Industry · Stationery & office supplies
POS system for a stationery shop in Kenya
A stationery business has two customers whose needs barely overlap. There is the parent buying six exercise books in January, and there is the school buying four thousand of them against a local purchase order, on thirty days' credit, after a quotation that had to beat two competitors.
The institutional side is where the money is and where the admin lives. Quotations, LPO references, delivery notes, invoices and a debtor balance that runs for a term — all of it typically handled in Excel and a duplicate book, and all of it needing to reconcile when the school's accounts office queries one line item four months later.
What solves it
Quotations that convert
Quote an institution at agreed rates; when the LPO arrives the quotation becomes the order without re-keying, at the prices you quoted.
Credit invoicing with ageing
Invoice on account with the reference the school's accounts office needs, and track the balance by days outstanding.
Bales in, pieces out
Buy exercise books by the bale of 50 and sell singles, with the conversion on the product so the stock figure holds.
Seasonal reorder levels
January and September demand is predictable. Reorder points fire in November and July, when stock is still available and cheaper.
Institution price lists
Each school's agreed rates apply automatically, so a term's worth of orders is priced consistently by whoever serves them.
A worked example: the term order and the query
A secondary school asks for a quotation: 4,000 exercise books, 200 reams of paper, 50 boxes of pens. You quote at institutional rates, KES 486,000, and win it. The LPO arrives three weeks later and the goods go out over two deliveries.
Four months later the school's accounts office calls: they think they were charged for 220 reams, not 200, and they are holding payment on the whole invoice until it is resolved. If the trail lives in a duplicate book and a spreadsheet, this takes a morning of somebody's time and often ends in a goodwill credit, because you cannot prove it either way.
With the quotation, the order it converted into, the two deliveries and the invoice all on one record, it takes a minute. The order says 200, the deliveries total 200, the invoice says 200 — and if the delivery note shows 220 because somebody loaded an extra ten reams twice, that is also on the record and the credit is a correct credit rather than a concession. Either way the KES 486,000 stops being held hostage to a missing piece of paper.
- →Quotation → LPO → order → deliveries → invoice, on one chain
- →Institutional rates applied automatically per school
- →Balance aged so a term-long debt is visible
- →A query is answered from records, not reconstructed
The features this trade leans on
Each one goes deeper than this page does — start with the first.
Customers and loyalty
Credit accounts that do not go missing, loyalty that returns, and a debtor list you can actually chase.
Prices, price lists and promotions
Wholesale and retail off one product, quantity breaks, customer-specific lists, VAT-inclusive display.
Buying, suppliers and approvals
Purchase orders, goods-received notes, supplier bills and the cost figure every margin depends on.
Reports and real accounting
Double-entry books — trial balance, P&L, balance sheet — not a CSV export to somebody else's software.
Questions from this trade
Can I quote schools and institutions?
Yes. Raise a quotation at that institution's agreed rates, and when the LPO arrives it converts into an order at the prices you quoted rather than today's. The whole chain from quotation to invoice stays linked.
Can I invoice on credit and track what schools owe?
Yes. Institutional sales go out on account as receivables, aged by days outstanding, so a debt running across a term is a visible position. That matters in a trade where payment often follows the school's own funding cycle.
Can I buy in bales and sell single books?
Yes. The conversion factor sits on the product, so receiving 80 bales of 50 adds 4,000 sellable books and the cost per book derives from the bale price.
How do I prepare for the January rush?
Set reorder levels on the seasonal lines so they fire in November, and use last year's purchase and sales history for the same weeks as the basis for the order. Buying school stock in January is both more expensive and less available.
Can two staff serve institutional customers consistently?
Yes, because the rates live on the customer rather than in someone's head. An institution's price list applies automatically, so whoever raises the quotation quotes the same figures.
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 KES 1,499/month for a single-branch till to KES 14,999/month for unlimited scale, with the online shop, M-Pesa checkout and KRA eTIMS receipts included from KES 2,999/month. Every plan starts with a 14-day trial and no card. There is no hardware to buy — sell.ke runs on a phone, tablet or laptop you already own.
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Try it in your stationery & office supplies
Fourteen days, no card, no hardware to buy. Import your product list or let Amina build it from a photo of your price list.