How to choose accounting software for a business in Tanzania

Before you compare products, write down a few facts about your own business. How many people need to enter or check figures on a normal day, and do they work at the same time? Are they all in one office, or spread across branches, a warehouse and the road?

Those answers decide more than any feature list. Software that suits one owner keeping the books can struggle when a sales desk, a store keeper and the accounts team all need it at once, and a system built for one location may not cope with a second branch.

If you hold stock, look past a simple item list. Check whether the software tracks stock in more than one location, handles batches and expiry dates, lets you buy in one unit and sell in another, and values stock by the method your accountant uses.

In Mainland Tanzania, ask how invoices reach the Tanzania Revenue Authority (TRA). A Virtual Fiscal Device (VFD) can work with billing or management software, so a sale recorded in your accounts goes to the TRA and comes back validated, without retyping it into a separate EFD machine. Ask whether the software works with a VFD, and who supplies and maintains it. In Zanzibar, fiscal receipts go through ZRA’s own system instead, so check that separately.

Ask about VAT returns too: whether the software can prepare return details from the sales and purchases you’ve already recorded, rather than leaving you to rebuild them in a spreadsheet each month.

Many Tanzanian businesses buy or sell in US dollars as well as shillings. Good software lets you keep Tanzanian shillings as the base currency, record sales and purchases in dollars at the rate for that date, print the invoice in the customer’s currency and work out the exchange gain or loss for you.

Then think about the reports management actually reads: profit and loss, balance sheet, cash flow, who owes you and for how long, stock on hand. Ask to see them during a demo, and ask whether they can be changed, or new ones built, for the way you report.

Some accounting software is a licence you buy once; some is a subscription you pay for as long as you use it. Neither suits everyone. Compare the cost over several years, what happens if you stop paying, and whether you can rent for a period before committing.

Ask where your data is kept. Software installed on your own computers keeps the books in your office; cloud software keeps them on a provider’s servers. Either way, ask how backups run, how you restore one, and how staff can check figures when they’re away from the office.

Software is only as useful as the people using it. Ask who will set it up, who trains your team, and who answers the phone when something goes wrong at month-end. A partner with people in Tanzania, working in your time zone, makes a real difference.

Then think two or three years ahead. If you add staff, open a branch or start manufacturing, can the same software grow with you, or will you have to move your books again? Changing systems is work you only want to do once.

TallyPrime is a licence you buy once: Silver for one user, or Gold for a team on the office network with no limit on users, with TallyPrime Server when many people work at once. Rental licences are available too. It records sales and purchases in foreign currencies with exchange rates by date and calculates forex gain or loss, tracks stock across godowns with batches, expiry dates, reorder levels and several valuation methods, and auto-fills VAT return details from your sales and purchases for export onto the TRA’s Excel template.

It runs on your own computers or on Powercomputers’ cloud server, and from Release 7.0 can back up on a schedule to TallyDrive cloud storage. An active TSS adds data synchronization between branches, remote access and browser reports. Power VFD, developed by Powercomputers as an authorised EFD and VFD supplier, sends TallyPrime sales invoices to the TRA without a physical EFD.

Powercomputers has been a Tally partner in Tanzania since 2004, with offices in Dar es Salaam, Arusha, Moshi, Mwanza, Dodoma, Manyara, Songwe and Zanzibar, and provides installation, training and day-to-day support. If you’re weighing other products, our comparison pages set them side by side. Or book a free demo and we’ll walk through your own business.