The problem · Flying blind
How to know what you actually made today
You know what came in. M-Pesa says one number, the drawer says another, and together they are the day's takings — the figure you quote when somebody asks how business is.
What you do not know is what any of it earned. Which lines carried the day, which ones you sold at a loss because a supplier price moved and nobody changed the shelf price, and whether the busy day was actually better than the quiet one.
So the answer to 'how is business' is a feeling. And feelings about a business are formed mostly by how tired you are.
Why takings mislead so reliably
Takings move with volume. Profit moves with mix. The two come apart constantly, and the shop that watches only the first systematically misreads its own best and worst days.
A concrete version: a duka takes KES 60,000 on a Saturday, mostly sugar, flour and cooking oil at four to six percent margin because those are the lines the whole street competes on. It takes KES 35,000 on a Tuesday, weighted toward household goods and personal care at twenty-five percent. The Saturday feels like the better day, got the staff overtime and the restock, and earned less.
Repeat that misreading for a year and the business grows in the direction of its loudest lines rather than its most profitable ones. That is how a shop with rising turnover runs out of cash — and it is the single most common way small retail dies here, far more common than one big loss.
- High-volume staples carry the thinnest margins, so busy days flatter you
- Cost rises arrive quietly and shelf prices lag them by weeks
- Credit sales count as takings when the money has not arrived
- Mobile money charges, rent, wages and spoilage never appear in a takings figure
Why the number is so hard to get
Profit needs two halves. Most shops only record one.
The selling side is captured, more or less — money arrives, and money arriving is memorable. The buying side is a drawer of delivery notes and a supplier's WhatsApp message about a price change. Without a cost attached to each item at the moment it arrived, there is nothing to subtract, so profit can only be estimated once a month by someone reconciling piles of paper.
And an estimate made monthly cannot change behaviour daily. By the time you learn that a line has been unprofitable since the last price rise, you have sold it at that price for six weeks. The problem is not arithmetic — it is latency.
- Costs live on paper, so margin cannot be computed per sale
- One cost per product, even when the last three deliveries were at three prices
- Credit sales booked as income on the day the goods left
- Owner's drawings, rent, wages and charges left out entirely
- A monthly estimate arriving too late to change anything
Step by step
How to get a real number
Put a cost on everything as it arrives
Record each delivery against the supplier with the price you actually paid, including transport if it is material. This is the one habit the whole thing depends on — without a cost at the moment of receipt, every margin figure afterwards is a guess wearing a decimal point.
Price from cost, and reprice when cost moves
Set each product's price as a deliberate margin over its current cost rather than as a round number that has drifted. Then, when a delivery arrives at a new price, review the shelf price that same day. Most quiet losses are a stale shelf price sitting above a cost that rose two months ago.
Separate credit sales from money received
Goods delivered on credit are revenue, not cash. Track what customers owe you separately from what landed in the drawer or the wallet, or you will spend money you have not been paid and discover it at the worst time.
Subtract the costs that are not goods
Rent, wages, electricity, transport, mobile money charges, licences. A gross margin that ignores them tells you a line is profitable when the shop is not. Enter them as they occur, not as a single remembered lump at month end.
Look at margin by line, not just by day
Rank your products by the total margin each contributed over a week. Almost every shop finds two or three lines it was proud of that earn almost nothing, and a couple it barely thinks about that carry the business. That ranking is the single most actionable report in retail.
Check it daily, not monthly
A daily number you glance at for thirty seconds changes decisions — what to reorder, what to push, what to reprice. A perfect monthly number arrives after the decisions have been made.
What you get
What sell.ke does about it
Cost captured on the way in
Purchase orders and goods-received notes record what you actually paid, per delivery, per supplier. Margin is then computed rather than estimated — per product, per branch, per channel.
A real ledger, not a sales total
Every sale, purchase and expense 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 and hope.
Takings split from what you are owed
Credit sales sit in a customer's balance rather than in today's cash. The day's money and the day's revenue stop being the same number by accident.
The margin ranking, ready made
Products ordered by the margin they actually contributed over a period — the report that tells you which lines are carrying the shop and which ones are just busy.
Price changes that follow cost
When a delivery arrives at a higher cost, the affected products are visible immediately, so the shelf price does not lag the supplier by six weeks.
Ask Amina in plain words
"Did we make money yesterday?" or the same question in Swahili. The assistant reads the same ledger the reports do and answers in the language you asked in.
Questions
Not knowing your profit — questions
What is the difference between my takings and my profit?
Takings are everything that came in. Profit is what is left after the goods you sold are replaced and the shop is paid for. A day that takes KES 60,000 on staples at five percent earns less than a day that takes KES 35,000 on household goods at twenty-five, and no amount of staring at the takings figure will reveal that. The number you need is revenue minus the cost of what you actually sold, minus the costs of running the place.
How do I work out margin if my supplier's price changes every delivery?
Record each delivery at the price you actually paid rather than keeping one fixed cost per product. The system then values what you sold against what it genuinely cost, and you can see your margin on that line moving in real time instead of discovering at year end that it went negative in March.
Does this need an accountant?
Not to run it. sell.ke posts the entries as you trade, so the trial balance, P&L and balance sheet exist whether or not anyone is looking at them. An accountant is then reviewing real books rather than building books from a shoebox — which is both cheaper and considerably more useful.
Can I see profit per branch?
Yes — per branch, per channel and per product. Branch P&L is usually the first report that changes someone's mind, because the shop that feels busiest is frequently not the one earning most, and that is invisible until the costs are attached to the right location.
What about mobile money charges?
Enter them as an expense and they land in the P&L like any other cost. For a shop taking most of its money on a wallet, charges are a real line item, and leaving them out is one of the more common reasons a shop's calculated margin is cheerfully wrong.
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.
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.
What does it cost?
Plans run from USD 12/month for a single-location till to USD 115/month for unlimited scale, with the online store on your own domain included from USD 23/month. In Kenya the same plans are KES 1,499 to KES 14,999/month, billed in shillings. Every plan starts with a 14-day trial and no card, and there is no per-terminal licence and no commission on your sales. There is no hardware to buy either — sell.ke runs on a phone, tablet or laptop you already own.
The problems that travel with this one
These rarely arrive alone. Fixing one usually exposes the next.
Supplier prices keep moving
When cost moves every delivery, a shelf price set once is a margin you are losing on purpose.
Customers who buy on credit
The debtors book is where a profitable shop runs out of cash. How to lend without bleeding.
Stock going missing
Why shrinkage is almost never one big theft, and what actually closes the gap.
The features that do the work
Reports and real accounting
Double-entry books — trial balance, P&L, balance sheet — not a CSV export to somebody else's software.
Buying, suppliers and approvals
Purchase orders, goods-received notes, supplier bills and the cost figure every margin depends on.
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.
If you are outside Kenya
The same problem, under the rails and the revenue authority you actually deal with.
Fix it on your own numbers
Fourteen days, no card. Import your product list or let Amina build it from a photo of your price list, and see what the reports say about your own shop.