Business management software for manufacturers — without the ERP weight

The key facts

• The manufacturing core: multi-level bills of materials, recipe versioning, production runs with shortage checks, batch creation with use-by dates, traceability supplier-to-customer.
• The accounting boundary: invoices push to Xero and MYOB (US integrations rolling out); the plant runs on the operational record, the books stay with the accountant.
• Stated plainly: BSimple has no MRP scheduling, no shop-floor machine integration, no HR — deliberately lighter than an ERP.
• Core plans include production: recipes, batches and mass-balance reporting carry no module fee.
• Where it fits: the production layer's hub is manufacturing inventory software.

What "business management" must mean for a factory

For a manufacturer, the business record is a chain of custody for transformation: raw material in, recipe applied, finished batch out, batch sold — and every link answerable months later. Software that only tracks purchasing and sales leaves the middle (the actual making) to a whiteboard, which is where the record loses the thread: which lot fed which batch, which batch went to which customer, what the yield really was.

So the non-negotiables are specific: multi-level BOMs (a recipe made of sub-recipes), versioning (the recipe that produced batch 214 is the one that was current that day), shortage checks before the run rather than mid-shift surprises, batches with use-by dates for goods with shelf life, and traceability — batch search from supplier to customer that satisfies a customer query or an auditor in minutes, not a week of spreadsheet archaeology.

What BSimple runs — and where it stops

We build BSimple, so weigh that. The production core above is built in: recipes with versioning, production runs against live stock with shortage checks, batch creation with use-by dates, and mass-balance reporting — used by existing customers for organic certification under ACO, NASAA and OFC. Around it sits the rest of the business record: purchasing from demand, multi-location stock, wholesale ordering portals, pick/pack to approved invoice, and the accounting handoff to Xero and MYOB. Production carries no extra module fee — it is in the core plans.

Where it stops, stated plainly: no MRP scheduling — forward-planning production schedules from forecast demand are ERP territory; BSimple tells you what you can make now and what to buy, not a generated master schedule. No shop-floor machine integration or SCADA — the record starts and ends with people recording movements. No HR or payroll. For small-to-medium manufacturers who need a trustworthy record rather than a planning engine, that boundary is the product; the manufacturing comparison and the BOM deep-dive cover the evaluation.

Testing any system against your factory

Bring one real recipe with a sub-recipe inside it, and run the full loop: check shortages, run the batch, watch raw-material lots consume, put the finished batch on sale, then trace a customer complaint back to the input lot. Time the trace — that number is the product. Run the same loop with the trial on your recipes; the manufacturing guide and the small-manufacturer angle fill in the picture for different scales.