Feature · Prices and promotions
Price lists, quantity breaks and promotions
A Kenyan hardware shop does not have one price for a bag of cement. It has a retail price, a price for the fundi who buys ten bags a week, a price for the contractor on account, and a price it will quietly do to move slow stock at month end. Systems that model one price per product force the shop to keep the other three in a notebook.
sell.ke models the price list as a first-class object. One product, several lists, and the right list applied by who is buying and how much. Amina will generate a list for you — describe the discount and the customer group and she builds it rather than leaving you to price four hundred lines by hand.
What this actually does
Wholesale and retail off one product
No duplicate SKUs, which means no split stock figure and no reconciling two records of the same item.
Quantity breaks
The price steps down at the quantities you set, so the fundi buying ten bags gets the ten-bag price without the cashier doing mental arithmetic.
Customer-specific lists
A contractor on account sees their agreed rates, applied automatically at the counter and on the website.
Promotions with a start and an end
A month-end push expires on its own instead of running until somebody remembers to turn it off.
VAT-inclusive display
Prices show the way a Kenyan customer reads a price tag — the number on the shelf is the number they pay.
Amina generates the list
"Make a wholesale list at 12% off for orders over ten units" produces the list, not a help article about how to make one.
Sell by length, weight or piece
Price per metre, per kilo or per unit, with the conversion held on the product so the till and the stock figure agree.
The duplicate-SKU trap
The usual workaround for two prices is two products: "Cement 50kg" and "Cement 50kg WHOLESALE". It works on day one and it is a slow disaster after that, because stock is now split across two records. A stock take counts one pile of cement and has two numbers to reconcile it against, reorder levels fire at the wrong time, and margin by product becomes meaningless because the same item appears twice with different costs.
Keeping the product single and the prices plural avoids all of it. There is one stock figure because there is one product; the price list only decides what the customer is charged. That is also why the online shop can quote a different list to a logged-in trade customer without touching the catalogue.
Promotions that end when you said they would
Every retailer has run a promotion for three months longer than intended. It is not carelessness — a discount with no expiry is invisible once the excitement passes, and the only thing that surfaces it is a margin report somebody eventually reads.
Dated promotions solve a management problem rather than a technical one. The discount stops on its date, the pre-promotion price returns without anyone editing anything, and the promotional period is a bounded thing you can measure: units moved, margin given away, whether it was worth repeating.
- →Start and end dates, applied automatically
- →Measure units moved and margin conceded per promotion
- →Runs on the counter and the storefront from one definition
Where this decides the sale
The trades this matters most to, and what they need from it.
Price lists, quantity breaks and promotions — questions
Can I sell the same product at wholesale and retail prices?
Yes, without duplicating the product. One item can carry several price lists — retail, wholesale, a specific contractor's agreed rates — and the applicable list is chosen by who is buying. Stock stays a single figure because there is still only one product.
Do prices include VAT?
Prices display VAT-inclusive, which is how a Kenyan customer reads a price tag: the number on the shelf is the number they pay. The tax breakdown still appears on the eTIMS-compliant receipt and in reports, where it is needed.
Can I give a customer their own agreed prices?
Yes. Attach a price list to a customer and their rates apply automatically at the counter and when they log into the online shop, so a contractor on account is never quoted walk-in prices by a cashier who did not know.
Can I sell by weight or by length?
Yes. Products can be priced per kilo, per metre or per piece, with the conversion held on the product so a 2.4kg cut and a 3-metre length reduce stock correctly. This is what butcheries and hardware shops need most.
Will a promotion expire on its own?
Yes, if you give it an end date — and you should. The discount stops on the date and the previous price returns without anyone editing the product, which is the difference between a measurable promotion and a permanent price cut you did not intend.
Can I use it for more than one shop?
Yes. Branches share one product catalogue but hold their own stock, so a transfer between them is a recorded movement rather than a re-count. Reports run per branch or across all of them, and staff permissions are set per branch — a Kisumu supervisor does not need to see Nairobi's margins.
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.
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
Stock you can trust
Batch and expiry, serial numbers, reorder levels, stock takes and the formulas behind them.
Customers and loyalty
Credit accounts that do not go missing, loyalty that returns, and a debtor list you can actually chase.
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.