Who it's for
For businesses that buy overseas and sell on.
FlowBooks is built around one shape of business. If that shape is yours, it will fit closely — and if it is not, this page says so before you spend a fortnight finding out.
It fits
Six things that are probably true of you.
Most of these, rather than all of them. The first two are the ones that matter.
You buy from overseas suppliers
By container, part-container or air freight, from one supplier or several — and sometimes several on the same shipment.
You pay in a currency you do not sell in
Orders in US dollars, renminbi, euros or anything else, with a rate you agreed on the day, and selling in your own money.
Getting the goods here costs real money
Freight, duty, clearing, inland transport and port charges, arriving as separate bills, weeks apart, in more than one currency.
You hold stock
In a warehouse, a shed or several sites, with quantities that have to be right because somebody is selling from them.
You sell to businesses on account
Invoices with terms, part-payments, credit limits, statements and the monthly job of working out who has not paid.
Somebody asks what the margin is
A partner, an accountant or a bank — and you would rather answer with a figure you can show the workings for.
In practice
The businesses it was shaped around.
FlowBooks holds no assumption about what you trade in — products, units, categories and attributes are yours to set up. These are simply the shapes it has been built and tested against.
The importer-wholesaler
Containers in from overseas manufacturers, sold on to trade customers in quantity. The business FlowBooks was built inside, and the one it fits most tightly.
The distributor with a counter
Trade customers who collect, and others who need it delivered by a carrier with paperwork and proof that it arrived.
More than one place to keep stock
A main warehouse and a branch or two, with transfers between them, staff who should only see their own site, and one set of figures over all of it.
The business outgrowing its spreadsheets
Where the figures are already kept carefully, by hand, and the cost of keeping them that way has become the limit on growing.
It does not fit
When to use something else.
Said here rather than discovered in week two.
A shop that needs a till
Counter sales are invoiced and take stock down, but there is no cash drawer, barcode lane or card terminal. A retail chain wants a point-of-sale system.
A services business
If what you sell is hours rather than goods, nearly everything here — stock, shipments, landed cost — is weight you would be carrying for nothing.
A manufacturer
FlowBooks buys, holds and sells goods. Building an item out of components, with a bill of materials and a production run, is not something it does.
One system for absolutely everything
Your books, your bank feed and your payroll stay in Xero or MYOB. FlowBooks runs the trading and hands your bookkeeper a file their software accepts.
How big
One person with a shed, up to a team across five sites.
What changes between plans is how many warehouses and how many people — never whether the figures are right.
Above five warehouses or fifteen people, tell us how you trade and we will quote for it. Two separate businesses means two stores, each on its own plan.
Still not sure whether it fits?
Open the demo and look at a container, a stock list and an invoice. Five minutes there answers the question better than anything we could write.