Muhammed AliMay 27, 2019
Nowadays, Business environment is growing day by day. It requiring more activities to be managed automatically. Billing software and ERP software are the mostly using software in business environment. Billing software are mainly used to manage stock of every products in a company and generate invoices for customers to know about the product and services. However an ERP software can have all the features of billing software. It is a resource management system that monitoring the business processes like accounting, sales, production and inventory management in a single platform.
Billing software is a tool that automatically generates billing for rendered services and products. This tool creates a list of services and products along with their corresponding costs. And sends them to customers as an invoice. An invoice is made for every product sold or service rendered. So these invoices makes the process easier to businesses.
Traditionally invoices came in paper form either handwritten or typed. Today, we using financial technologies like electronic transfers, card payments,and online payments which speed up transactions. However Invoicing software makes things even faster. A standard invoice includes the following. A unique number or reference, name, address, and contact details of the individual or company issuing the invoice,a description of what product or service,the supply date of the goods or service, date of the invoice was issued, the amount of money owed, detailing the tax, discounts, total dues and the deadline date for payment.
The main advantage of a billing software is error free. It should have full description of that what customer charged for a product or service. It keep the accurate record of customer and rates. This software can find out which of the customers are most regular & profitable. Therefore it maintains the status of being paid or unpaid and payment details which is received from customer. Hence we can track the material receipts from supplier and inventory stock in company. It is also reduces the workload of employees. But It not suitable for all type of payment. Like if there is no ongoing relationship with the customer or if payment is required upfront, an invoice wouldn’t be used.
Some industries use a lot of upfront payments for goods or services, such as retail and e-commerce. Merchants within these sectors require instant payment before they hand over or dispatch products. Some of the industries take cash or digital payments from customers on the spot. So they rarely issue invoices. Manual invoices are slower both to deliver and to be processed. But modern automated methods can ensure payments are made quickly and efficiently,even immediately.
Enterprise Resource Planning(ERP) software is a resource management system that monitoring the business processes like accounting, sales, production and inventory management in a single platform. It is a business management software of integrated modules. In which an organisation can use to store, manage, collect and interpret data from business activities. It includes many activities which help employees do their jobs more efficiently and helps the entrepreneurs to run the organisation in the best way. ERP system track business resources cash, raw materials, orders, and purchases.
The applications that share data across various departments(manufacturing, purchasing, sales, accounting, etc) that provide the data. ERP provides an integrated and continuously updated view of core business processes using common database maintained by a database management system. The purpose of ERP software is to increase efficiency and promote a culture of collaboration in the organization. This results increased productivity which can eventually lead to a better growth of an organization.
Advantage of an ERP software is that the business processes saves time and expense. Management can make decisions faster and with fewer errors. Data becomes visible across the organization. By using an ERP software an organization can report the sales forecasting, which allows inventory optimization, history of every transactions. Order tracking, revenue tracking from invoice through cash receipt, matching purchase orders (what was ordered), inventory receipts (what arrived), and costing (what the vendor invoiced). ERP can also improve quality and efficiency of the business by keeping a company's internal business processes running smoothly. ERP can lead to better outputs that may benefit the company, such as in customer service and manufacturing.
| Traditional Billing Software | ERP Software |
|---|---|
| 1. No collaboration | 1. Collaborative working with real-time |
| 2. Risk of losing orders | 2. No chance of missing any order |
| 3. Inventory wastage | 3. Maximum inventory in minimum |
| 4. Low data security | 4. High data security |
| 5. Delayed deliveries | 5. On-time deliveries |
| 6. Non-compliant operations | 6. Standardized processes |
| 7. Spending hours in validating report | 7. Generates report in a single click |
| 8. Less efficient | 8. More efficient |
| 9. Inaccurate scheduling | 9. Efficiently planned production |
| 10. Unsatisfied customers | 10. Happy customers |
The main difference between a traditional billing software and an ERP software is the collaborative working. An ERP software have a collaborative working with a real time data. But the traditional billing software haven’t a collaboration. Data takes many forms in the modern companies, including documents, files, forms, audio and video, and emails. Each data medium has its own mechanism for allowing collaboration. Business processes like accounting, sales, marketing, production, and inventory are integrated in one ERP platform. Which increases efficiency. So it’s easier to collect and access data across the organization. An ERP software includes human resource management, financial management, sales and marketing, customer relationship management, manufacturing, inventory management, supply chain management, purchasing modules in a single platform.
The traditional billing software needed different platforms to process these modules. Traditional billing software has less data security,anyone can change the data using the software. While ERP provides more data security. Likewise administrators can quickly deactivate the access of terminated employees and grant permission to new ones.
ERP solutions also display user activities. So they can easily spot unauthorized actions or suspicious activity patterns in the system. ERP system makes accurate forecasts. The data de duplication feature also ensures data is updated and using data integrity managers can generate reports with realistic forecasts. With the help of dashboards managers can get all the data of all department and easily make decisions. The dashboard system is not included in the traditional billing software.
ERP increases the operational flexibility. So we can add more modules as business grows. Therefore no longer need to replace the system with a new software. Billing software is also flexible. But need to replace the system with a new software while expanding the business.
The risk of losing orders and wastage of inventory is increasing due to the less efficiency of traditional billing software. ERP provides efficiently planned production and on-time deliveries. The integrated management of ERP software helps to generate reports in single click and making happy customers.
Due to the growth in business we couldn’t control our business manually. So we are using special management tools and systems which can easily manage all the processes and activities. ERP includes many activities which help employees do their jobs more efficiently. That’s why more organizations are using ERP software for their business management..
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