Every shop's first system is a notebook, then a spreadsheet. Both work until the business grows past the person keeping them. The move to a point of sale is not a leap; it is a week of preparation and a quiet morning. Here is how to know it is time, and how to do it without closing.
Four signs you have outgrown the spreadsheet
- The evening takes an hour. Typing sales, matching M-Pesa messages and totalling cash is work the till should do while you sell.
- Two people cannot use it at once. A second counter, a second branch or a second phone means two copies and one argument.
- You only know yesterday. Stock, cash and sales are always as of the last time someone typed them in.
- Mistakes are quiet. A transposed digit or a forgotten expense changes a decision months later and nobody knows why.
The switch-over plan
Week before: clean the product list
One row per product, one name per thing, prices checked, duplicates merged. Give every product a code and, if you can, a barcode. Export the sheet as CSV — that is what you will import.
Three days before: count the stock
Count on a quiet day and write the opening quantities in the sheet. This becomes the first true stock figure in the new system.
The day before: set up the people and the money
Add cashiers with their own PIN and role, set your VAT rate and receipt details, and enter your M-Pesa Till or Paybill. Print one test receipt.
Switch-over morning
Import the products and opening stock, open the first cashier shift with a counted float, and start selling. Keep the spreadsheet open for a week for comparison, then stop updating it — two systems become none.
What to look for in the first POS
- CSV import for products and customers
- Selling continues when the internet does not
- M-Pesa on the sale, with the code on the receipt
- Stock that moves with every sale and delivery
- Cashier shifts, so cash-up is a comparison rather than a count
- Customer accounts with credit and statements, so pay-later customers stop living in a book
- A price per month you can say out loud, with no per-user fees
Starting with NodePoint
NodePoint Retail POS imports products from CSV, opens each cashier's shift with a float, takes M-Pesa and store credit at the till, and keeps selling offline. The free trial runs with the full product, and what you enter in the trial carries into your subscription. Set-up takes minutes from the setup page; if you would rather talk it through, contact us.
Read next: stock control that actually works and M-Pesa at the till.