ERP and Automation for Manufacturers and Traders
Know where every order and every rupee is.
I build ERP for traders and manufacturers in Mumbai and across India: order tracking, stock, dispatch, collections and sales reporting, shaped around how your business runs and connected to the accounting software your team already uses. Most projects start with one module and grow once it proves itself.
The daily manual work in a trading or factory office
Orders arrive over phone calls and WhatsApp. Status lives in people’s heads, so the only way to know where an order stands is to call someone. Stock in the yard doesn’t match the books. One bank receipt has to be split across many invoices, with TDS and credit notes, and it’s done by hand every time.
The reporting is no better. One listed lubricants manufacturer I worked with built its monthly sales reports by hand from about 19 Excel workbooks, and the sheets disagreed with each other. Management saw totals, but not which distributors were buying less.
What to automate first
- Field sales. Salesmen check in by location, log visits and book orders. See the field sales tracking app.
- Dealer orders. Dealers order from a catalogue inside WhatsApp, and a sales order appears in your ERP or Tally. See WhatsApp ordering for distributors.
- Stock and reorders. Low stock creates a draft purchase order for the usual supplier. See automatic stock reorder.
- Purchase approvals. Requests go to the right approver with one-tap decisions and a full record. See purchase approvals on WhatsApp.
- Collections. Overdue invoices trigger reminders with a UPI link until the payment lands. See payment reminder automation.
- GST matching. GSTR-2B compared with your purchase register, with mismatches listed per supplier. See GST reconciliation.
- The owner’s briefing. Yesterday’s sales, collections and cash, in plain English every morning. See the daily business report on WhatsApp.
ERP for traders: custom or off the shelf?
A generic ERP is fine when your process is generic. Traders and manufacturers usually find the gaps in the details. Steel sells by weight, and mill and weighbridge weights often disagree. A coil has to be tracked at the yard, under process, part consumed and dispatched. Dealers have their own prices and credit limits. Off-the-shelf software makes you change your process to fit it.
For a Mumbai steel trading company, I built OpsHub around the way the floor actually runs: a ten-step order tracker from enquiry to gate pass, coil-by-coil stock, a weighbridge log, and nine role-based views where margins stay with senior staff. Receipts are allocated oldest-first, with 194Q TDS applied automatically.
A custom system isn’t always the answer, and I’ll tell you when it isn’t. If you’re weighing it up, the guide to custom ERP cost in India compares the two, and the custom ERP development page explains what gets built.
Built for manufacturers and traders.
OpsHub Steel Operations
One system for a steel trader to run orders, coil stock, dispatch, collections and GST.
Validated · 48,210 invoice lines
Sales Intelligence Dashboard
Nineteen hand-built Excel reports replaced by one live dashboard that refreshes from a single ERP upload.
Tools that fit this work
I connect to the accounting software, Excel files and WhatsApp you already use instead of replacing them. TallyPrime stays the book of record through Tally integration, the WhatsApp Business API carries orders and alerts, and business dashboards sit on top, with GST, TDS, lakhs and crores built in from the start.
Questions people ask.
It depends on how unusual your process is. If standard billing and stock cover you, TallyPrime alone may be enough. If orders, dispatch or pricing need their own logic, a small custom module alongside Tally usually fits better than a large generic ERP. The audit call settles it.
No. A custom ERP usually works alongside Tally and syncs with it, so accountants keep their tools while sales, stores and dispatch get screens built for them. Data moves between the two systems automatically, so neither team has to enter anything twice.
Yes, because the system is built around how you actually hold stock. The steel system I built tracks every coil through yard, processing, part consumption and dispatch, and records weighbridge tare and gross at the yard, so weight differences are caught early.
Yes, and most projects do. Pick the module that hurts most, such as order tracking or collections, get it running and prove it on real orders. New modules can then connect to the same data, so the system grows without starting again.
My projects run from ₹50,000 to ₹10 lakh, depending on modules, users and integrations. One module with a Tally sync sits at the lower end, and a multi-role system across orders, stock, dispatch and collections sits higher. The quote is fixed after the free audit call.
Show me how an order moves through your business.
A free 30-minute call. You walk me through the process; I tell you what can be automated, roughly how, and what it would take.