Most Kenyan retailers check one number: how much came in today. It is the easiest number to find and the least useful one on its own. Daily revenue tells you what happened. It does not tell you why, or what to do about it.
Your POS is already recording everything needed to answer those questions. The reports below take about fifteen minutes a week to review, and between them they surface most of the margin an average shop is quietly losing.
Set aside a fixed slot — Monday morning works well, before the week starts pulling at you.
1. Sales by product: what is actually earning
What it shows: Every product ranked by units sold and by revenue.
What to look for: The two lists are different, and the difference matters. A product can top the units list and contribute almost nothing to profit. Another can sell five units a week and carry your margin.
The action: Rank by gross profit rather than revenue where your POS supports it. Then look at your top ten by profit and ask whether they are always in stock, positioned well, and being suggested at the counter. Those ten products are your business — protect them.
Also read the bottom of the list. Products that sold zero units in a month are working capital sitting on a shelf. Discount them, return them to the supplier if terms allow, or stop reordering.
2. Sales by hour and by day: staffing and opening hours
What it shows: Revenue distributed across hours of the day and days of the week.
What to look for: Where the peaks and dead zones actually are, as opposed to where you assume they are.
The action: Two decisions come out of this. First, staffing — put your best cashiers on the peaks and reduce cover in the dead hours. Second, opening hours: if the last ninety minutes of your day generate 2% of revenue, closing earlier saves wages and electricity with almost no revenue cost. Kenyan shops frequently discover their Saturday afternoons or their early mornings are not paying for themselves.
3. Payment method breakdown: M-Pesa vs cash vs card
What it shows: What share of revenue arrives through each payment channel.
What to look for: The trend more than the snapshot. In most Kenyan retail, M-Pesa's share has been climbing steadily for years.
The action: As your cash share falls, cash handling becomes proportionally more expensive per shilling — the float, the change runs, the banking trips, the reconciliation. If cash is under 20% of revenue, it is worth asking whether you still need a cash drawer at every till.
Also watch for an anomaly: if one cashier's shifts show a noticeably higher cash proportion than everyone else's, that is worth understanding. It is not proof of anything, but it is a question worth asking.
4. Cashier performance: the accountability report
What it shows: Sales, transaction count, average basket, voids, discounts and refunds — per cashier.
What to look for: Not just who sells most. Compare average basket size between cashiers on similar shifts; a large gap usually means one person is upselling and others are not, which is a training opportunity rather than a discipline issue.
Then look at voids, discounts and refunds as a percentage of each cashier's transactions. One person running materially more voids than their colleagues is the single most reliable early signal in retail. Most of the time there is an innocent explanation. Sometimes there is not, and either way you want to know.
The action: Share average basket numbers with the team — visibility alone tends to lift the lower performers. Investigate void outliers quietly. Our shrinkage guide goes deeper on this.
5. Stock variance: where inventory is disappearing
What it shows: The gap between what the system says you should hold and what a physical count finds.
What to look for: Variance concentrated in specific products or categories. Small items, high-value items, confectionery, batteries and cosmetics are the usual suspects.
The action: International retail treats 1–2% shrinkage as acceptable; Kenyan retail with manual controls commonly runs 3–7%. On KES 500,000 monthly turnover, each percentage point is KES 5,000 a month. Identify your worst categories and tighten controls there specifically — behind the counter, locked cases, or manager approval on discounts — rather than trying to fix everything at once.
You cannot run this report without periodic physical counts. Weekly spot-checks on high-risk categories are more useful than an annual full count.
6. Low stock and reorder report: preventing lost sales
What it shows: Products at or below their reorder level, ideally weighted by how fast they sell.
What to look for: Fast-moving lines approaching zero. A stockout on a top-ten product costs you the sale and sometimes the customer.
The action: This is the report to act on immediately rather than analyse. Place the order. Then, monthly, review whether your reorder levels are set correctly — if the same product keeps hitting zero before the delivery arrives, the reorder level is too low for its lead time, not the supplier's fault.
7. Dead stock and ageing inventory: trapped cash
What it shows: Products with no sales in 30, 60 or 90 days, and the capital tied up in each.
What to look for: The total value at the bottom. Most shops are surprised by it. Cash in dead stock is cash unavailable for stock that sells.
The action: Anything with no movement in 90 days needs a decision, not another month of hoping: discount it to clear, bundle it with a fast mover, return it if the supplier allows, or write it off and free the shelf. Then stop reordering it. For perishables and medicines this report is a safety matter as well as a financial one — see the pharmacy expiry guide.
8. Gross margin by category: where the profit really comes from
What it shows: Revenue, cost of goods and gross margin percentage per product category.
What to look for: The mismatch between the categories that generate the most revenue and the categories that generate the most profit. They are rarely the same, and shops routinely optimise for the wrong one.
The action: Give your high-margin categories more shelf space, better positioning and more attention at the counter. For high-revenue, low-margin categories, treat them as traffic drivers — they bring people in — but do not expand them further without a reason.
This report also catches pricing errors. A category showing an implausibly low margin usually means a cost price was entered wrong somewhere.
9. Customer repeat rate: the growth number
What it shows: How many customers bought more than once, and what repeat buyers are worth compared with first-timers.
What to look for: The proportion of revenue coming from returning customers. Acquiring a new customer costs several times more than getting an existing one to come back, and repeat buyers typically spend more per visit.
The action: If you capture customer phone numbers at the till, you have a marketing channel that costs nothing. A WhatsApp broadcast to everyone who bought in the last 60 days, announcing new stock or a weekend offer, consistently outperforms paid advertising for Kenyan SMEs. The WhatsApp commerce guide covers how to do this without annoying people.
If you are not capturing customer details at all, start — it is the highest-return habit change available to most shops.
A fifteen-minute weekly routine
You do not need to read all nine reports every week. Split them:
Every Monday (10 minutes)
- Sales by product — top and bottom ten
- Low stock and reorder — act on it now
- Cashier performance — scan for void and discount outliers
- Payment method mix — check the trend
First Monday of the month (20 minutes)
- Gross margin by category
- Dead stock and ageing inventory
- Stock variance, after a physical count
- Sales by hour and day
- Customer repeat rate
The reports are only useful if the routine survives a busy week. Put it in your calendar.
Getting these reports in sell.ke
All nine are available in the sell.ke dashboard on the Grow and Scale plans. Scale adds multi-branch versions, so you can compare the same report across locations and spot a branch that is drifting.
Every report is filterable by date, branch and cashier, and exportable to CSV if you want to work in a spreadsheet or hand something to your accountant.
The reason these numbers are trustworthy is that they come from the same system that processed the sale — the M-Pesa confirmation, the stock deduction and the eTIMS receipt all happen in one place, so there is nothing to reconcile between systems and no manual entry to get wrong.
Frequently asked questions
Which POS report should I look at first? Sales by product, ranked by gross profit rather than revenue. It reframes what your business actually earns from, and most retailers find at least one surprise in the top ten.
How often should I do a physical stock count? A full count monthly, with weekly spot-checks on high-risk categories — small, high-value, easily concealed items. Without a physical count there is no variance report, and shrinkage stays invisible.
What is a normal shrinkage rate in Kenya? International benchmarks put 1–2% as acceptable. Kenyan retail with manual stock control commonly sees 3–7%. If you are above 3%, the controls are the problem rather than the staff.
Can I get these reports on my phone? Yes. sell.ke runs in a browser, so the full dashboard works on a phone. Most owners check the Monday reports before they leave the house.
Do I need the Scale plan for reporting? The nine reports above are on Grow. Scale adds multi-branch comparison and more advanced analytics — worth it once you have more than one location.