Industry · Butchery
POS system for a butchery in Kenya
A butchery buys one thing and sells six. A carcass comes in at a price per kilo and leaves as fillet, sirloin, mince, bones and offal — each at its own price, each in different quantities, and the total weight out is always less than the weight in. Trim, drip and bone loss are real and they are not theft.
That is the arithmetic no ordinary till does. It counts units, so a butchery ends up pricing by eye, weighing on a scale that talks to nobody, and discovering at month end that the margin is nothing like what the price per kilo suggested. The gap is usually yield loss that was never measured.
What solves it
Sell by weight
Price per kilo, sold to two decimal places. A 1.35kg cut is a 1.35kg sale and a 1.35kg stock movement, not "about one and a half".
One carcass, many cuts
Break a carcass down into the cuts you actually sell, each with its own price, so the yield from one purchase is visible as several products.
Daily wastage recorded
Trim, spoilage and unsold end-of-day stock written off against a reason. It hits the profit and loss instead of quietly becoming variance.
Cold-chain stock takes
Count what is in the chiller in kilos, against a system figure held in kilos, so the variance means something.
Margin per kilo, after yield
Because the cost of the carcass and the weight actually sold are both recorded, the margin figure accounts for the yield you really got.
A worked example: the yield you are not measuring
You buy a beef carcass at 180kg for KES 450 a kilo — KES 81,000. Priced naively, selling at an average KES 620 a kilo looks like KES 111,600 of revenue and KES 30,600 of margin.
It is not, because you will not sell 180kg. After bone, trim and drip you sell perhaps 158kg. At an average KES 620 that is KES 97,960, and the margin is KES 16,960 — a little over half what the naive figure suggested. Your real cost per saleable kilo is KES 81,000 ÷ 158 = KES 513, not KES 450.
This is the number that decides whether the shop makes money, and it is invisible without recording both the purchase weight and the weight actually sold. With the carcass received as a cost and the cuts sold by weight against it, the yield falls out of the data: a 12% loss is normal, 20% means something is going out of the back door or the butcher is trimming heavily, and you can tell which week it changed.
- →Carcass in: 180kg at KES 450 = KES 81,000
- →Sold: 158kg at an average KES 620 = KES 97,960
- →True cost per saleable kilo: KES 513, not KES 450
- →Yield loss of 12% is normal; 20% is a question to ask
The features this trade leans on
Each one goes deeper than this page does — start with the first.
Prices, price lists and promotions
Wholesale and retail off one product, quantity breaks, customer-specific lists, VAT-inclusive display.
Stock you can trust
Batch and expiry, serial numbers, reorder levels, stock takes and the formulas behind them.
Reports and real accounting
Double-entry books — trial balance, P&L, balance sheet — not a CSV export to somebody else's software.
Selling at the counter
Split payments, held orders, manager-gated discounts and a drawer count that reconciles.
Questions from this trade
Can the till sell meat by the kilo?
Yes. Products can be priced per kilo and sold to two decimal places, so a 1.35kg cut is recorded as 1.35kg of sale and 1.35kg of stock movement. The price and the stock figure stay in the same unit the customer is buying in.
How do I handle one carcass becoming several cuts?
Break it down into the cuts you sell, each with its own price, against the cost of the carcass it came from. That is what makes yield measurable: the weight you bought and the weight you sold are both on the record, so the difference is a number rather than a suspicion.
Can I record daily wastage?
Yes, as a write-off against a reason. Trim, spoilage and unsold end-of-day stock post to the profit and loss rather than disappearing into stock variance, which means a bad week is visible as a bad week.
Will it tell me my real margin per kilo?
Yes, and it will usually be worse than you expect — that is the point. Because both the carcass cost and the weight actually sold are recorded, the margin accounts for yield loss instead of assuming you sell every kilo you bought.
Does it work with a weighing scale?
You still weigh on a scale. The till takes the weight and prices it per kilo, deducting the same figure from stock, so the scale and the system agree on what left the chiller.
Do I need internet?
Not to keep selling. Offline mode lets the till take sales, print receipts and reserve stock while the connection is down, then syncs everything when it returns. You do need connectivity for the parts that are inherently online: an M-Pesa STK push, an eTIMS submission and the online shop all need a live link.
Will it show me my profit?
Yes, and from a real ledger rather than a sales total. Every sale posts to a double-entry chart of accounts, so you get a trial balance, profit and loss, balance sheet and cash flow — not a CSV to hand your accountant. Margin is visible per product, per branch and per channel, because cost is tracked on the way in through purchase orders and goods-received notes.
Can I stop staff from giving discounts or deleting sales?
Yes. Discounts, voids and refunds sit behind a manager PIN, and every one of them records who authorised it and when. Staff accounts carry role permissions, so a cashier can sell without seeing cost prices, editing products or opening reports. A void that reverses stock is a movement in the audit trail, not a gap in it.
Try it in your butchery
Fourteen days, no card, no hardware to buy. Import your product list or let Amina build it from a photo of your price list.