Feature · Customers and loyalty
Customer accounts, credit and loyalty
Nearly every Kenyan business sells on credit whether it planned to or not. The fundi takes cement now and pays on Friday, the restaurant next door runs a monthly account, the neighbour is good for it. It works on trust, it is recorded in an exercise book, and the exercise book is the single largest uninsured asset in a lot of shops.
sell.ke treats credit as a ledger position rather than a memory. A sale on account creates a receivable against a named customer, part-payments reduce it, and the debtor list is a report you can sort by age and act on. Loyalty sits on the same customer record, so the person you are rewarding and the person who owes you are the same entity.
What this actually does
Credit and debt tracking
Sales on account create a receivable. Part-payments reduce it. Nothing depends on remembering who was good for it.
An ageing debtor list
Sorted by how long the money has been outstanding, because a 90-day debt and a 7-day debt are not the same problem.
Customer price lists
An account customer's agreed rates apply automatically, at the counter and when they log into the online shop.
Loyalty programme
Points or rewards attached to the customer record, so repeat business is visible rather than assumed.
Credit notes as tender
A returned item can become credit the customer spends later, redeemable as one tender on a split payment.
Purchase history per customer
What they buy and how often — which is what makes a WhatsApp message to them worth sending.
Customer profiles across channels
The same customer buying at the counter and on the website is one record, not two.
What the exercise book actually costs
The problem with credit in a notebook is not that it is analogue — it is that it has no ageing. Every debt looks the same on the page, so the ones that are quietly becoming bad losses are invisible until someone stops answering their phone. Shops routinely discover a year-old debt while looking for something else.
An ageing report changes the behaviour rather than the record-keeping. A debt at 30 days gets a reminder, at 60 days a conversation, at 90 days a decision. That is only possible if the system knows when the sale happened and what has been paid against it since — which is what a receivable is, and what a note on a page is not.
Loyalty that is worth running
Most small-business loyalty schemes fail for one reason: the shop cannot tell whether they worked. A stamp card gives away margin with no measurement, so it either runs forever or gets abandoned on a hunch.
Because loyalty here sits on the customer record and the customer record carries purchase history, the scheme is measurable. You can see whether enrolled customers come back more often and spend more when they do, and whether the reward is costing less than the repeat business is worth. If it is not, stop it — but stop it on evidence.
- →Rewards attached to a customer record, not a paper card
- →Purchase frequency and basket size visible per customer
- →The same record carries their credit balance and their agreed prices
Where this decides the sale
The trades this matters most to, and what they need from it.
Customer accounts, credit and loyalty — questions
Can I sell on credit and track who owes me?
Yes. A sale on account creates a receivable against that customer rather than requiring payment at the till, part-payments reduce the balance, and the debtor report ages the outstanding amounts so you know which debts need chasing first.
Can I set a credit limit for a customer?
Customer accounts carry their balance and history, so you can see exposure per customer before extending more. This is the difference between deciding to give credit and discovering you already have.
Does the loyalty programme work online as well as at the counter?
Yes, because it is attached to the customer rather than the channel. A customer who buys in the shop and on the website is one record with one balance and one history.
What happens when a customer returns something?
The return reverses the stock and the sale, and can issue a credit note the customer spends later. The credit note is a tender like cash or M-Pesa, so it can be part of a split payment on their next purchase.
Can account customers have their own prices?
Yes. Attach a price list to the customer and their agreed rates apply automatically wherever they buy, so a contractor on account is never charged walk-in prices by a cashier who did not know the arrangement.
Can I sell online with the same system?
That is the point of it. The storefront reads the same products, the same branch stock and the same price lists as the till — there is no sync job and no separate ecommerce subscription. A web order and a counter sale move the same stock and land in the same report, tagged by channel so you can see which one is actually growing.
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.
Read next
Prices, price lists and promotions
Wholesale and retail off one product, quantity breaks, customer-specific lists, VAT-inclusive display.
Reports and real accounting
Double-entry books — trial balance, P&L, balance sheet — not a CSV export to somebody else's software.
An online shop off the same stock
A branded storefront on your own domain, reading the same products, stock and prices as the till.
See 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.