Feature · Reports and accounting
Reports and real double-entry accounting
Most POS products in this bracket stop at a sales report. You get today's takings, maybe a top-products list, and a CSV export for whoever does your books. The accounting happens somewhere else, a month later, from figures nobody at the shop recognises.
sell.ke keeps a real double-entry ledger behind the till. Every sale, refund, purchase, supplier payment and stock write-off posts to a chart of accounts, so the system can produce a trial balance, a profit and loss, a balance sheet, a cash flow statement and a general ledger — from the same data that printed the receipt. Your accountant reads the books rather than rebuilding them.
What this actually does
Chart of accounts
A real account structure, not a category list bolted onto sales. Assets, liabilities, income and expenses behave the way an accountant expects.
Trial balance, P&L, balance sheet, cash flow, general ledger
The five statements that make a set of books a set of books, generated rather than assembled.
Reversible journal entries
Corrections reverse rather than overwrite, so the audit trail survives the correction. Nothing is silently edited.
Opening balances
Start mid-year with what you already owe and are owed, instead of pretending the business began the day you installed the software.
Accounts receivable and payable
Customer credit and supplier bills are ledger positions, so "who owes me" and "what do I owe" are answers rather than notebooks.
Margin by product, branch and channel
Cost is captured on the way in through purchase orders and goods-received notes, which is the only way a margin figure means anything.
Counter versus web, in the same report
Both channels write to the same orders, so the channel filter is a filter — not a reconciliation between two systems.
Why the channel filter is the proof, not the feature
It is worth being precise about what "one system" means, because every vendor claims it. The test is not whether a POS and a webshop can be bought from the same company — it is whether a web sale and a counter sale are the same kind of record.
Here they are. Both write to the same orders table against the same branch stock, which is why a single report can be filtered by channel. A product built as a POS with an ecommerce plugin cannot do that honestly; it can only place two sets of numbers side by side and hope they agree. If they ever disagree, you are the reconciliation.
Knowing your profit, not your takings
"How much did I make today?" is usually answered with the day's takings, which is not profit — it is cash movement. It ignores the cost of what was sold, the stock that expired, the supplier bill due on Friday and the M-Pesa charges on every transaction.
A double-entry ledger answers the real question because both sides of every transaction are recorded. Sell a bag of cement for KES 850 that cost KES 700 and the ledger holds both figures; the P&L shows KES 150 of gross margin rather than KES 850 of revenue. Do that across a month and the number at the bottom is one you can act on — raise a price, drop a line, chase a debtor.
- →Cost of goods sold captured from purchase orders and GRNs
- →Stock write-offs and expiries hit the P&L, not just the stock figure
- →Supplier bills and customer credit sit in the ledger as AP and AR
- →Branch-level statements for multi-branch businesses
Where this decides the sale
The trades this matters most to, and what they need from it.
Reports and real double-entry accounting — questions
Does sell.ke replace my accounting software?
For most small and mid-sized Kenyan businesses, yes. It keeps a double-entry ledger with a chart of accounts and produces a trial balance, profit and loss, balance sheet, cash flow statement and general ledger. Businesses with an established accountant and complex requirements often keep both, but the point is that the books exist here rather than only in an export.
Can I see profit per product?
Yes, because cost is captured when stock comes in through a purchase order and goods-received note. Margin is then visible per product, per branch and per channel. A POS that does not track cost on the way in can only show revenue, which is why its "profit" figures should be treated with suspicion.
Can I start using it part-way through a financial year?
Yes. Opening balances let you carry in what you own, owe and are owed on the day you start, so the balance sheet is correct rather than starting from zero. This is the step most migrations skip and then spend a year explaining.
If I make a mistake, can I correct the books?
Yes, by reversing entries rather than editing them. The original entry, the reversal and the correction all remain visible, which is what makes the trail auditable. Nothing in the ledger is silently overwritten.
Can I see the online shop and the counter separately?
Yes — and together, in one report, filtered by channel. Both write to the same orders against the same stock, so this is a filter rather than a merge of two systems' numbers.
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.
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.
Read next
Buying, suppliers and approvals
Purchase orders, goods-received notes, supplier bills and the cost figure every margin depends on.
Branches, staff and control
Shared catalogue, separate stock, transfers that are movements, and permissions per branch.
Selling at the counter
Split payments, held orders, manager-gated discounts and a drawer count that reconciles.
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.