One system
All-in-one POS, inventory and online store software
Most retailers do not choose to run three systems. They end up with three: a till, because you have to ring up sales; a spreadsheet, because the till's stock figures drifted and somebody had to keep the real numbers somewhere; and a webshop, because customers started asking. Each was a sensible decision on its own day.
The cost arrives later, and it is not the three subscriptions. It is that the three disagree. The spreadsheet says eleven, the shelf says nine, the website is still selling the twelfth. Somebody spends an evening a week making them agree, and every decision made in between is made from numbers that were already wrong.
All-in-one means the disagreement is structurally impossible: the counter, the stock ledger and the storefront are three views of one record, not three records with pipes between them. Sell the last unit at the till and it is gone from the website in the same instant, because there is no second place for it to still exist.
What you get
What this gives you
One product list, everywhere
You build the catalogue once. The counter, the storefront, the purchase orders and the reports all read it. There is no second catalogue to keep in step, which is where most of the ongoing work in a two-system setup actually goes.
One stock count, updated as it moves
Sales, returns, supplier deliveries, transfers between locations and write-offs all adjust the same figure as they happen. A stock take becomes a check on the system rather than the only moment you know what you own.
One set of books
Double-entry accounting with a real trial balance, P&L and balance sheet, fed by the sales and purchases themselves — not a CSV export into somebody else's software at month end. Included from the Growth plan.
One view of the customer
The person who bought in the shop last month and ordered online this morning is one customer record, with one history and one loyalty balance, rather than two strangers who happen to share a phone number.
Nothing to integrate, nothing to break
No connector app, no webhook queue, no sync window, no plugin that stops working after a platform update. The most reliable integration is the one that does not exist.
One bill, one login, one support conversation
When stock is wrong in a stitched-together stack, the till vendor blames the connector and the connector blames the webshop. Here there is one system and therefore one place the answer is.
What 'all-in-one' has to mean to be worth anything
The phrase is used by almost every vendor in this category, including ones selling a POS that ships with a marketplace of integrations. That is not the same thing, and the difference shows up precisely when it costs you money.
A useful test: ask what happens to a sale that occurs at the counter at the exact moment a web customer has the same item in their basket. In a genuinely unified system the answer is boring — stock is decremented once, the web basket revalidates at checkout and tells the customer honestly. In an integrated one the answer depends on when the connector last ran, which is why oversold orders cluster around busy trading hours.
A second test: ask where the margin figure comes from. If your cost prices live in one system and your sales in another, gross margin is something a person calculates periodically rather than something the software knows. That is the difference between a report you trust enough to act on and one you check before believing.
- Unified: one database, one stock figure, changes are immediate by construction
- Integrated: two databases and a sync job — correct most of the time, wrong exactly when you are busiest
- Not integrated at all: two databases and a person — correct once a day at best
What you actually get, module by module
The counter handles multi-item sales, held sales, split payments, returns, exchanges, discounts, quotations and receipt printing, with barcode scanning from a handheld reader or a phone camera. It works offline and reconciles when the connection returns.
Inventory covers product variants and pack sizes, cost prices, reorder levels with low-stock alerts, stock takes, write-offs, supplier purchase orders with goods-received notes, and transfers between locations. Every movement is recorded with who made it and when, which is what makes shrinkage visible rather than inferred.
The online store is a real storefront on your own domain, generated from the same catalogue: product pages, categories, search, a basket, checkout, delivery zones and order management. It is not a catalogue export — an order placed on it is a sale in the same ledger as a sale at the till, tagged by channel.
Behind all three sit reporting, double-entry accounting, customer records with credit and loyalty, staff accounts with role-based permissions, and Amina, an assistant you can ask questions of in plain language rather than building a report to answer.
The honest limits
Not everything is on every plan, and it would be dishonest to imply otherwise. The entry plan is a single-location till with inventory — it does not include the online store. The storefront, a custom domain and multiple locations start at the Basic plan; double-entry accounting and loyalty at Growth; statutory e-invoicing at Enterprise.
Payment rails are market-specific, and this is the real constraint on where sell.ke is a good fit today. Cards, cash, bank transfer and on-account sales work anywhere. Mobile money and direct tax-authority submission depend on the country — the deepest integrations are in East and West Africa, and Kenya specifically has both mobile money and e-invoicing wired end to end.
If you are somewhere we have not named, the sensible thing is to ask us what would connect before you commit, rather than discovering it in week two. We would rather lose a signup than win a refund.
Compare
All-in-one versus the stack most shops end up with
The comparison that matters is not feature-by-feature — it is what each arrangement costs you in work that never finishes.
| What you are comparing | Separate POS + webshop | POS with a sync plugin | sell.ke |
|---|---|---|---|
| Product catalogue | Built and maintained twice | Built once, mirrored — drifts on failed syncs | Built once. There is no second copy |
| Stock accuracy | As good as the last manual update | As good as the last successful sync | Immediate — one figure, changed once |
| Overselling online | Routine | Clusters at peak trading | Structurally not possible |
| Margin and profit | Calculated by hand from two exports | Calculated by hand from two exports | Known by the system, per product and channel |
| When something is wrong | Two vendors, neither responsible | Three vendors, including the connector | One system, one place to look |
| Monthly cost | Two subscriptions plus your evenings | Two subscriptions plus the connector | One, from USD 12 |
Competitor rows describe the architecture of running separate systems in general, not any one named product. Where we name a specific platform we say what it is and what it does — see the Shopify and WooCommerce comparison.
Questions
All-in-one POS, inventory & online store — questions
What does all-in-one POS software actually include?
At minimum it should cover four things that are usually four products: taking the sale at the counter, tracking stock as it moves, selling the same stock online, and turning both into accounts you can file. sell.ke covers all four, plus purchasing, customers and loyalty, delivery, staff permissions and reporting. The test of whether it is genuinely all-in-one is not the length of that list — it is whether the four share one database.
Is an all-in-one system worse at each individual job than a specialist tool?
Sometimes, and it is worth being clear about where. A dedicated warehouse management system will out-feature this on bin locations and wave picking; a dedicated ecommerce platform will out-feature it on theme ecosystems and A/B testing. What you are trading those for is that your stock figure is correct. For most independent retailers, restaurants and wholesalers that trade is heavily worth making; for a business whose bottleneck genuinely is warehouse picking logic, it is not, and we would say so.
Can I start with just the point of sale and add the online store later?
Yes, and many do. The entry plan is the counter and inventory; moving up to Basic switches the storefront on against the catalogue you have already built, so launching online is a matter of hours rather than a project. Nothing has to be migrated, because there is nothing to migrate — the products are already there.
Do I have to sell online to get value from this?
No. Plenty of merchants never publish the storefront and stay for the inventory accuracy and the books. The unified argument is strongest when you do sell on both channels, but one accurate stock figure and a real set of accounts are worth having with a single counter and no website at all.
How is this different from a POS with an ecommerce integration?
An integration keeps two systems in agreement most of the time. A unified system has nothing to keep in agreement. In normal trading the two feel similar; they diverge when volume spikes, when the connector fails quietly, or when the two systems model something differently — a product variant, a refund, a partial return — and the sync has to guess. Those guesses are where stock discrepancies come from.
How much does sell.ke cost?
Plans run from USD 12/month for a single-location till to USD 115/month for unlimited scale, with the online store on your own domain included from USD 23/month. In Kenya the same plans are KES 1,499 to KES 14,999/month, billed in shillings. Every plan starts with a 14-day trial and no card, and there is no per-terminal licence and no commission on your sales. There is no hardware to buy either — sell.ke runs on a phone, tablet or laptop you already own.
Can I run more than one location?
Yes, from the Basic plan up. Locations share one product catalogue but hold their own stock, so moving goods between them is a recorded transfer rather than a re-count at both ends. Reports run per location or across all of them, and staff permissions are set per location — a branch supervisor does not need to see another branch's margins.
Which countries does sell.ke work in?
The software is not geographically limited — the counter, inventory, the storefront, reporting and accounting work anywhere, in multiple currencies. What is market-specific is two things: the payment rails available to you, and your country's tax-invoicing rules. We currently run with merchants in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda, Ethiopia, Ghana and Nigeria, and the deepest local payment and compliance integrations are in Kenya. If you are outside those markets, ask before you sign up and we will tell you precisely what would and would not be connected for you.
What happens to my data if I leave?
You export it. Products, customers, suppliers, stock movements and transactions are all exportable, and the accounting side produces standard statements rather than a proprietary format. We would rather you stayed because moving is not worth it than because moving is not possible — a business whose records are hostage is a business that resents its software.
Read next
The other pages that answer the question you are probably about to ask.
POS that syncs with your website
Real-time stock between counter and storefront — because they are the same system.
Omnichannel retail management
Every channel drawing on one inventory, one customer record and one ledger.
Inventory management software
Stock that updates itself as it moves, instead of a spreadsheet you maintain.
POS systems explained
What a point of sale system is, what it replaces, and how to choose one.
Ecommerce website builder
An online store on your own domain, built from the catalogue you already sell from.
Best POS for a small business
How to judge one honestly, and the trap that catches most first-time buyers.
Go deeper on a feature
Selling at the counter
Split payments, held orders, manager-gated discounts and a drawer count that reconciles.
Reports and real accounting
Double-entry books — trial balance, P&L, balance sheet — not a CSV export to somebody else's software.
Branches, staff and control
Shared catalogue, separate stock, transfers that are movements, and permissions per branch.
See it for your trade
Hardware shop
Sell by length or weight, wholesale versus retail lists, quotations, credit accounts.
Electronics & phone shop
IMEI and serial tracking, warranty by unit, consignment stock, high-value write-offs.
Wholesale & distribution
Quantity breaks, customer price lists, cartons in and pieces out, delivery zones.
Try it on your own products
Fourteen days, no card. Import your product list or let Amina build it from a photo of your price list, and run it alongside whatever you use now.