Why orders still get typed twice
In most manufacturing businesses, an order starts as a phone call, a WhatsApp message or an email. Someone then reads it, checks prices and stock, and types it into Tally. The same order is entered twice: once by the dealer when they write it, and once by your team.
That is where mistakes, delays and the daily “where is my order?” calls come from. It is also why two or three people end up doing data entry instead of selling or following up on payments.
Keep Tally as the record, add a front door
You do not need to replace Tally. Your accountant knows it, your GST filing runs on it, and it works. The fix is a simple front door in front of it: a page or app where dealers place orders from their phone, with their own price list, and where your team approves the order once.
Once approved, the order is passed to Tally as a voucher. Tally can take data in through its import options and its integration interface, and the right method depends on which version you run. This is the first thing we confirm.
Decide four things before you build
Most of the effort is in the decisions, not the software.
- Who places orders: dealers, your field staff, or both.
- How prices work: one price list, dealer-wise lists, or schemes that change by month.
- Credit: whether an order should be blocked or flagged when a dealer is over their limit.
- Status: how a dealer finds out that the order is accepted, packed and dispatched.
A sensible first version
Start with one product line and your ten busiest dealers. Orders land in one queue, your team checks and approves them, and approved orders go to Tally. Dealers see the status of each order on their phone.
This is typically a matter of weeks. You can judge it on three simple measures: how many orders are entered only once, how many status calls your team still receives, and how long an order takes from receipt to dispatch.
What to watch out for
Three things catch people out.
- Version and customisation: Tally Prime and older versions behave differently, and a customised setup needs checking early.
- Item names and codes: if the same product has three names in Tally, clean that up first or the orders will not match.
- Two systems owning stock: decide that Tally stays the only place where stock is final, and let the order page only read it.