A POS for timber merchants has to do something an ordinary retail till does not: sell by the cubic foot, from stock that is counted by species, size and godown, and let a lorry leave only when the paper matches the load. A shop POS counts items and prints a bill; a timber yard has to count volume, and the bill is only the last step of the sale.
This note explains why a standard point-of-sale system struggles in a timber business, what a timber merchant actually needs at the counter and at the gate, and where stock and dispatch software sits next to your billing or accounts package.
Why a retail till does not fit a timber yard
A retail POS assumes a catalogue of fixed items: a bag of cement, a packet of screws, each with a price per piece. Timber is not sold that way. The same species comes in many sizes, the price is usually quoted per CFT or per CBM, and the quantity on the bill is a calculated volume, not a count of pieces.
Take an example. A customer orders 50 pieces of 10 ft x 4 in x 2 in. Each piece is 10 x 4 x 2 / 144 = 0.556 CFT, so the order is 27.78 CFT. At an example rate of ₹1,800 per CFT the value is ₹50,000. In metric terms the same order is about 0.787 CBM, because 27.78 / 35.3147 = 0.787. A till that only knows “50 pieces at a price each” cannot show this, and the salesperson ends up with a calculator and a notebook.
There are other differences that a retail system never meets:
- Stock sits in several godowns or yards, and the figure a salesperson quotes from must be the figure in the godown being quoted from.
- Customers order in their own units: feet for a builder, millimetres for a furniture maker, cubic metres for an exporter.
- Goods leave on a lorry with a challan, often in large lots, so the risk is not a wrong change at the till but a wrong size or an over-load going out of the gate.
- Hardwood and pine behave differently: girth, hollow and tags matter for logs, while sawn timber is measured by length, width and thickness.
What a timber merchant needs at the counter
Before a quote or a bill, the merchant needs to know what is really in the yard today. That means stock by species, size and godown, shown in CFT and CBM, updated every time timber is received, sawn, adjusted or loaded. If the stock figure is a month old, every quote is a guess.
The second need is to write the order the way the customer gave it. If the customer says 12 ft, 6 in and 2 in, the system should convert it to your stock sizes and show whether it can be met. The third is a clear order line: size, quantity, and how much is still due, so that the order, and not memory, decides what is loaded.
| Need | Retail POS | What a timber yard needs |
|---|---|---|
| Quantity | Pieces | Pieces and volume in CFT and CBM |
| Price basis | Per item | Per CFT or per CBM, by species and size |
| Stock location | One shop | Several godowns, each with its own figures |
| Sale ends at | The till | The gate, when the lorry is checked against the challan |
From order to challan to gate
In a yard, the sale is a chain. An order is taken, a loading list is made from it, the lorry is loaded, a challan is printed, and the gateman checks the challan before the lorry leaves. Each step should depend on the one before. The loader should not be able to load more than the order still needs, and the timber should come off the books only when the gate has seen the challan.
When these steps live in different places, a notebook for orders, a register for stock and a separate bill book, the gaps are where money leaks. A customer is promised a size that is not there, a lorry carries ten pieces more than the order, or a load goes out and nobody bills it. The point of a single chain is that the paperwork and the yard cannot disagree.
Where billing and accounts fit
Most Indian timber merchants already have accounts in Tally or a similar package, with GST invoices, ledgers and payroll handled by an accountant. There is no reason to throw that out. A sensible split is to keep the physical side, which is stock, orders, loading and dispatch, in a system built for timber, and keep the money side, which is invoicing, GST and ledgers, in your accounts software.
That split gives the accountant what is needed, which is the quantity and size that left on each challan, without needing to understand girth or hollow. It also gives the owner a stock figure to trust without waiting for month-end entries to be posted.
Questions to ask before you buy any POS for timber merchants
- Can it hold stock by species, size and godown, and show it in both CFT and CBM?
- Can an order be entered in feet, millimetres or cubic metres and still match your stock?
- Does it stop a loader from loading more than the order needs?
- Is there a challan check at the gate, and does stock reduce only after that check?
- Can the salesperson see live stock from a phone before quoting?
- How does it hand figures to your accountant, and does it work beside your existing accounts?
If the answer to several of these is no, the system was built for a shop, not a yard. For the volume arithmetic behind any of this, the log CFT calculator shows the formulas for logs and sawn timber, and the conversion of CBM to CFT.
How Timbba does it
Timbba is not a billing or accounts package; GST and ledgers stay in Tally or your own software, and Timbba’s figures reach your accountant as Excel files. What Timbba covers is the side a till misses. Our timber merchant software keeps live stock in CFT and CBM by size, species and godown, takes orders in the customer’s units, lets the loader pick only lines that are still due on the order, and prints a challan with a barcode that the gateman scans before the lorry leaves. Only then is the timber off your books. Salespeople see live stock on their phones, and each godown keeps its own stock while the owner can view one or all together. If you also saw your own logs, the wider timber management software adds consignments, gate entry and production. Indian plans start at ₹6,250 a month, billed yearly.
To see it with your own sizes and godowns, Book a demo.
