Challenges
The manual work this trade still runs on, what it costs, and what changes.
Quoting a part without knowing what it really costs
- How it is done today
- The owner works out material and machine cost on a calculator or in an old Excel sheet whenever a buyer sends a drawing.
- Cost or risk
- Quotes are too low on complex parts and too high on simple ones, and nobody notices until the year-end books.
- With Finocket
- Build a bill of materials per part and read the rolled-up standard cost per piece before you quote.
Machine time is never charged to the job
- How it is done today
- Hours on the lathe or VMC are noted on a register, if at all, and are not added to the job's cost.
- Cost or risk
- Machine-heavy jobs look profitable when they are not.
- With Finocket
- Name work centres with an hourly rate and route each part through them, so time per step lands on the job.
Work in progress is a guess at month end
- How it is done today
- The supervisor counts half-finished parts on the floor and the accountant enters a round figure.
- Cost or risk
- Profit swings month to month for no real reason, and stock in the books does not match the shop.
- With Finocket
- Work orders carry a WIP ledger from start to close, which nets to zero when the order is closed into finished stock.
Material sent to job workers on handwritten challans
- How it is done today
- Challans for plating, heat treatment or machining are written in a book; the return is matched by memory.
- Cost or risk
- Material with a job worker past the legal time limit can be treated as a supply, and nobody sees it coming.
- With Finocket
- Raise the delivery challan in Finocket with the job-work purpose, nature of work and original challan number on it. A custody register and the time-limit warning are not built yet.
Dispatch details kept apart from the invoice
- How it is done today
- Vehicle number, transporter and e-way bill number are written on a separate slip or a WhatsApp message.
- Cost or risk
- A missing or wrong e-way bill can hold up a truck, and the CA cannot match dispatches to invoices.
- With Finocket
- Keep e-way bill number, vehicle and transporter on the invoice or challan itself.
Stock spread across godowns that nobody can see at once
- How it is done today
- Each godown keeps its own register; the owner phones around to find a raw material.
- Cost or risk
- Duplicate purchases of material already lying in another godown, and stock-outs that stop a line.
- With Finocket
- Hold raw material and finished goods by godown, move stock between them, and give stores staff their own role.
Outsourced job-work bills booked without TDS
- How it is done today
- Plating and heat-treatment bills are paid in full and TDS is remembered at the quarter end.
- Cost or risk
- Interest and disallowance when TDS is missed or late.
- With Finocket
- Record the job-worker bill as an expense against its challan reference and record TDS on it.
The CA gets a bag of papers every month
- How it is done today
- Bills, challans and bank statements are photocopied or emailed to the CA, who re-enters them.
- Cost or risk
- GST returns are late or wrong, and the owner pays twice for the same data entry.
- With Finocket
- Invite the CA into the workspace to read the books and prepare GSTR-1 and GSTR-3B from the same entries.