Seven questions to ask before you choose billing software

Billing software is easy to buy and hard to leave. Once your products, customers and a year of bills are inside it, switching means re-typing all of that, usually during a busy season.

So it is worth spending an hour before you commit. The demo will always look good. These seven questions show you what the demo does not.

1. What exactly am I paying for?

Prices are quoted in very different ways, and two “₹X a month” offers can cost very different amounts.

Ask:

• Is the price per shop, per device, or per user login? A counter PC, a phone for the godown and a tablet for the owner can turn one plan into three.
• Is GST charged on top of the quoted price?
• Is it billed monthly or only yearly?
• Which features are extra? Common add-ons are a second shop, more staff logins, barcode label printing and accounting integrations.
• What happens to the price at renewal?

Write down what you would pay in year one and year two for your actual setup: number of shops, counters and people. Compare that number, not the headline.

2. What happens to my data if I stop paying?

This is the question most owners forget, and the one that matters most later.

Ask:

• Can I export everything (products, customers, khata balances, bills, purchases) in a format I can open, like Excel or CSV?
• Is export available on every plan, or only on expensive ones?
• After I stop paying, can I still log in and download my records? For how long?
• Can I get my data out without asking support?

Your sales records are business records. A GST-registered business has to keep its books for years (your CA can tell you the exact period that applies). If they live only inside an app you no longer pay for, you have a problem. Try the export during the trial, not after.

3. Are there caps on invoices, users or items?

Some plans limit how many invoices you can create in a month or year, how many products you can add, or how many staff can log in.

A neighbourhood shop can make a hundred or more bills on a busy day. A cap that sounds generous for a consultant who raises ten invoices a month can run out in days at a kirana counter.

Ask what happens at the cap. Does billing stop? Does the price jump? Do old bills become read-only? Also check any accounting software the billing app connects to, because that may have its own limits. We wrote about one common case in the Zoho Books free plan invoice limit.

4. Will I deal with a dealer or the company?

Some software is sold and supported through local dealers. Some is sold directly. Neither is automatically better, but you should know which one you are getting.

Ask:

• Who installs it and trains my staff?
• Who do I call when billing stops on a Sunday evening, and how fast do they answer?
• Are there separate charges for installation, training, or yearly support?
• If the dealer closes or stops answering, can I go to the company directly?

Get the support terms in writing, including the phone number or WhatsApp you will actually use.

5. What happens when the internet goes down?

Shops lose internet. The question is what the counter does next.

Ask the seller to show you, not tell you:

• Turn off Wi-Fi in the middle of a bill. Can you finish it and print?
• Can you start a new bill while offline?
• When the connection returns, do the offline bills sync on their own, without duplicates?
• Is there anything that does not work offline, such as adding a new product or a khata payment?

Software that installs on one PC and works offline may not sync between your counter and your phone. Cloud software may sync well but need care offline. Know the trade-off you are choosing.

6. Does it fit my GST registration?

Indian shops are not all the same for GST. Some are regular registered dealers. Some are in the composition scheme. Many small shops are not registered at all.

The documents differ. Under Section 31 of the CGST Act, a regular registered dealer issues a tax invoice, while a composition dealer issues a bill of supply instead of a tax invoice. Section 10(4) adds that a composition dealer must not collect tax from the customer at all.

Ask the seller:

• Which registration types does it support: regular, composition, unregistered?
• For a regular dealer, does the bill show HSN codes and the CGST/SGST split?
• For a composition dealer, can it print a bill with no tax lines and the required wording? See our guide to composition bills.
• If my registration changes next year, can I switch without losing data?
• Do I need e-invoicing (IRN) or e-way bills? Many small shops don’t, but if your CA says you do, check that the software handles them.

For a regular dealer, our GST invoice checklist lists what every tax invoice must show.

7. Can I control what staff do, and see what they did?

Once someone else runs the counter, you need two things: limits and a record.

Ask:

• Can each staff member have their own login?
• Can I hide screens like reports, purchase prices or settings from staff?
• Can staff delete or void a bill? If yes, is it recorded who did it and when?
• Will I, as owner, be told when a bill is voided or deleted?

Software that lets anyone delete a bill without a trace makes cash differences very hard to explain. More on this in stopping cash leakage at the counter.

One more: language

If your staff are more comfortable in Hindi, Marathi, Gujarati or another language, check that the billing screen itself is in that language, not just the brochure. Hand the phone to the person who will actually bill and watch them use it for five minutes.

How to run the trial

A free trial is only useful if you test real work. In one week:

1. Add twenty of your real products, including a few loose items sold by weight.
2. Bill a busy hour’s worth of sales.
3. Record one khata (credit) sale and one payment against it.
4. Turn off the internet once.
5. Give a staff member a login and try to void a bill as them.
6. Export your data and open the file.

If the software passes all six, you can decide on price.

Where Bazaar IQ fits

Since you are reading this on our site: Bazaar IQ is a mobile-first billing app that runs in the browser on any phone, tablet or PC. It supports regular, composition and unregistered shops, staff logins with per-screen permissions and owner alerts on voids and deletes, and an open billing screen keeps working offline and syncs later. It is available in English, Hindi, Marathi and Gujarati. It does not generate e-invoices (IRN) or e-way bills, so if you need those, it is not the right fit. There is a 14-day free trial with no card needed. Plans are on the pricing page, and you can try the demo using the checklist above.