[kdeldycke]

> had to be printed AND available as PDF.

You just reminded me of a customer I was working for as a junior ERP consultant. They required us to have the proof a document was printed by a user.

I went far down the rabbit hole trying to come up with an end-to-end solution involving cryptographically signed messages sent to the printer, a physical QR code on the document to be scanned back for validation, and others convoluted half-backed contraptions. But I couldn't find an unhackable way to reconcile the state in the machine with the reality of the physical world.

A senior consultant solved it in 10 minutes. Showed them. They were ecstatic and we were paid.

What has he done? Just updated a "printed" column in the database to "True" when the user clicked the HTML "print" button.

[rad_gruchalski]

In this case, the business owner would go through every printed document that landed on his desk. He really did, every day… it had to be printed, otherwise it did not exist.

Regardless what we think about it, the man was driving a Zonda and his garage has seen a couple of Koenigseggs, and I still build software.

[kdeldycke]

Sounds like he had some sort of business discipline. Or worse, couldn't delegate and had to double-check everything by hand. Paper was his medium of choice in which he felt productive for this particular task.

In my case I'm pretty sure the owners didn't care about the printed documents and never checked them. It was just required to have a proof because... process.

That's when I understood ERPs were not about software but workflow. Not a solution either, but a symptom. Some requirements are bullshit, because nobody has the time (or mandate) to question the sacred Process.

I quit doing ERPs not long after that.