A software setup wizard often asks the wrong questions. "Enable inventory?" is hard to answer if the owner knows only that items sometimes run out between supplier deliveries. "Use accrual accounting?" is even further from how they describe a day at the shop.
A business interview starts with observable work instead:
- What do people sell, and how are sales taken: counter, invoice, online, or all three?
- How does stock arrive, and when does ownership change?
- Can a customer pay later? Who may extend credit, and to what limit?
- Who counts the cash and who may correct a sale or approve a refund?
- Which reports help the owner catch problems tomorrow morning?
The answers can then become a reviewable configuration. If a shop sells stock from two locations, the system may propose two stores and transfer controls. If customers pay later, it may propose receivables, credit limits and an approval path. If a cashier handles sales but cannot issue large refunds, the role policy should make that split explicit.
The important word is propose. A good interview does not infer tax registration, statutory invoice details or approval limits from vague answers and quietly turn them on. It shows a plain-language summary of the resulting screens, roles, documents and reports, points to contradictions, and holds regulated or specialist choices for qualified review.
The test is not whether the interview feels short. It is whether a non-technical owner can say, "Yes, that is how we work," and then use the configured system for real transactions. A production ERP is not a plan or a diagram. It has to preserve those decisions in the screens and controls people actually use.
AI assistance was used to draft this article.
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