How does a multi-branch POS work?
One account holds all your branches. You set up your products once, and each branch keeps its own stock of them, its own tills, its own prices where they differ and its own settings. You look at the whole business or one branch at a time, and every sale, transfer and change is recorded against the branch where it happened.
That is the difference between a chain run on one system and three shops each with its own exercise book. When the owner in Nairobi asks how Kisumu did yesterday, the answer is already there.
What each branch keeps for itself
Each branch has its own stock, tills, prices and settings, so it can run on its own day to day.
| Per branch | What it means |
|---|---|
| Stock | Each branch has its own stock and its own ledger. A sale in Kisumu never reduces stock in Nakuru. |
| Tills | Each till is registered to a branch, and its receipts carry the branch in the number. |
| Prices | The same product can sell for KSh 290 in one branch and KSh 300 in another. |
| Settings | A branch can differ from the business-wide settings where it needs to. |
Staff work only in the branches you give them. The owner sees every branch; a manager for the Eldoret branch can be given Eldoret alone.
One dashboard for every branch
The dashboard shows all branches together or one at a time. It compares today with yesterday and shows sales by hour, top products, payment methods and cashiers, along with low stock and negative stock. The owner can see it from a phone in Mombasa while the branches trade in Nairobi and Thika.
Most reports work the same way: run them for one branch or all of them, and export to Excel, CSV or PDF. See reports for the full list.
Moving stock between branches
Stock moves between branches with a transfer, sent from one branch and received at the other. The sending branch’s stock goes down when the transfer is sent; the receiving branch’s stock goes up by what actually arrives.
Say your Nairobi branch sends 40 cartons of 500 ml water to Machakos, and the van arrives with 38:
- Nairobi sends the transfer. Its stock goes down by 40.
- Machakos counts what arrived and receives 38. Its stock goes up by 38.
- The missing 2 cartons are recorded as lost in transit, so the gap is on record instead of disappearing between two shops.
Stock moves at its average cost, so each branch’s stock value stays right. More on stock in stock control.
Roles and permissions
Every person signs in with their own account and gets a role that sets what they can do. The built-in roles are Owner, Manager, Cashier and Stock Clerk, and you can make your own.
- Cashiers sell, take payments and run their shift, switching in at a shared till with their own PIN.
- Stock clerks receive goods, request adjustments, send transfers and count stock.
- Managers approve adjustments, give their PIN for large discounts and price changes, and see the figures.
- Owners see and change everything, in every branch.
Tills, sync and the audit log
Register each till and see when it last synced, so you know at a glance if the till in Nakuru has not sent its sales since yesterday. Each till keeps selling when its internet drops and catches up when it is back; see offline selling.
Anything a till could not send waits under Sync issues for someone to review. The audit log records who did what and when across all branches: a price change, an approved adjustment, a voided sale. The shop theft guide shows how to use these records to spot trouble early.
How many branches, users and tills you can have depends on your plan; see pricing.