Accounting
Choosing accounting software in Bangladesh: a buyer's checklist
How to choose accounting software for a Bangladeshi business: the questions to ask about VAT, LC, bKash, support and data, plus how to run a fair trial.
Choosing accounting software is a decision you will live with for years: your history, your staff habits and your VAT records all end up inside it. Switching later is possible but painful. So it is worth spending a few days on the choice, and the most useful thing you can do is decide what you need before you watch a single demo.
This checklist is meant to be used with any product, including ours. It lists what to ask, what to test and what to be wary of. We do not rank other products here, and you should be sceptical of any vendor, including us, that makes sweeping claims you cannot test yourself.
Step 1: write down what you actually do
List your real workflows before looking at features. A trading company that imports goods, sells on credit to wholesalers and files monthly VAT needs different things from a service firm that bills monthly retainers. For each, note who does it, how often and what goes wrong today.
- Which documents you issue: invoices, challans, quotations, credit notes
- How you buy: local suppliers, imports through LC, advance payments
- How you get paid: bank transfer, cheque and PDC, bKash, Nagad, cash
- What you hold: stock in one or several locations, fixed assets
- What you must report: monthly VAT, tax deducted at source, management reports, audit support
- How many people use it, and who must not see what
Step 2: Bangladesh-specific questions
| Area | Ask the vendor to show you |
|---|---|
| VAT | Issuing a Mushak-6.3 challan from an invoice; separate output and input VAT accounts; how the monthly return data is prepared; how credit notes link back |
| Tax at source | How VDS and TDS are recorded on a supplier payment and how certificates are produced. Ask who updates rates when rules change |
| Import and LC | Tracking an LC from opening to settlement; landed cost allocation to items; foreign currency handling |
| Mobile wallets | Importing bKash or Nagad statements and matching them to receipts |
| Cheques | Tracking received and post-dated cheques, bounces, and issued cheques not yet cleared |
| Financial year | July to June periods, period locking, year-end close and opening balances |
| Language and formats | Taka formatting including lakh and crore, printable documents that suit your office |
Step 3: the fundamentals that apply everywhere
- Double-entry integrity: every transaction balances, and sub-ledgers (customers, suppliers, stock) agree with control accounts
- Audit trail: who created, changed or deleted a record, and when. Ask what cannot be deleted
- Roles and permissions: can you stop a salesperson from seeing margins, or a storekeeper from posting journals?
- Period locking: can you close a month so numbers stop changing?
- Reports you need: trial balance, ledgers, profit and loss, balance sheet, receivables and payables aging, stock valuation, VAT reports. Check that they can be filtered and exported
- Multi-branch and cost centres, if you have more than one location or division
Step 4: data, security and exit
Ask where your data lives, who can access it, how it is backed up and how you can get it out. You should be able to export your core records (chart of accounts, ledgers, customers, suppliers, items, transactions) in a usable format at any time. A vendor that makes exit difficult is telling you something. If the product is cloud-based, ask about access controls and what happens to your data if you stop paying.
Step 5: support and implementation
- How is data migration handled, and who does it? Opening balances, customers, suppliers and stock are the bulk of the work
- What training is included, and is it in a language and at times that suit your staff?
- How do you reach support: channels, hours, response expectations? Ask for them in writing
- What happens when rules or forms change: how are updates delivered and are they included in the price?
- Who in your own team will own the system? Software fails more often from lack of an internal owner than from missing features
Step 6: understand the price
Compare the total cost, not the headline: subscription or licence, per-user charges, limits on branches, transactions or storage, implementation and training fees, and charges for extra modules. Make sure you know what is included on the plan you are quoted. Published pricing, where available, is easier to compare than quotes that arrive after a call.
Step 7: run a fair trial
- 1Pick one real month of your own data: a few dozen sales, purchases, receipts and payments, including awkward ones such as a return, an LC purchase and a PDC.
- 2Enter them in the trial system with the people who will use it day to day, not just the owner.
- 3Produce your month-end reports and check them against your current numbers.
- 4Try the VAT process end to end, including the challan and the data you would use for the return.
- 5Ask a question you know the answer to from support and see how they handle it.
- 6Have your accountant or auditor look at the output. If they cannot follow it, it will cost you later.
Red flags
- Unwilling to show a real workflow end to end, preferring slides to the product
- Claims that cannot be tested, such as guaranteed compliance or the best in the market
- Records that can be deleted without a trace
- No clear way to export your data
- Pressure to sign before a trial is possible
If a product passes your trial, gives your accountant clear records and has a support route you have tested, it is probably a reasonable choice regardless of its size or fame. We would rather you pick on those criteria than on a brochure. If you want to see how eSolverBooks handles each item here, you can try it against the same checklist.