Excel, off-the-shelf or custom-built: how to choose management software that holds up against power cuts, mobile money and till discrepancies.
You are looking for stock management software in Cameroon because the notebook no longer keeps up, or because the figure in Excel is never the figure in the shop. Before comparing names and prices, work out what the software has to do for you, in Douala or Yaoundé, with your power cuts, your payment methods and your staff. The rest comes later.
The signs it is time
The stock in the file and the stock on the shelves never meet. You discover a shortage when the customer is already at the counter. Two employees each keep their own file, and in the evening nobody knows which one is right. And you cannot say, without half a day of sums, which item actually makes you money.
If two of those sentences sound familiar, the notebook has had its day.
What good stock software must do
Link the sale to the stock. Every sale recorded must take the item out of stock immediately, without anyone retyping anything elsewhere. That is the basic rule, and it is where home-made fixes fail: data typed twice always ends up wrong once.
Handle stock coming in as well as going out. Supplier deliveries, customer returns, breakage, expired goods. Software that only knows about sales will give you a false stock figure within a month.
Warn you before you run out. A threshold per item, and an alert when stock drops below it. You reorder in time instead of staring at an empty shelf.
Follow several sales points. A shop and a warehouse, or one store in Douala and another in Yaoundé: each has its own stock, and every transfer between them leaves a trace.
Give each person their own rights. The cashier takes payments, the storekeeper receives goods, the manager sees the figures. Nobody changes a past sale without it being logged. The day there is a gap, you can explain it instead of putting up with it.
Record how each sale was paid. Cash, mobile money, bank transfer, customer credit. At the end of the day, the till must reconcile with your statements, method by method. Otherwise the gap hides in the “miscellaneous” column.
The question nobody asks: what happens when power or internet goes down?
Here, that question decides everything. Fully online software stops when the connection does, and your till stops with it. Ask the seller, precisely: can I keep selling without internet? What happens when the connection comes back? Where is my data if the till computer breaks down?
On the hardware side, a UPS on the till computer and on the router is no luxury. It will not last through a whole outage, but it gives you time to save and shut down properly, which avoids corrupted files.
Then there is the backup: an automatic copy, kept outside the shop, that someone has already tried to restore at least once.
Excel, off-the-shelf or custom
Excel is enough as long as one person keeps the file and the number of items stays reasonable. As soon as two people touch it, the versions drift apart.
Off-the-shelf software is ready straight away and costs less to start with. It suits you if the way you work is standard. Check that it works in French, in CFA francs and with your payment methods, and that someone near you can help when it gets stuck.
Custom software takes longer to build, but it follows your rules: your discounts, your sales on credit, your units (the carton, the piece, the kilo), the way you do your stocktake. It is the right choice when ready-made software has already forced you to change your trade to suit it.
And for a school?
The search “school management software” comes up often, and the logic is the same. A school handles enrolments, fees paid in instalments, marks and report cards. The painful point is almost always this one: knowing, at any moment, which pupil is up to date with payments, without sifting through a pile of receipts. Software that ties each payment to the pupil’s record solves that. The questions to ask are the same as for a shop: power cuts, user rights, backups.
Questions to ask before you sign
Will my current data be brought across, or do I start from zero? Do I get a complete copy of my data if I leave? Who trains my staff? Who do I call when it gets stuck on a Saturday? What do the following years cost, not just the first?
If an answer stays vague, ask for it in writing.
If you want to talk it through
At All Techs we build custom management software. We start by spending a day with you and your staff to see how you really work, and bringing your existing data across is included. The details are on the custom software page, and the quote is free.
If you would rather train your team on off-the-shelf software, have a look at our computerised business management course.
