Changing over
What to check before you change billing software.
Most of the pain of switching is not the new program. It is the four questions nobody asks the old one until it is too late. Ask them of us as well — the answers are below each one.
Can you get your own data out, today, without asking anyone?
This is the first question and it is not close. If the answer needs a support ticket, a subscription that is still paid, or an internet connection, then the data is not really yours — you are renting access to your own bills. Try it before you need it.
CalcyBill’s answer
Backup writes one file, from a button, offline. Reports and CSV exports keep working even after a licence lapses, because a shop must always be able to get its own data out.
What happens to last year's bills?
You do not get to leave them behind. GST assessments look back years, and an auditor asking for a bill from two Marches ago does not care which software you were using. Know where those records will live and whether you can still read them.
CalcyBill’s answer
Keep the old program installed and unlicensed, or keep its export. CalcyBill imports your item list, not your history — and it says so plainly rather than promising a migration that would quietly drop half of it.
How much of it can you set up yourself?
Anything that needs an engineer to visit needs an engineer to visit again — at year end, when you buy a second till, when the machine is replaced. That is a running cost nobody quotes you.
CalcyBill’s answer
One installer, a three-minute setup screen, and a CSV import that dry-runs first and tells you exactly what it would change before it changes it.
What does it do when the internet goes down?
Ask specifically: can I complete a sale, print a bill and take the money with the line down? For cloud-first software the honest answer is usually no, and a shop discovers this on the busiest afternoon of the year.
CalcyBill’s answer
The whole point. Invoice number, items, payments, stock and ledger all commit to your own machine without waiting for a network. The cloud is a copy that catches up afterwards.
What is the price in year three?
Not year one. Add the licence, the renewal, the per-user fees, the extra charge for GST returns, and the support plan that is separate from the software. That is your real number.
CalcyBill’s answer
One price per shop that includes the books, GST and every update in a maintained year. Buy it once and the licence never expires; the pricing page draws the year-three number for you rather than making you work it out.
Who answers when it goes wrong on a Saturday?
Find out before you need to. A shop that cannot bill is not a support ticket, and the difference between a reseller's voicemail and the person who wrote the code is the difference between an hour and a week.
CalcyBill’s answer
The people who built it. There is no reseller in the middle and no partner network to be handed to.
Moving in
Moving in, in the order that hurts least
This order is the same whichever program you are moving to. Follow it even if you do not choose us.
Take a backup of the old one first
Before anything else, and keep it somewhere that is not the shop's computer. This is the step everybody skips and the only one that cannot be redone later.
Export your item list to CSV
Name, price, tax rate, barcode, opening stock. Almost every program can produce this; if yours cannot, that is worth knowing about the program you are leaving.
Run the trial beside the old till, not instead of it
For a week, on the same counter. Bill the awkward things: the return, the credit customer, the item sold by weight, the bill split three ways. That is where software either fits your shop or does not.
Change over at a month end, never mid-month
It makes the GST return one program's job rather than two, and it gives you a clean line to point at if a figure is ever queried.
Keep the old program installed for a year
Unlicensed is fine — you are keeping it to read old bills, not to write new ones. Uninstall it after your next annual return has been accepted.
If the answers point somewhere else
Then they point somewhere else. A shop billing happily on something that suits it is worth more to us than a shop billing unhappily on ours — you talk to other shopkeepers, and they ask you what you use. What CalcyBill™ does not do is the honest half of this page.
Ask us a question on WhatsAppRun it beside the old till for a week.
Thirty days free, nothing switched off. Bill the awkward things on it — the return, the credit customer, the split bill — and let the shop decide.