Running a shop without the exercise book
What the book does well, what it cannot do, and how to move over without losing the trust it had.
Most shops in Accra run on an exercise book, a calculator and a good memory, and plenty of them run well. Before you change anything, it is worth being honest about what the book is genuinely good at, because whatever replaces it has to be at least that good on day one.
This guide is about moving the shop's records off paper without losing what paper gave you. It is written for a shop with one counter and one or two branches, and it works whether you end up on a phone or stay exactly where you are.
What the exercise book does well
The book is not a bad system. It is a system that has been tested by every kind of bad day a shop can have, and it survives all of them.
Five things it does that most software still cannot match:
- It always works. No signal, no charge, no waiting. It opens in one second, in direct sun, with one hand.
- Everyone understands it. A customer can lean over and read their own line, and that is why the book settled arguments.
- It costs a few cedis and then nothing, forever.
- It is yours. Nobody can lock you out of it or change what it says from somewhere else.
- It never asks a question before it lets you write. You do not fill a form to record a sale.
Anything that fails one of those five will be abandoned inside a week, and rightly so. Hold whatever you move to against this list, not against a feature list.
The four things a book cannot do
The book has real limits, and every one of them costs money quietly rather than loudly. That is why they are easy to live with for years.
- It cannot total itself. You only know today's takings after somebody adds a column, so most evenings nobody knows.
- It cannot be in two places at once. If you are at Kaneshie, the Madina book is at Madina, and the only way to know what happened there is a phone call and somebody's word.
- It cannot be cross-referenced. The sales book and the credit book never speak to each other, so 'what did Akosua buy in June, and has she paid for it' is an hour of flipping pages.
- It cannot tell you profit, because it never knew what the goods cost you. It only ever recorded one side of the trade.
And one more that nobody counts until it happens: it burns, it gets wet, it walks off in a bag. A shop that loses its book loses its credit book with it.
Start with today, never with history
The most common way this goes wrong is a shop owner deciding to copy three years of the book into a phone before starting. Two evenings in, it is abandoned, and the conclusion drawn is that the app was too hard. The app was not the problem. Copying history is.
Start recording from this morning. The only history worth carrying across is credit that is still open: the names, the balances, and the date each one started. Everything else is already recorded, on paper, where you can still read it.
Move in this order
Each step below is useful on its own, so if you stop after step two you are still better off than you were.
- Your best-selling products with their prices. Not the whole shelf: the 20 or so lines that actually earn your money. The long tail can wait a month.
- Today's sales, from this morning, every one of them. A half-recorded day is worse than a paper day, because you will trust a figure that is missing sales.
- The daily close: one figure at closing to check against the cash in your hand.
- Restocks, with what you paid now and what is still owed to the supplier.
- The credit book last, and only the balances that are still open.
The credit book goes last for a reason. It is the record your customers can see and argue with, so it should move only after you already trust the rest.
Run both for two weeks
Keep writing in the book while you record on the phone. Yes, it is double work for a fortnight. It is also the only thing that will make you believe the new figure, and belief is the whole point.
At closing, do one comparison and one only. Not sale by sale: just the day's totals, and the cash you should be holding.
Closing at Madina, one evening
- Sales today (47 sales)
- GH₵ 3,240.50
- Of that, MoMo
- −GH₵ 980.00
- Of that, on credit
- −GH₵ 420.50
- Money out (a tricycle from Makola)
- −GH₵ 150.00
- Cash you should be holding
- GH₵ 1,690.00
One figure, checked against the notes in your hand. If it agrees for ten evenings straight, you can stop writing in the book.
When the two agree for ten days, put the book on the shelf. Do not throw it away. It is your record of everything before the change, and one day somebody will ask about a sale from last year.
Keep the thing that made the book trusted
The book settled arguments because both sides could see it. A phone that only you can read is a step backwards, however clever it is, and your regulars will feel that immediately.
So give the customer their side of the record every time: a receipt on WhatsApp for the sale, and their own statement when they are paying off a balance. When somebody says 'I already paid you fifty', the answer should be a document you send them in ten seconds, not your word against theirs.
What you should be able to answer six weeks in
If the change is working, four questions that used to take an evening now take a moment. What did we take today, before I sleep. What did we keep, after the goods and the money out. Who owes me, and for how long. What is actually on the shelf.
If you still cannot answer those, the tool is not the problem either. Something in the daily recording is being skipped, and it is almost always the same something: sales made while you were not standing at the counter.
Read next
Selling when the network is down
What to do the moment the signal goes, and what 'saved on this phone' means next to 'backed up'.
What your profit actually is
Sales, minus what the goods cost, minus money out. A full worked week that adds up.
Keeping the credit book straight
Give credit deliberately, record it at the counter, and keep a repayment record that ends the argument.
