Industry · Fuel station
POS system for a fuel station in Kenya
A fuel station is a high-volume, low-margin cash business staffed around the clock by people handling other people's money. The margin per litre is thin enough that a small, regular leak matters more than it would anywhere else, and the exposure is at shift change — the point where accountability passes from one person to another and usually gets recorded on paper.
Attached to the forecourt is a shop with completely different economics: fast-moving convenience stock, real margin, and its own shrinkage. And behind both sits a set of fleet and account customers who fuel now and pay monthly, whose balances have to be right because they are large.
What solves it
Shift open and close with denomination counts
Each attendant's shift is a bounded period with a counted drawer at both ends, so a shortfall attaches to a person and a window.
The forecourt shop on the same system
Convenience stock is tracked, priced and reported alongside fuel sales instead of being a separate business with its own book.
Fleet and account customers
Credit fuelling creates receivables per account, aged and statement-ready at month end rather than reconstructed from chits.
Manager-gated voids and refunds
On thin margins, an unexplained void is expensive. Every one carries the name of whoever authorised it.
Per-shift and per-branch reporting
Compare shifts and stations against each other, which is how a pattern becomes visible in a week instead of a quarter.
A worked example: KES 40 a shift
Take a station selling 9,000 litres a day at a gross margin of about KES 4 a litre. That is KES 36,000 of daily gross margin across three shifts — a business where KES 40 going missing per shift is not noise, it is 0.3% of the entire margin of the station.
Paper shift handovers cannot see KES 40. The attendant counts, writes a figure, the next attendant starts, and small differences are absorbed as rounding or blamed on a customer who drove off. Over a year, KES 40 a shift across three shifts is roughly KES 43,800 — from one station, on a leak too small for anyone to notice on any single day.
A counted shift makes it visible without accusing anyone. Open with a denomination count, close with a denomination count, and the difference is a figure attached to a named person and a three-hour window. One shift being KES 40 short is nothing. The same shift being KES 40 short eleven times in a fortnight is a conversation, and it is the pattern — not the incident — that the record gives you.
- →9,000 litres/day at ~KES 4/litre = KES 36,000 daily gross margin
- →KES 40 per shift ≈ KES 43,800 a year from one station
- →Denomination counts at open and close bound the exposure
- →Patterns surface in a fortnight, not at the annual audit
The features this trade leans on
Each one goes deeper than this page does — start with the first.
Branches, staff and control
Shared catalogue, separate stock, transfers that are movements, and permissions per branch.
Reports and real accounting
Double-entry books — trial balance, P&L, balance sheet — not a CSV export to somebody else's software.
Customers and loyalty
Credit accounts that do not go missing, loyalty that returns, and a debtor list you can actually chase.
Selling at the counter
Split payments, held orders, manager-gated discounts and a drawer count that reconciles.
Questions from this trade
How does shift reconciliation work?
Each attendant opens and closes a shift with a denomination count of the drawer. The system holds the recorded tenders for that shift, so the difference between what should be there and what is there is a specific figure attached to a specific person and period.
Can I run the forecourt shop on the same system?
Yes, and you should. Convenience stock has real margin and real shrinkage, and running it on the same system means one set of reports covers both the fuel and the shop instead of the shop being a side business with its own book.
Can fleet customers fuel on credit?
Yes. Account fuelling creates a receivable per customer, aged by days outstanding and statement-ready at month end, rather than a pile of chits to be reconciled by hand.
Does it integrate with pumps?
sell.ke handles the till, the shop stock, the shift reconciliation and the account customers. Direct pump and tank-gauge integration depends on your forecourt controller and is not something this page claims out of the box — ask before assuming it, because it is the one question worth confirming for this trade.
Can I compare shifts and stations?
Yes. Reporting runs per shift, per station and across the group, so a station or a shift that behaves differently from its peers is visible as a comparison rather than an intuition.
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.
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.
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 fuel station
Fourteen days, no card, no hardware to buy. Import your product list or let Amina build it from a photo of your price list.