Billing software or accounting software: which does a Nepali shop need?

What is the difference between billing and accounting software?

Billing software answers: what happened today? It records who bought what, at what price and with how much VAT. It records what arrived from which supplier, and what is left on the shelf. It shows who owes you money, and whom you owe. It lives at the counter and in the store room, and the owner and staff use it every day.

Accounting software answers: what is the position of the business? It keeps a general ledger in double entry. That means every transaction is recorded in two accounts, so the whole set of books agrees. From that ledger it produces the statements that go to an auditor and to the tax authority. It sits on an accountant’s desk and is used in batches, often monthly or once a year.

In short, billing software deals with each sale and purchase, and accounting software deals with the accounts built from them. Good billing records make good accounts easier to prepare. One does not replace the other.

What is each judged on?

If you are comparing products, judge each kind against its own list.

Billing software

• Invoice discipline: one number sequence per fiscal year, nothing reused or edited, reprints marked and counted, cancellations recorded with reasons.
• Compliance: enlisted with the Inland Revenue Department, a server in Nepal, an activity log, and exports.
• VAT reporting: sales and purchase registers, both return registers, a VAT summary by Nepali month, the counterparty schedule.
• Stock accuracy: the stock figure moves in the same transaction as the sale. Transfers are recorded, stock counts produce adjustments, and batches and expiry dates are tracked where the trade needs them.
• Counter speed: what a cashier can do in ten seconds.
• Receivables and payables: who owes what, and for how long, so you know which udhaaro to collect first.
• Help to sell: does it show what is selling, and warn you before an item runs out?

Accounting software

• A general ledger in double entry, with journals and party accounts.
• The statutory year-end statements an auditor signs.
• Depreciation schedules, provisions, accruals and adjusting entries: the corrections an accountant makes at period end.
• Cost centres and budgets where a business needs them.
• A chart of accounts (the list of every account in the books) that somebody is willing to keep up to date.

Only one item appears on both lists, in spirit: the record of who owes what. That overlap is why people confuse the two kinds of software.

Which does your business need?

Answer these questions honestly.

Do you, or anyone on your staff, post journal entries? If nobody in the business will ever open a ledger and make an adjusting entry, you will not use accounting software. You will pay an accountant instead, which costs less and gives a better result.

Is your counter the bottleneck? If bills are slow, stock figures are wrong, or supplier bills pile up waiting to be typed, your problem is in daily operations. Billing software fixes that. A ledger package will not help with it.

Is year end the bottleneck? If daily trade is under control but the yearly accounts are a mess, the problem is the handover. Better exports and an earlier start usually fix it. You rarely need to buy a second system.

Are you being pushed towards electronic billing? Then the rule applies to the software that issues the invoice. A ledger package on an accountant’s desk does not meet it.

How complex is your entity? Several companies, trade between those companies, outside investors, or loans taken against audited accounts: this is where a real accounting system, run by someone who knows it, is worth its cost.

For most shops, pharmacies, hardware stores and distributors in Nepal, the answer is billing software every day, plus an accountant at the end of each period. This split matches who actually does each job: your staff at the counter, and a professional at the period end.

Where Kuver Books sits, plainly

Kuver Books is billing, POS and inventory software. It covers invoicing and counter sales, sales orders, purchase orders and supplier bills, goods receipts, stock across warehouses, and batch and expiry handling. It has the reports that go with all of this, including the VAT registers and the counterparty schedule you file. On the money side, it covers receivables and payables with ageing, party ledgers, the cash ledger and cash to bank deposits. That lets you see the position of your working capital, the cash and dues you run the shop on, during the month.

It is not a general ledger system. It does not keep accounts in double entry, and it does not produce the statutory year-end statements an auditor signs. There is no chart of accounts to maintain, no journal voucher entry and no depreciation schedule.

We are specific about this for two reasons. First, a lot of marketing in Nepal uses the word accounting for anything with numbers in it, and buyers end up with an unpleasant surprise. Second, we drew this boundary on purpose. We want Kuver Books to be the system your counter runs on all day, handing your accountant a clean set of records. A thin ledger that nobody posts to would help no one.

Making the handover short

If you use billing software and an accountant, the handover is the whole relationship. Three things keep it short.

Ask what they want, before you buy. That usually means registers, party ledgers, stock valuation, the VAT returns and the schedule, in a spreadsheet they can work from. Check that the product you are considering produces exactly that.

Close the period on time. Do it monthly, not once a year. A month that is checked while people still remember it saves a day of argument in Asar.

Do not fix history by editing it. Make corrections with credit and debit notes linked to the original document. Where you bill electronically, editing is not allowed anyway, and that turns out to help you.

Kuver Books exports its registers, ledgers and reports to spreadsheet, PDF and CSV. Dates are shown in Bikram Sambat as well as the Gregorian calendar, which is the format most accountants in Nepal want. You can see the full list on the reports page.

Check anything about how your accounts must be prepared, or what your auditor requires, with the IRD or your accountant.