01One pack, not a stack of tools
Many factories run on an accounting package, a stock spreadsheet, a payroll tool and a notebook at the weighbridge, then spend the month making them agree. Here it is all one: more than fifty modules sharing the same data, from the truck on the scale to the balance sheet, with nothing to add on and nothing to connect. The breadth you would otherwise look for in the largest ERPs, at the scale of a factory that is growing.
02The cost of a real solution, without the cost of a big ERP
A factory does not need to spend a fortune, wait eighteen months and hire consultants to know what a batch cost. BFL brings the same rigour, at a scale a growing factory can carry: perpetual stock, real cost price, double-entry books.
03Accounting that keeps itself: you come to read it
Nobody re-types anything into the books. Confirming a delivery moves the stock and posts the cost of sales in the same transaction; a payroll run, a loss in transit, a damaged return each write their own entry. So your accountant stops keeping the books and starts reading them: the statements are up to date every day, every line traces back to its entries, and every entry names the document that produced it. And the software always cites a role, never a hard-coded account number, so the chart of accounts stays yours.
04Rights given gesture by gesture
Declaring is not validating. Granting is not disbursing. Keeping a recipe is not touching prices. Every decision that matters has a right of its own, from correcting a recorded error to granting a discount at the counter, with a preset per role and an override per person. And a role can work without ever seeing an amount.
05It refuses to invent a number
When an item has no weight in the catalogue, the software does not compare a partial load: it names the item to complete. A missing figure is said out loud, because a false variance accuses an innocent driver.
06Made for the way African factories actually run
Cash, mobile money, cheques after clearing, several banks. Country and currency chosen at installation, from 41 countries. Taxes and contributions stay the company's to set, because rates change by decree; a country pack can install them in one click, checked on their official sources, and a new rate never rewrites the past.
07A document handed over is never rewritten
An invoice, a receipt or an advice note freezes the moment it leaves your hands. What happens next is added under its own number, not silently written over the old one. That is what lets you find, a year later, exactly the paper the customer is holding.
08A cheque received is not money received
Cheques wait on their own account, outside the treasury, until the bank credits them. Your cash position shows what you can actually spend. And if one bounces, the receivable comes back to life on its own, with a letter for the customer.
09The annual report checks itself in front of you
Six pages you can hand to a bank: what the year produced, what the material cost, what is still owed. Each figure is reached twice, by two independent paths, and if the two disagree, the document prints the difference instead of hiding it.
10It works where the network does not
Installed on site, the factory keeps working when the internet drops. Tablets and phones are first-class: every screen is built to be used standing, in a warehouse, on a 393-pixel display.
11Your data stays with you
The software installs on your own server, under your own domain, with a certificate in your name. Your database is reachable from no public address. Each night one backup carries your accounts and your attachments together, because accounts restored without their documents prove nothing. And the backup is put to the test on a throwaway database: a backup never restored is not a backup, it is a belief.
12It refuses to spend money you do not have
A cash box can no longer go negative without anyone noticing. When a payment exceeds what the account holds, it is refused, and the refusal says how much is missing, instead of leaving a balanced balance sheet lying about your cash.
13Your taxes stop piling up on a balance sheet
The VAT you collected, the tax withheld on salaries and the social contributions are paid from the software itself. The screen shows what you owe, computed from your entries and never from a re-entry; you settle all of it, or the part you can this month. The receipt from the administration is filed next to the payment.
14A distant delivery stops looking as profitable as the one next door
Fuel, tolls and the hired carrier's invoice attach to the trip that consumed them. The cost is shared between the orders the truck carried, by weight, and each delivery shows what it really earned. On our test set, transport reverses the ranking of two orders.
15Your teams get a manual, not a training to ask for again
Two handbooks ship with the software. One follows a batch through production, quality and rework, and lists the twenty-two refusals the software can oppose, with their exact wording and the gesture that lifts each one. The other answers the four questions an audit firm asks about somebody else's software. Both end with what the product does not do, because that is the half that earns the rest.
16A large payment waits for management
You set the amount above which a disbursement stops being routine. Beyond it, supplier payments, expenses, salaries and customer refunds all wait, and management approves or refuses from its own screen. The entry is born at the approval, not before: as long as nobody has decided, the ledger holds nothing, and the ledger can prove it. The person who asked reads it on screen instead of believing the money gone, and every decision carries the name of whoever took it.
17The money leaves the account you name
A factory rarely holds one account. The rent leaves one bank, wages another, the phone bill a mobile money wallet. Every payment, expense, purchase or salary now leaves the exact account you name, and comes back to that same account if it is cancelled. Pick a bank account then switch to cash, and the software refuses instead of quietly posting cash against a bank. Nothing changes if you never name one: the default keeps being used.
18What the workshop did not use goes back to the store
The run needed less than planned. Instead of keeping the surplus on a shelf or throwing it away, production declares what is going back and says why. Nothing moves at that point, and the screen says so. The store then receives it and decides with the material in front of them: take it back, scrap what cannot be reused, or split between the two. What comes back re-enters at the price it left at, so your average cost does not move, and the order stops carrying material it never used.
19You type the name, the software finds it
A factory carries hundreds of materials and products. Picking one from a list you can only scroll is slow on a tablet, and it is easy to take the line next to the right one. Type any part of what you are looking for, the code or the name, and the list narrows as you type. Short lists that are not catalogues keep their plain drop-down: there is nothing to search through in three entries.
20What you make yourself counts in the price
Many factories make part of what they use: the drum, the cap, the bulk. Most software treats them as bought goods or ignores them. Here the component leaves the finished-goods store by its own batches, its cost enters the product that contains it, and the software refuses to declare a batch whose recipe called for a component that never came out. An order whose cost is incomplete says so, on its own screen, and stops saying it the day the component is issued.
21Every store is real, and a lot is always somewhere
Every receipt, issue, delivery, return and count names the store it acts in, prefilled so nobody is slowed down, and a storekeeper can be limited to their own stores. Open a lot and you see how much of it sits in each one. Moving goods from one store to another is a document: it waits in draft, travels in transit without changing either the total or the value of your stock, and the destination records what actually arrived, in several times if the truck comes back. What never arrives does not vanish: it goes to dispute, and a manager settles it, found or lost, on an account of its own.
22The count stops turning tidying up into a loss
Stock is counted lot by lot, and the counter never sees the quantity expected: each lot finds its real place, and a lot found where nobody expected it is added on the spot. A lot counted short in one store and found long in another is a lot that was put away wrong, not a loss, and it is corrected without an accounting entry. What the count will post as a loss or a gain is shown before you validate, on the screen and in the report your accountant reads, and if stock moved while you were counting, the screen names what moved.
23Goods leave once, and the customer knows which lot
A delivery note is issued from an issued invoice, and from nowhere else, so the same sale can no longer leave twice; the storekeeper still finds it by the order number. The paper the customer signs lists the lots that left, and the invoice file shows its delivery notes, one click away, and the lots delivered for each article. While nothing has left the warehouse, the invoice can only be cancelled in full, never partly credited for goods that never moved. And what comes back damaged is set aside in a hold store, lot by lot, out of sellable stock, until it is written off with its entry or allocated to staff.
24The workshop says what it really used
The cost of a product is what went into the machine, not what the recipe planned. In front of each material, the workshop declares what the run really used; what the store had not served leaves stock through that very gesture, and what is left over goes back to the store, which confirms it. An order does not close without that declaration, and the reports show what went beyond the recipe, in quantity and in cost. Material that orders closed long ago never took out is listed and caught up in one click, dated the day the order was closed, so a month already closed is never rewritten behind your back.
25What you give away is counted
Ten bought, two free is written on the invoice itself, and the goods leave stock at cost as a sales expense instead of a sale at zero that would inflate your stock. A gift to a visitor or to an administration, and an allocation to your own staff, go through their own screen, with who received it and why, each landing on its own account: you can answer what the quarter was given away, and to whom. The discount granted to a customer, by your early payment rule or typed in amount at the counter with its reason, is read on an account of its own and printed on the receipt, so you know what your collection policy costs you.
26Every authority, every deadline, on one screen
The tax office, customs, the local assembly, the social security fund and the regulators each owe you a calendar. Here they share one: every obligation with its dated rate and its due date, recorded the day it arises, declared, then paid through the approval gate, and what you owe each authority reads on its own statement like a supplier's. A permit paid in January is spread over its twelve months instead of sinking January. For Ghana, one click installs the GRA, SSNIT, your assembly and the EPA with their rates, checked on their official sources, and touches nothing you had already set up.
27Pay a supplier, the withholding tax is done
The software keeps back what the law requires: the right nature from what is paid, goods, services or rent, on the amount before VAT, at the rate of the day for a resident or not, once the supplier's payments of the year pass the threshold. You may keep back another amount, but you say why, and the reason stays on the payment. The supplier leaves with a numbered certificate, and the month's schedule to file is checked against your ledger, to the cent.
28Your people have their own section, and their own keys
HR keeps the people, their careers and their time; the payroll officer prepares and pays; the accountant disburses. Attendance is recorded from a tablet against the planned schedule, hours and overtime are computed, never typed, and payroll pays them at your rates, monthly, twice a month or by the day, without ever paying the same day twice. Contractors and agency staff are recorded without a payslip. When someone leaves, the final settlement is paid to the half-day and the person leaves with a certificate of employment that says nothing it should not. And your dashboard shows what your workforce costs, not only what it takes home.
29A mistake is undone exactly, never guessed
A payment keyed twice, a supplier paid the wrong amount, a manual entry on the wrong account, an opening taken over with the wrong figure: each is undone by its own gesture, which reads back the entry it undoes and returns it line by line on the accounts really used. The document stays visible, marked Cancelled, with its reason. Delete removes an item from every list without ever erasing it, and the Super Admin can restore it. Reorganise your chart of accounts today: tomorrow's corrections stay exact.
30Your bank loans follow themselves
A loan enters the books the day the money arrives, on the account you name. Its schedule is built at drawdown and adjusts to the bank's own table; each instalment paid writes one entry that separates capital, interest and penalty, above your approval ceiling if it is large. What you still owe is never typed: it is deduced from what you paid, lender by lender.
31Month end, checked before it is closed
Sold, collected, still owed, overpaid and paid but not delivered, over the period you choose, each figure next to the ledger's, with a one-page summary for the meeting. Opening stock taken over at the wrong cost is brought back to its real cost in one gesture, and the cost of sales already posted follows. Foreign exchange gains and losses have their own register, with the two rates of every operation. And before the first update reaches your server, we measure your own database: that is how we catch what no test sees.
32A gap is named, never left to find
Sales of the period shows every invoice excluding tax, its tax and what the customer pays, then checks by itself that the total excluding tax is what the ledger carries in sales. When the two differ, the screen lists the invoices and credit notes that make the difference. The aged balance does the same against the customers' account. Your accountant no longer hunts for a gap: he reads it.
33The customer wants VAT after all? Re-issue the invoice
Even when it has been paid. One button cancels the invoice with a credit note and issues a new one at the same price excluding tax, with VAT on every line. What the customer already paid is carried over, so he owes only the VAT. Goods already delivered count for the new invoice and never leave twice, and the invoice he received is never rewritten. Only the people you allow can do it, and they say why.
34The shop floor counts what it holds in its hand
A carton does not come in quarters: jars, cartons and labels leave the store in whole units, counted on the whole order, so twelve more jars never open a second carton. Before an order closes, the workshop sees every material, planned, requested, released and consumed, and sends the rest back to the store in one click, or declares part of it damaged; the store confirms. The quality check counts apart the units a test used up, and their cost goes to the good units, as IAS 2 requires.
35Every report proves itself against your books
Expenses, debts, payroll, declarations, taxes, commissions, exchange, production costs, stock: under each total, a line says whether the figure agrees with the general ledger, and names the documents that make any difference. The stock is proved against the books for any day you choose, the auditor's 30 June included. At year end the annual report lists every one of those checks, with a link to each, and the PDF you hand to a bank carries a one-line summary. Your finance director stops redoing the sums: each list says by itself whether it holds.
36A closed month stays exactly as you closed it
Once a month is closed, nothing written in it moves: no entry, no receipt attached later, no reason corrected, no payslip rebuilt. The buttons say so before the click, greyed out with the reason and a link to reopen the period, and a cancellation always carries the date of what it undoes. Each expense keeps the production share it had on the day it was recorded, so changing a category never rewrites September's costs. And as long as a past month is still open, the dashboards remind whoever can close it.
37Your payroll law, written as rules and proved by its examples
Payroll runs on a rule engine you set to your country's law: capped percentages, progressive scales, overtime and bonuses taxed apart, deductions within a ceiling, each rule dated and citing its text. A legal rule must find the official worked examples to the cent before it can be used, it is simulated on your own employees, and a second person approves it. For Ghana the law already comes written, SSNIT, PAYE of Act 1178, overtime and bonuses included, proved on the GRA's own examples. Every payslip explains how each deduction was reached, and a law published late is caught up on the next payroll without ever rewriting one already validated.
38From the payslip to the bank file, with nothing re-typed
Before validating, payroll flags what looks wrong: a net that moved too much, a net at zero, a transfer with no account number. It then pays by batches, bank, mobile money or cash, each from its own account, and produces the file your bank imports, in its exact format, described once without a programmer. A failed transfer comes back owed in one gesture. Each employee receives the payslip by e-mail, and the monthly and yearly statements for the GRA and SSNIT are drawn from the validated payslips, kept as filed, with the amended return shown when a payroll changes later. A bonus, a thirteenth month or a final settlement is paid on its own date, outside the monthly run, with the tax of the month right to the cent.
39Your dollar account speaks dollars
A bank, a till or a mobile money wallet can be held in a foreign currency. It shows its balance in that currency beside its book value, its statement prints the amount, the rate and the balance of every line, and it refuses to receive your home currency by mistake. Rates are typed or fetched every day, and each stays dated. Customers pay and suppliers are paid in dollars, salaries leave the dollar account, a transfer keeps the two amounts the bank really took and paid, and the dollar statement is reconciled in dollars. At month end one button revalues every foreign account to its fair value, as IAS 21 requires, and what conversion cost you shows expense by expense in the exchange register.
40A sale and its cost always land in the same month
An invoice issued before the goods leave waits on a contract account; when they leave, the sale enters revenue for what really left, at the very moment its cost does, as IFRS 15 requires. A screen shows what is invoiced and not yet gone, and what is gone and not yet invoiced, each checked against its account. The income statement splits the cost of sales by what it is made of, and writes the expenses-by-nature note IFRS 18 will ask of everyone from January 2027. Each statement compares itself with the previous period or last year, and one click on any line of the journal opens the whole operation.
41The margin of each product, down to the batch that made it
Gross margin by product, for any period, from the invoices and the departures, with the proof that its total is your income statement. Open a product and you reach every invoice, credit note, delivery and revaluation behind it, then, for each unit sold, the lot that left, the production order that made it and what it cost. An opening stock taken over too dear and later corrected gives each product its share of the correction, so a takeover never distorts your margins.
42What production really cost reaches your stock
The same meter lights the workshop, the offices and the gate. You say what share of each expense belongs to production; the software spreads it over the month's orders, adds the payroll of those who make and the wear of the machines, and at month end brings that cost into the value of your stock, as IAS 2 requires. Fixed costs are spread over your normal activity, so a quiet month does not make every jar dearer. Each closed order shows what it cost, where that came from and where its batches went, and its cost no longer moves when purchase prices change.
43Plan production on a calendar, machine by machine, team by team
The production manager plans each run on a calendar, with its product, time, machine, team and material, and the software says whether the material will be there that day. Each step of the routing gets its machine and its hours, a machine booked twice at the same time is circled in red, and the team working on it is warned when another order needs it. Shifts and teams come from HR, so a morning team is not handed a five o'clock run, and opening an order shows who is expected on the line, with the service number everyone already knows. Each factory chooses how strict this is: no check, a warning with a reason, or a block.
44Imports and taxes, the way the GRA asks
An import file gathers a shipment's purchases and everything it cost, freight in dollars, insurance, customs, the clearing agent; each charge is owed to whom it is due, customs becomes an obligation to the GRA, and once received the charges join the average cost of each material, even those paid earlier as an expense. Invoices split the levy into VAT, NHIL and GETFund, each on its own account; an exempt customer, covered by a dated certificate, never receives a taxed invoice; the VAT on goods given free is counted on their normal value. The VAT report reconciles with your books, the withholding your customers suffer you is followed certificate by certificate, and every permit warns before it expires.
45A customer with many shops, one account holder
A branch is attached to its parent. The parent sees what each member owes and the group total, prints the group statement and can be given a group credit limit, checked on every order of every member. One payment from head office settles the invoices of the parent and its branches you choose, and the receipt lists each one. One truck, one delivery note, several stops in the group: each stop signs for what it received, and the invoice of a branch's order can be addressed to its parent.
46Taking over from your old system without losing anything
On the day you switch, nothing stands still: a supplier invoice half delivered, a customer who paid without receiving everything, an advance paid without an invoice, material at a subcontractor's. Each situation is taken over as it is and finished normally afterwards, sixteen questions are asked before the accounts open so that nothing is forgotten, and your opening balance sheet is set against the last one of the old software, line by line. The owner's current account is kept apart too: withdrawals, funds entrusted, purchases paid from her own pocket, each with its nature, so you always know what she owes the company and what it owes her.
47Your foreign customers, invoiced and followed in their own currency
Your customer in Lomé pays in CFA francs, the one in London in pounds: each receives an invoice in his own currency, at the day's rate or the agreed one, frozen when issued, while your books stay in cedis without any double entry. He owes 1,000 dollars, not 11,742 cedis: his debt, his instalments and his reminders stay in dollars to the last payment, and each payment tells you what exchange made you gain or lose. Credit, advances, group payments, early payment discounts, withholding tax, post-dated cheques and write-offs all work in dollars too, and the invoice is settled to the cent.
48Your foreign suppliers, paid in dollars under your local tax rules
The supplier's invoice is entered in dollars: the order's prices are offered converted, the rate is frozen when it is validated, and the goods enter stock at that rate. The debt is paid in dollars, from a dollar or a cedi account, and the exchange gain or loss is computed for you. The withholding tax the law requires is calculated on the cedi value of the day and its certificate printed; freight or a clearing agent billed in dollars keeps its debt in dollars inside the import file. A credit note, an overpayment, a short delivery, a manual entry or an offset: everything that settles a dollar debt reads in dollars, and exchange never escapes the income statement.
49Your commercial agreements apply themselves at the counter
A customer who has « 2% on every payment » gets it at every collection, ten payments, ten discounts, offered ticked and removable by the cashier; it adds up with the early payment discount, and withholding tax is computed after it. One click, Exact amount, fills in what the invoice still owes, discounts deducted, even in dollars. A customer who comes to pay three invoices leaves with a single receipt: each invoice receives what this payment settles, the discount and the withholding are computed invoice by invoice, and what is left stays on his account. A parent company with the agreement pays for its branches and the discount is reckoned line by line, in dollars when it pays in dollars.
50An auditor will find no missing number
An auditor starts by looking for the numbers that are missing. Receipts, invoices, credit notes, delivery and return notes, supplier payments, expenses, corrections and production orders take their number in the very gesture that records them: refused because the month is closed, a check fails or an error occurs, the document gives its number back and the next one takes it. Products, customers, employees and machines follow the same rule, so no reference jumps when a creation fails.