1Month one is assessment, not shopping
Confirm your phase, map your invoice types, count your volume and pull a sample of a hundred real invoices. You cannot specify a solution before you know what you are specifying it for.
Six months is enough for most mid-sized businesses if the months are used properly. The plan below is the sequence we actually run with clients, and the order matters — several teams have wasted a month choosing software before knowing what their data looked like.
Four things worth understanding properly before you spend money on anything.
Confirm your phase, map your invoice types, count your volume and pull a sample of a hundred real invoices. You cannot specify a solution before you know what you are specifying it for.
Customer master data, TRNs, trade names, addresses, VAT treatment per line. This is the unglamorous part that decides whether go-live is calm or chaotic.
By now you can ask providers precise questions instead of generic ones, which changes the quality of what you get back.
Build the connection, run real invoices through validation, work through the rejections, then run a parallel period before switching over.
Work down this list in order. Most of it costs nothing but an hour of attention.
Short, practical answers. If yours is not here, ask us directly — we answer even if you never become a client.
For a small business with clean data, a few weeks. For a mid-sized company with an existing ERP, plan six months. Large groups with multiple systems should plan longer.
Customer master data cleanup, almost every time. The technical integration is usually shorter than people expect and the data work is always longer.
Yes, but compression comes out of the testing phase, which is the phase you least want to shorten.
Most businesses will need something sitting between their sales desk and their Accredited Service Provider — a system that creates a proper structured invoice, holds the customer data the standard demands, and keeps a record an auditor will accept. That is what we build, and because we build it ourselves we can shape it around your business rather than asking you to reshape your business around a product.
GoldenKey is a business setup and compliance consultancy. We are not a Ministry of Finance Accredited Service Provider, and we do not claim to be one. Our software is built to work alongside the ASP you appoint. Scope, timelines and pricing are agreed in writing before any work starts.
Excel, Tally, Zoho, an ERP or paper — send us your current setup and we will tell you what has to change and what does not.
No cost, no obligation. We tell you which phase you fall into and what you actually need.
GoldenKey covers every step — start, run, grow — under one golden roof: