Six questions to ask any supplier before you sign

A demonstration is a supplier’s best half hour. These six questions are harder to rehearse.

Can I export everything, today, without asking you? The answer worth having is a button and a documented format. Export on request, for a fee, or in a shape only that supplier reads, is the same answer in three costumes.

What is not built yet? Every system has a gap. A supplier who names theirs is telling you what the first six months will feel like; a supplier who says everything is ready is describing a roadmap as a product.

Show me a refusal. Make a user in front of me, give them a role, and try to open something that role does not allow. Permissions that are a screen of tick boxes and not an enforcement are the most common gap between what is sold and what is delivered.

What does moving my history cost? This is where a switch succeeds or fails — customers, stock, opening balances and the chart of accounts. A price for it is a better answer than a promise about it.

Who do I ring, and what have you actually met? A response target nobody reports against is not a target. Ask for the quarters they missed.

Raise an invoice for GH₵ 1,000.00 net and read the total. Under Act 1151 it is GH₵ 1,200.00. If their system says GH₵ 1,207.50 it is still running the old cascade.

One of those six will eliminate somebody on your list, and it will not be the one you expected.