In the manufacturing and retail sectors, the data needed to create business documents tends to live in ERP systems like Microsoft Dynamics 365 F&O. Invoices, delivery notes and labels are generated using transaction data and sent in whatever format each customer requires, including email and print. These documents also need to be easily retrievable for disputes, audits and product recalls.
If your software only stores documents, your team still has to create, send and track them manually. That’s hours lost to admin each week, an increased likelihood of errors and potential compliance lapses.
In this document management software checklist, we cover how to choose the right solution for ERP-led manufacturing and retail businesses.
Key Takeaways
- The biggest time and cost savings for manufacturers and retailers come from document management software that creates, sends and stores documents using ERP data.
- Check the core features first: ERP integration, document automation, invoice capture, version control, audit trails, security, template ownership and e-invoicing capabilities.
- Manufacturers need document management software offering personalization, supplier invoice management, warehouse labeling and audit-ready quality documents.
- Retailers need accurate, on-brand customer documents, shipping labels, barcodes, receipts and invoices.
- Map your documents, separate essential features from preferable ones before booking demos, then use an implementation partner to set the software up around your organization’s processes.
Why manufacturers and retailers need document management software
Every order, shipment and batch generates paperwork. For example, in manufacturing, a single order creates a chain of documents: an order confirmation, production order, job card, packing slip, bill of lading and more. When those documents are spread across shared drives, inboxes and separate systems, efficiency suffers.
Your team ends up spending hours each week firefighting, including scouring your internal systems for documents, dealing with duplicate data and manually correcting inaccurate documents. The benefits of document management software come from removing that time-consuming, error-prone manual work.
Do you need document management software if you already have an ERP?
In most cases, yes. Microsoft Dynamics 365 F&O stores the transaction data and lets users attach files to records. However, it isn’t built to manage document approvals and version control, capture inbound documents at scale or produce high volumes of documents in different formats.
Without a dedicated document management system, that work ends up on the to-do lists of busy teams members, or becomes a custom development project that has to be maintained after every ERP system update. Many D365 F&O users opt for a document management system that works inside the ERP, such as Lasernet.
Core document management system features
Manufacturers and retailers may produce different documents, but they face many of the same challenges in creating, sending and storing them. Use this checklist to compare vendors on the essentials first, then move on to the features specific to your sector.
☑ ERP integration
First of all, your document management software needs to play nice with D365 F&O. Ideally, it should run inside your ERP. This creates a more unified user experience, allowing users to view, upload and manage documents directly from the system they’re familiar with.
☑ Document automation
Document automation capabilities turn a digital repository into a document generation and distribution system that reduces manual document creation (and the human error that comes with it) and standardizes information across your entire organization.
In a typical D365 workflow, invoices are generated as PDFs. The user then has to download the file, attach it to an email and send it manually. With Lasernet, a document management system that sits inside D365, the entire process is automated. Recipients, CC and BCC rules, subject lines and email body text are dynamically generated using information from the document. Documents are sent without manual work, following governed rules.
☑ Automated invoice capture
Automated invoice capture removes the manual steps that typically come with managing supplier invoices and keeps each invoice connected to its associated purchase.
Purchase orders are created in D365, but supplier invoices arrive separately by email, and are often captured, tracked and filed in different places. Lasernet brings the two together inside D365. It produces and sends purchase orders in the format each supplier requires, captures the invoices that come back and archives everything with searchable metadata.
☑ Version control, search and retrieval
Your team should always be working from the latest version of a document, with a full history of who changed what and when. Document search capabilities make a big difference, too. People need to be able to find the documents using the references they use every day, such as order number, customer, supplier, item code or batch number.
☑ Audit trail and document retention
When a customer or an auditor asks for a document, you need to be able to find it quickly and show its full history. Check that the system logs who accessed or made changes to the document and that you can set retention rules to align with your region’s requirements. For example, in the European Union, manufacturers must retain technical documentation for 10 years from the date the product is placed on the market.
☑ Security and access control
Your documents hold sensitive information, so you need to be in strict control of who has access to them. Suitable document management software will have role-based access control (RBAC) capabilities with granular permissions to ensure personal information is safe from prying eyes.
☑ Template ownership
You update document templates regularly. But when every change has to go through a developer, small jobs quickly turn into a backlog and an ongoing cost to maintain. Lindab, a leading manufacturer of ventilation systems and industrial building products, experienced this problem with Microsoft’s SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS).
As the business expanded into new markets, it needed consistent branding and formatting for documents across every entity, as well as localization for each country. ERP Mechanics helped the manufacturer move from SSRS to Lasernet to standardize its quotes, invoices and packing slips across more than 20 entities.
When comparing document management software, check whether users can update templates themselves and how quickly templates can be created for a new entity or country.
☑ E-invoicing compliance
E-invoicing is now a legal requirement in a growing number of countries. These mandates replace PDF and paper invoices with structured, machine-readable files sent through approved networks and government platforms.
Belgium, Poland and France already have mandates in place, with Germany following in January 2027 and the UK in April 2029. For manufacturers selling abroad, that means issuing invoices in each country’s required format (e.g., XRechnung in Germany). Retailers are also affected, as many countries require businesses to accept e-invoices from suppliers before they have to issue them.
Your e-invoices are created from the same D365 data as your other business documents, so it makes sense to manage them in the same place rather than using a separate e-invoicing solution. Look for a document management and e-invoicing platform like Lasernet that produces compliant formats and gives you real-time visibility into delivery, acceptance, rejection and disputes.
Document management software features for manufacturing
Manufacturers deal with a wider range of documents than most businesses, including warehouse labels, product manuals, quality reports and customer paperwork. Data that informs these documents usually lives in different systems, so good document management in manufacturing depends on bringing the information together. With that in mind, here’s what to look for when comparing document management software solutions:
☑ Personalized business documents
How many systems does your team have to use before sending a document to a customer? Customer details might sit in a CRM, orders and pricing in D365 and product information somewhere else. Integrating all of that information is slow and error-prone. Document management software pulls data from your business systems to build documents tailored to each customer.
☑ Vendor invoice management
When you’re buying materials and components from a long list of suppliers, the paperwork quickly piles up. Every invoice processed manually eats into your finance team’s time, and increases the likelihood of human error. Software that scans, processes and archives supplier paperwork automatically takes the pressure off.
☑ Warehouse labeling
A single wrong barcode or label can cause major problems, and putting that right costs you time and money. Ideally, labels should be generated using D365 data and printed at whichever warehouse needs them, without developers having to build every single label format from scratch. Automating label generation can cut the time spent on label-related tasks by more than half.
☑ Quality reports, data sheets and certificates of conformity
Quality reports, data sheets and certificates of conformity all need to stand up to close inspection by customers and auditors. But the data behind these documents is often spread across product information management, quality management and ERP systems, and pulling it all together manually is time-consuming.
Document management software built for manufacturing companies connects your core systems, giving you consistent, audit-ready documents you can retrieve quickly.
Document management software features for retail
Retailers produce documents at every stage of an order, from purchase orders and shipping labels to receipts and invoices. Many of these documents go straight to customers, so they need to be accurate and on-brand. These are the features to prioritize when comparing document management software for retail:
☑ Personalized, on-brand documents across every channel
The documents you send your customers need to be accurate, both in the details they contain and the message they send about your brand. However, the data used to create them is often split between CRM, e-commerce and ERP platforms.
Software that unites this data into an accurate, on-brand and accessible document, in the customer’s language and sent through their preferred channel, means fewer errors and fewer interactions with the customer service team.
☑ Shipping labels and barcodes
Carriers and trading partners have strict rules for labels, and anything that doesn’t meet their requirements can delay deliveries and leave customers wondering where their order is. Producing labels and barcodes inside D365 automatically takes that work away from your already busy team, and printing to local or remote printers means each store and warehouse gets the right labels for the orders it’s fulfilling.
☑ Receipts and invoices
Receipts and invoices are produced in large numbers, and the cost of printing, mailing and filing them adds up. Automating how they’re generated, delivered and archived speeds up fulfillment and reduces manual errors and costs. For example, Danish luxury brand Georg Jensen used Lasernet to save €300,000 per year by trading paper invoices for emailed invoices.
How to choose document management software
Once you know which features you need, the next step is finding a system that delivers them. These steps will help you choose the most suitable document management software solution:
1) Define your requirements by mapping your documents
It’s tempting to find a system you like the look of and book a demo straight away. But mapping your documents first will make a demo far more useful, because you’ll know exactly what the software needs to be able to handle.
First, list the documents your business sends and receives, the approximate monthly volume, who they’re sent to or received from and the format and delivery channel (e.g., 1,500 shipping labels printed at one of your warehouses).
Next, split your document management requirements into two columns: one for essential features, the other for preferable ones. You might not find a system that ticks every box, so the essentials must always take priority.
2) Decide on questions to ask document management vendors
Once you’ve mapped your documents and identified your essential and preferable features, it’s time to talk to some document management software vendors. The demos give you the opportunity to see the system in action and ask questions about its suitability for your business. Here are some questions you could ask:
- Can you show a live demo of data flowing between your DMS and the ERP system we use?
- Can our users update document templates without a developer?
- Which e-invoicing formats and countries do you support?
- Can templates handle different brands, languages and layouts?
- What built-in optical character recognition (OCR) tools does the DMS have?
- How granular are user permissions?
- How does the system support compliance requirements relevant to our sector?
- How long does a typical implementation take for a business of our size?
3) Work with a document management software implementation partner
Once you’ve found document management software that works for your business, you might want to consider working with an implementation partner. To get the most out of your new software, it needs to be set up around your processes. Your partner will handle all of that, and they’ll be the ones supporting you after go-live.
ERP Mechanics: Implementing Lasernet for D365 F&O
At ERP Mechanics, we help manufacturers and retailers integrate Lasernet’s document management capabilities into D365 F&O. We’re a Lasernet reseller and support partner with more than 18 years of experience. Our team offers implementation, custom development and ongoing support to Microsoft Partners and end users worldwide, on projects of any size.
We’ll make sure your document management software covers the features in this checklist that matter most to your business. That way, it starts cutting costs and reducing risk as soon as you go live.
If you’re a manufacturer or retailer considering integrating document management software into D365 F&O, we’d be happy to help you find the best fit. Get in touch with the ERP Mechanics team to talk through your requirements and see how Lasernet measures up against this checklist.