The shop opens at eight. There are yesterday’s open orders to check, today’s shipments to prepare, and afternoon collections to follow up on. Keeping all of this in a paper ledger is possible, but something always slips through the cracks. Navision — an integrated business software that keeps sales, stock, and accounting records in one place — steps right into this daily routine and puts every action on record.
The first task of the morning is opening the program and reviewing where things stand. In Navision’s sales order screen, the list of pending orders appears immediately. Which orders are complete, which are still open, which ones have enough stock to ship — all of this is visible on a single screen. Under the old system, pulling this picture together meant asking the accountant, the warehouse, and the sales desk separately. The program connects all three in one place.
Stock checking is also an early-morning job. Without looking it up, knowing exactly how many units are left in the warehouse is rarely easy. Navision’s item card — a record page kept for each product — shows the current quantity on hand, the last purchase price, and which open orders are drawing against that stock. A quick screen check at the start of the day replaces a walk through the warehouse. The catch is that this information is only accurate if every receipt and shipment has been entered into the program consistently. That takes discipline, and building that habit is one of the first real challenges for any small business getting started with the software.
Orders keep coming in through the day, mostly by phone or fax. Each order entered into the program immediately reduces the available stock count. If two salespeople promise the same item to two different customers at the same time, the program flags the shortage right away. That warning looks like a small thing, but it prevents real problems with customers. With paper orders, the same conflict could go unnoticed until the truck was already loaded — or not loaded, as the case might be.
When shipment time arrives, the warehouse staff prints a dispatch list from the program. The list shows which customer gets what, in what quantity, and where it goes. The driver takes the printout and loads the truck. When the goods leave the building, the stock record updates. When the accountant needs to issue an invoice, the same shipment data is already in the system — there is no need to retype addresses, quantities, or item codes. Eliminating that retyping saves time and cuts down on the small errors that are easy to make when copying information by hand.
Late afternoon brings collection follow-up. Navision’s customer account screen shows each customer’s outstanding balance and which invoices are past due. The accountant works through the list and decides who to call. When a payment comes in, it is entered against the customer’s account and the balance updates. At the end of the day, the cash close compares the program’s record of cash movements against the actual money in the till. If there is a difference, tracing it is much simpler because every transaction has a record behind it.
Getting Navision into the daily routine does not require everything to be perfect from the start. The most important thing is straightforward: enter every transaction promptly and correctly. An order entered late leaves the stock count wrong, and a wrong stock count creates problems further down the line. No matter how well the software is built, it only works as well as the people using it. In a small business with even two or three staff members, consistent use means that by the end of the day the accountant and the owner are both looking at the same numbers. That shared picture was very hard to achieve when everything lived on paper.
This article was originally written in Turkish by Gökhan MERCANOĞLU on April 2, 2001 and has been automatically translated into English and other languages using machine translation.