Best tailoring software in India: a buyer's checklist

Search for tailoring software in India and you will find ranked lists, many written by the vendors on them. A ranking cannot know whether you run a two-person blouse shop, a bridal house or a boutique with a workshop upstairs. Those shops need different tools.

Use this as a checklist. Take it into each demo and mark what you saw working on screen, as opposed to what you were told.

Start with your own shop

Write down three things before you speak to any vendor: your garments, your buyers, and last month's worst problem. A missed fitting date points to a different tool from a size that sold out in festival week.

Public reviews show what small shops find missing. One reviewer of a tailoring product wrote, "What I missed here are two important features- client scheduling and point of sale." If you sell from a rack as well as to order, check for both early.

INR and GST settings

Most software can show a rupee sign. The tax side needs more care.

First, find out your own position. Ask a GST practitioner or your jurisdictional GST office whether you need to register, which rates apply to your garments and to your stitching services, and whether a scheme such as composition suits you. Rates and rules change, so use the current CBIC notifications and not a figure from a blog, this one included. This matters for software choice, because your answer may mean more than one rate on the same bill.

Then check these in the demo:

• Can you set the rate yourself, and can you use more than one?
• Does it work with prices that include tax, prices that exclude it, or both?
• Does it split central and state tax on the bill, if you need that?
• If you are a composition or exempt business, can it issue a bill of supply in place of a tax invoice?

Boutique billing

If you are registered, hold a printed sample against Rule 46 of the CGST Rules. It lists what a tax invoice must carry, such as your GSTIN, a serial number unique within the financial year, the HSN code, and the rate and amount of tax. It also covers details needed for unregistered customers on larger bills, and the option of one consolidated invoice at the close of each day where the customer does not ask for one.

A boutique also needs to handle the order that spans weeks. The GST Council's invoice guidance says a registered person receiving an advance must issue a receipt voucher or similar document. So take a trial order with an advance, and ask to see what paper the customer gets on that day. Our guide to tailor billing software gives a test you can run.

Ethnic wear workflows

Here a general retail system falls short fastest. A lehenga, sherwani or saree blouse rarely moves through a straight line of cut, stitch, finish. Test the software with a real garment of yours:

• Your own stages. Can you add zari work, dyeing, fall and pico or a second fitting, and rename them in your own words?
• Work sent out. If a panel goes to an outside embroiderer, can you record who has it, when it is due and what it cost?
• Customer's fabric. Can you note that the saree or blouse piece belongs to the customer, with its length and condition at drop-off?
• Several garments, several dates. Can a bridal order hold a lehenga, a blouse and a groom's kurta, each with its own due date?
• Measurements by garment. A blouse and a sherwani need different fields. Check that you can add a field of your own.
• Handwork materials. Ask how it holds beads and sequins by the gram, crystals by the piece and fabric by the metre.

Language and devices

Ask which screens are translated and which are not. An app can have one language at the counter and another at the bench, and a staff member who cannot read the screen will go back to paper. Have the person who will use it try it, in the language they would use.

On devices, test on what you already own. Try a low-cost Android phone, and try the screen at the size your cutter would see. Big buttons matter when hands are full of cloth. If the tool needs a good connection, find out what stops when it drops.

Questions for every vendor

1. What does the total cost come to in the first year, with every user and shop counted?
2. Is any payment hidden until after sign-up? One app reviewer found out about the charge only after opening the app. Ask before you install.
3. Who sets up my garments, stages and measurements, and how long does that take?
4. Can I export my customers and orders, and in what format?
5. Who answers when something breaks during wedding season, and how do I reach them?
6. Can I speak to a shop like mine that uses this now?

For a wider method that works in any country, see our guide on how to choose tailoring software.

Where Tailoq fits on this list

Apply the same test to us. Tailoq suits a shop that makes for stock and for customers and wants both in one system. It has an ethnic wear preset and a bridal preset, with stages you can change, and a lane for outside workshops. It handles rupees, GST at your rate and inches or centimetres, and it works on the phone, tablet or computer you own.

Score two things with care. Tax is one rate per shop, on tax-inclusive prices, and tax figures show on screen, so it will not print a Rule 46 tax invoice for you yet. If a printed GST invoice from the software is a must, that should weigh heavily in your score.