Regional Manufacturing Enterprise

The Challenge

Three plants each kept their own spreadsheets and fed a single aging on-premise ERP, so finance and operations never agreed on the same stock or cash numbers without days of manual reconciliation at month-end. Purchase orders were raised on paper or email per plant, with no shared view of what any other site had on hand or on order — leading to duplicate purchasing and stockouts on the same SKU in different plants during the same week.

Zoho Products Used

The Solution

Migrated finance and inventory data from all three plants onto a single Zoho Books and Zoho Inventory data model, with warehouse-level tracking so every plant's stock and purchase orders are visible in one place. Built cross-plant reporting in Zoho Analytics for consolidated cash and inventory position, and automated purchase-order approval and stock-transfer workflows so plants stopped duplicating orders on the same parts.

1
Phase 1
2 weeks
Plant-by-plant discovery
Sat with finance and stores staff at each of the three plants to map how stock actually moved, where the spreadsheets diverged, and which numbers month-end really depended on. The gaps were not the same at every site, so a single template would have broken on day one.
What came out of it
• Current-state process map per plant
• Master list of SKUs with conflicting codes across sites
• An agreed definition of “stock on hand” all three plants signed off on
2
Phase 2
3 weeks
Chart of accounts and item master design
Designed one chart of accounts and one item master that all three plants could live inside, with warehouse-level tracking rather than three separate sets of books. This is the decision that makes or breaks a multi-site Zoho Books rollout, so it was settled before any data moved.
What came out of it
• Unified chart of accounts
• De-duplicated item master with per-warehouse stock locations
• Opening balance and stock cutover plan
3
Phase 3
4 weeks
Data migration and reconciliation
Migrated open invoices, vendor balances, and stock positions from the legacy ERP and the plant spreadsheets, then reconciled the migrated trial balance against the legacy system line by line before anyone was allowed to transact in Zoho.
What came out of it
• Migrated ledgers, contacts, and stock balances
• Signed-off reconciliation between legacy and Zoho balances
4
Phase 4
3 weeks
Purchase and stock-transfer automation
Built the approval workflow for purchase orders and the inter-plant stock transfer flow, including a check that surfaces existing stock at sister plants before a new PO can be raised — the control that stopped the duplicate purchasing.
What came out of it
• Value-banded PO approval workflow
• Inter-plant transfer request and receipt flow
• Cross-plant availability check on PO creation
5
Phase 5
2 weeks
Consolidated reporting in Zoho Analytics
Built the consolidated cash and inventory dashboards leadership had been assembling by hand, plus per-plant drill-downs so site managers could see their own numbers without raising a report request.
What came out of it
• Group cash position and inventory valuation dashboards
• Per-plant drill-down reports
• Scheduled month-end report delivery
6
Phase 6
Go-live and first close
Ran the first month-end close alongside the finance team rather than handing over a manual, fixing the handful of edge cases that only appear during a real close.
What came out of it
• Supported first month-end close
• Finance and stores runbooks

Before and After

Business Results

• 42% reduction in reconciliation time
• One consolidated view of stock and cash position across all three plants
• Faster month-end close with fewer manual journal entries
• Duplicate purchase orders across plants eliminated with shared stock visibility