The problem · Costs that will not sit still
When your supplier's price changes every delivery
The cost of a carton went up in March. It went up again in June. Your shelf price was set in January, by writing a round number on a label.
You know the margin is thinner than it was. You do not know by how much, on which lines, or whether any of them have gone negative — and some of them have.
Meanwhile a competitor two doors down changed their price last week, and you are either leaving money on the counter or quietly losing it on every sale.
What a stale price costs
Margin erosion is invisible by construction. Nothing goes wrong. The customer pays, the till rings, the day's takings look normal — and the business makes less on every single unit than it did last quarter.
A shop running at 15 percent that absorbs a 5 percent cost rise without repricing is now at roughly 10.5 percent. It has lost about a third of its margin and nothing about the day looks different. On thin-margin staples, a couple of unnoticed cost rises are enough to take a line below cost entirely — and then the busiest lines in the shop are the ones losing money fastest.
Across a region that has seen sustained input-cost pressure, fuel moves, exchange-rate swings and import duty changes, this is not an occasional event. For most East African retailers it is the normal operating condition, which makes repricing an ongoing process rather than an annual exercise.
- A 5 percent cost rise on a 15 percent margin removes a third of the profit
- Thin-margin staples can go below cost without anything looking wrong
- Volume lines erode fastest, so the damage scales with how well you are selling
- Pricing from the old cost on new stock understates the replacement cost of your shelves
Why repricing does not happen
Because the information arrives in the wrong place at the wrong time. The new cost is on a delivery note in a drawer. The shelf price is on a label. The margin is in nobody's head. The only person who can connect the three is the owner, and only by sitting down with paperwork.
So it is done when there is time, which is rarely, and in a batch, which means weeks of selling at the old price before anything changes. Then there is the second problem: a shop holding stock bought at three different prices has to decide which cost its margin is measured against, and most shops use whatever single figure was typed in when the product was created — which is frequently the oldest one.
And prices live in several places at once. The label, the till, the online store, the wholesale list, the second branch. Updating one is easy; updating five consistently is a project, so it waits.
- New costs arrive on paper, disconnected from the price and the margin
- One fixed cost per product, even after three deliveries at three prices
- Repricing batched because it is laborious, so it is always weeks late
- The same price maintained in several places and therefore inconsistent
- No report showing which lines' margins have moved
Step by step
How to keep prices ahead of costs
Capture the real cost on every delivery
Record each receipt at the price you actually paid, including freight or duty where it is material. Without that, nothing downstream can be correct — margin becomes an estimate based on a cost somebody typed in once.
Price as a margin, not as a round number
Decide the percentage you need per category and derive the price from the current cost. Round for the counter afterwards if you want to, but let the rounding be a presentation decision rather than the pricing method.
Review affected prices on the day the delivery lands
Not monthly. The moment a cost changes is the moment you know, and it is the only moment when repricing is a small, specific task — this delivery, these lines — rather than a large, vague one.
Watch margin by line, not just by shop
An overall margin can look stable while individual lines fall off a cliff, because mix hides it. A list ranked by margin movement over the last month shows you exactly which lines the cost rises have landed on.
Change the price once, everywhere
Till, labels, online store, wholesale list and every branch from one change. Prices maintained in several places diverge, and a divergence between your shop and your web store is a customer-facing argument you will lose.
Value stock on what it costs to replace
If you sell at a margin over an old cost, you cannot buy back what you sold. Price from what the next delivery will cost, not what the last one did — this is the discipline that keeps a shop solvent through sustained cost pressure, and it is the one most often missed.
What you get
What sell.ke does about it
Cost per delivery, not per product
Each receipt carries the price you actually paid, so margin is measured against what the goods genuinely cost rather than a number typed in when the product was created.
Margin visible per line, live
Margin by product, category, branch and channel, so a line whose profitability has moved shows up as a figure rather than as a suspicion.
Repricing from the goods-received screen
A delivery at a new cost surfaces the affected products immediately, so the review happens while the stock is still being put away.
One change, every channel
A price set once applies at the till, on the labels, in the online store and across branches — with deliberate exceptions where you want them.
Price lists per customer type
Retail, wholesale and contract pricing as separate lists over the same products, so a cost rise can be passed through differently to different buyers.
Time-boxed promotions
Discounts with an end date, applied at the till, so a promotion stops on its own instead of quietly becoming the new price.
Questions
Supplier prices keep moving — questions
How often should I reprice?
Whenever the cost moves, line by line, rather than on a calendar. The reason repricing feels like a big job is that it is done in batches; done per delivery it is a two-minute task on the lines that actually changed.
Should I price from the old cost or the new one?
The new one — what it will cost to replace what you are selling. Pricing from an old, lower cost means every sale brings in less than the goods will cost to buy back, which looks profitable in the margin column and slowly empties the bank account.
My customers notice when prices change. What do I do?
Smaller, more frequent movements are absorbed far better than occasional large corrections, which is itself a strong argument for repricing per delivery. Where you genuinely cannot move a headline price, protect margin elsewhere — a bundle, a pack size, or a different line pushed at the counter.
Can I have different prices for wholesale and retail customers?
Yes. Price lists sit over the same products, so a customer on a wholesale list sees wholesale prices at the till and online. When a cost rises you can pass it through on one list and absorb it on another, deliberately, rather than having a single price that is wrong for both.
Does the online store price change too?
Yes, from the same change. The storefront reads the same products and the same price lists as the till — there is no sync job and no second place to update, which is the main reason shop and web prices usually disagree.
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.
The problems that travel with this one
These rarely arrive alone. Fixing one usually exposes the next.
Not knowing your profit
Takings are not profit. The gap between them is where most small shops quietly fail.
Dead stock and expiry
The shelves are full and the bank is empty. That is not a coincidence.
Customers who buy on credit
The debtors book is where a profitable shop runs out of cash. How to lend without bleeding.
The features that do the work
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.
Stock you can trust
Batch and expiry, serial numbers, reorder levels, stock takes and the formulas behind them.
See it for your trade
Wholesale & distribution
Quantity breaks, customer price lists, cartons in and pieces out, delivery zones.
Hardware shop
Sell by length or weight, wholesale versus retail lists, quotations, credit accounts.
Electronics & phone shop
IMEI and serial tracking, warranty by unit, consignment stock, high-value write-offs.
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.