tiles, sanitaryware, electronics, lighting or kitchens share a pattern. A family walks in, spends 30 to 60 minutes with a salesperson, shortlists a few pieces and asks for a price. Often they come back two or three times, sometimes with a contractor or an architect, before an order is placed. The sale might be worth ₹40,000 or ₹4,00,000, and it depends on the salesperson remembering the conversation.

Most showrooms bill in TallyPrime, but the visit itself lives in the salesperson's memory or a register. When that salesperson is on leave, or leaves the job, the customer's history leaves too.

What goes wrong without a record

• No follow-up: the customer said "we will come back on Sunday" and nobody called on Saturday.
• Repeat explanations: on the second visit a different salesperson starts from zero.
• Price confusion: the customer remembers a number the salesperson does not.
• No measurement: the owner knows footfall was high but not how many visits became orders. Our guide on converting walk-in customers covers how to measure this.

Walk-ins and wishlists in Cashflow OS

With the showroom module switched on for your company:

• Look up by mobile number. When a customer arrives, the salesperson types the number and sees past visits and wishlists.
• Build a wishlist. Add items with quantity and notes, and mark the customer's interest as hot, warm or cold. Barcodes can be scanned with the phone camera if your items are labelled.
• Share on WhatsApp. Send the wishlist to the customer so the family can discuss it at home with photos and names in front of them.
• Convert to a sales order. When they decide, a sales order is made from the wishlist or visit with lines and GST, and posted to Tally through the connector once writing is switched on.

Quotations that look like your showroom

Many showroom customers ask for a written quotation, often for a builder or for a loan. The documents module makes quotations with your logo, colours, letterhead, signature, and bank and UPI details, shared as a PDF on WhatsApp or by email. When the customer agrees, the quotation can be converted into a sales order or a Tally sales invoice, so nothing is typed twice. See quotation format and best practices for what a good showroom quote should include.

Showing items the way customers know them

Tally item names are written for the store room: "TL-GVT-600x1200-MATT-IVR". Customers know it as "Ivory matt tile, 2x4 feet". Cashflow OS lets you keep a display name and photos for each item without changing the Tally name, and use Tally stock groups as categories. Brands and custom fields such as finish, size or warranty can be added too. The same item data feeds the online catalogue link if you want customers to browse from home, with enquiries coming to you on WhatsApp.

A weekly routine for the showroom owner

1. Go through the week's wishlists marked hot and check that each customer has had a call.
2. See which salesperson's visits turned into orders; the performance view helps if you also run outdoor sales.
3. Check receivables for customers who took delivery on part payment.
4. Review stock of the items that appear most in wishlists, so the best sellers are not out of stock when the customer returns.

The guide on showroom customer follow-up has a simple calling schedule.

What to capture at each visit

A wishlist is only as useful as what goes into it. A short checklist for showroom staff keeps the records consistent:

• Mobile number first, before anything else, so the visit is tied to a customer and not lost.
• Every item shown seriously, with quantity. Four pieces of a sofa set or 120 tiles for a room matter more than a single item.
• A note in the customer's words: "wants darker shade", "budget around ₹1,50,000", "will bring contractor on Sunday".
• An honest interest level. Hot means likely to buy within days, warm means comparing, cold means just looking. If everything is marked hot, the follow-up list stops meaning anything.

Sharing the wishlist on WhatsApp before the customer leaves the showroom also does a quiet job: the customer now has your showroom's name and the items in his phone, not a competitor's visiting card.

Access and control

Showroom staff can be given the salesperson role, which shows items and their own customers but not the company's accounts. Orders from frontline staff can be set to need approval before they reach Tally. Writing into Tally stays off until the owner switches it on, and the owner can see the team's activity in the app.