Every report from one place, and it matches the godown

Because each report starts from a different copy of the truth. One is pulled from the billing system on the day, one from a spreadsheet updated on Fridays, one from an export someone cleaned by hand. Each copy is a little stale and a little edited, and the differences compound. The cure is not a better spreadsheet; it is one place every number comes from, with the rule for each number written down once, so two people asking the same question get the same answer. Why do our reports disagree? takes the four causes in turn, starting with the one nobody looks for.

Partly, and the software part is the easier half. Returns booked late, transfers between godowns that exist on paper for a day, damaged stock nobody records, and a count taken at a different moment from the report all put a gap between the system and the shelf. We measure that gap first, godown by godown, then close it from both sides: the system records the events it was missing, and counting becomes a short routine with a number attached rather than a yearly ordeal.

Yes, and it is the most common version of this job. Each channel keeps selling the way it sells; what changes is that every sale lands in one place in the same shape, so a product is one product whether it went out of a shop, a marketplace or your own site. Returns and cancellations are counted the same way everywhere, which is usually where the old numbers diverged most. The D2C fashion brand had eleven stores, three online channels and a month-end that took a week and still disagreed.

At the size of most businesses we work with, no, and we will say so. What is needed is one place the numbers are collected, in your own account, that every report reads from, and a written rule for each number. That can be a modest database and a nightly job. The heavy machinery exists for businesses with far more data and far more people asking questions of it; if you are one, we say that too, and the running cost is in writing before the build.

Yes. Tally stays the book of record for the accounts, and Excel stays what it is good at: looking at a number from a new angle. What changes is where Excel gets the numbers from. Instead of a paste from three exports, it reads from the one place, and so does every other report. Nobody copies, so nothing drifts, and the chartered accountant sees the same figures the owner sees.

By running the old report and the new one side by side, on the same period, until they agree or the difference is explained and signed off by the person who owns that number. That parallel run is a gate: nothing replaces a report you already trust until it has earned it. For stock, the check is physical: a count in the godown against the system on the same day, repeated monthly as a routine, with the difference tracked as a number of its own.

We do not publish prices for the build, and there is no hourly billing. The running cost is a different thing: the servers and services the system uses at your volumes, every month, whoever runs it. That figure is worked out and written down before the build, reviewed with you, and checked against the real bill after go-live. The point is that you saw it first. A cost model is a deliverable explains why.