The second branch is usually where the spreadsheets start. One file for each location's sales, another for stock, a third that someone builds at the end of the month to add them together. By the fourth branch, the owner spends the first week of every month reconciling files that were never meant to agree.
The fix is not a better spreadsheet. It is setting the business up once, deciding what each branch shares with the company, and letting every report read from the same records.
Decide what a branch shares
Most branches are not separate businesses. They trade under the company's name, use its VAT registration and print its logo. A few differ: a branch in a mall may have its own address, a franchise outlet its own trading mark, and occasionally a branch is registered separately for tax.
Write this down before you set anything up. For each branch, answer three questions: does it trade from the company address, does it print the company logo, and does the company's tax registration cover it? In most cases all three answers are yes, and the branch needs nothing but a name.
Setting branches up in Nizam
- Enter your company details once in the business settings: name in both languages, address, VAT and CR numbers, and logo. Every branch takes them unless you say otherwise.
- Open Branches and add each location. Give it its own address, logo or tax number only where it really differs.
- For each product, choose where it is sold. Only those branches offer it on an invoice and at the till, so a branch never sells something it does not carry.
- Create one POS for each counter or branch, each with its own products, categories and receipt design.
- When you invite colleagues, tick the branches they work in. They will see only those branches' invoices, quotes, VAT, dashboard and reports.
Reading the business branch by branch
Once every document carries the branch it came from, the reports you used to build by hand already exist. Invoices show what was invoiced, paid and owed per branch. Stock is held per location, so a sale in one place does not empty the shelf in another on paper. And in the Accounts app, every page, from the journal to the balance sheet, can be read for one branch, one POS or one hotel building, or for all of them together.
The useful habit is to look at both views. The total tells you how the business is doing; the branch view tells you where. A group that is up 9% can still have one branch quietly losing money, and that is much easier to see when you are not waiting for someone to merge the files.
When a branch closes or moves
Keep the history. A branch that moves premises needs a new address, not a new branch, so its past sales stay with it. A branch that closes should simply stop being used, so its documents remain in the books for the periods it traded.
Spreadsheets are a fine way to start one shop. For several, the time they cost is better spent running the branches themselves.