How to choose accounting software

Step 1: write down what you actually do

Before meeting any vendor, list a normal month's work in numbers. For example, a ₹6 crore hardware wholesaler might write:

• About 1,200 sales invoices, 150 purchase bills, 400 receipts, 80 payments.
• Around 2,500 items, sold in pieces and bought in boxes.
• Two godowns and one counter.
• Credit sales to 300 dealers; collections tracked bill by bill.
• Four people entering data, the owner and the CA reading reports.

This list is your test brief. Any software you consider must handle these volumes and these habits comfortably.

Step 2: the must-have checklist

The GST invoice mandatory fields guide is a good reference while checking invoices.

Step 3: run a fair demo

Vendor demos use clean sample data. Insist on your own. Bring ten real documents and ask the vendor, or your own staff, to enter them during the demo:

1. A B2B sales invoice with three items at different GST rates.
2. A sale to a customer in another state (IGST).
3. A sales return with a credit note against the original bill.
4. A part payment received against two bills.
5. A purchase in boxes that you sell in pieces.
6. A transfer from one godown to another.
7. An expense with TDS, if you deduct TDS.
8. A cash sale to a walk-in customer.
9. Any document your trade uses often, such as a delivery challan.
10. Then ask for the party ledger, outstanding and GST summary that should result.

Time each entry. Watch whether the person entering needs to stop and ask how. Those pauses predict your training cost.

Step 4: think about people outside the office

Accounting software is often chosen by the accountant for the accountant. But owners, salespeople and branch staff also need numbers. Ask:

• Can the owner see sales, collections and outstanding on a phone?
• Can a salesperson see their own customers' balances without seeing the whole company's accounts?
• Can statements be shared with parties on WhatsApp without someone in the office making a PDF?
• Is there a Hindi or regional-language option for staff who prefer it?

Step 5: data ownership and exit

The most overlooked question is how you leave. Ask in writing:

• Can I export every master and every voucher, with bill-wise details, in a standard format?
• Is export free, and can I do it myself without raising a ticket?
• If I stop paying, how long is my data kept, and can I still read it?
• Where is the data stored, and who at the vendor can see it?

A vendor confident in their product will answer these without hesitation. See also security of accounting data.

Step 6: count the full cost

Add up three years of: licences or subscriptions for every user, implementation, data migration, training, hardware or internet upgrades, and annual support. Then add the hidden cost of change: a slower month while staff learn, and time spent reconciling the old and new systems. A cheaper product that needs two extra weeks of reconciliation may cost more than a pricier one your team already knows.

If you already use TallyPrime

Many businesses discover during this process that their books are fine and the real gap is access: the owner and the field team cannot see or enter anything away from the office. In that case, keeping TallyPrime and adding a connected app may be enough. Cashflow OS syncs Tally companies through a connector on the Tally PC, shows ledgers, outstanding, GST views and reports on phone and web in English or Hindi, and, if the owner switches it on, posts vouchers back into Tally. It has a 14-day free trial, which is long enough to test it against your own month. See financial reports.