Why move from Excel or a stock book to a POS?
A POS records each sale, payment and stock movement as it happens, instead of someone writing it up later. Excel and stock books can work for a small shop, but they depend on every entry being typed correctly, and they cannot tell you what is on the shelf right now.
The move itself is mostly about data and people. The software is the easy part. If you prepare a clean product list and train your staff before the first sale, the switch can take days rather than months. If you are still deciding which system to use, start with our guide on how to choose a POS system.
How do you clean your product list?
Make one row for every item you actually sell, at the level you sell it, with no duplicates. Product lists built up over years often hold old items, double entries and three different spellings of the same thing; fixing them in a spreadsheet is far quicker than fixing them one by one after import.
Names
Use one pattern for every name: product, type, size. “Cooking oil 1 L”, “Cooking oil 3 L”, “Sugar 2 kg”, “Maize flour 2 kg”. Pick one way to write units (kg, g, L, ml) and keep to it. Cashiers search by name, so the name should be what a person would type.
Units
Decide the unit you sell and count in. If you sell rice by the kilo from a 50 kg bag, the unit is the kilo and the stock is counted in kilos. If you sell soda by the crate and by the bottle, decide how the crate relates to the single bottle.
Barcodes
Scan barcodes from the packs with a barcode scanner instead of typing them; one wrong digit means the item will not be found at the till. Check that no barcode appears on two items. Loose goods and items without a barcode need a short shop code, or a printed barcode label.
Prices and costs
Record both the selling price and the cost price for every item. Cost is easy to leave out, but without it you cannot see your profit. Your latest supplier invoice is a good starting cost.
Categories
Group items into a manageable number of broad categories that match how you think about the shop: drinks, dairy, flour and cereals, cleaning, toiletries. Categories drive your reports and your stock counts, so keep them broad and consistent.
Which columns should you prepare?
Prepare one column for each piece of information, with one item per row. Whatever system you move to, you will need most of these:
| Information | Example | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Product name | Cooking oil 1 L | What the cashier searches for |
| Category | Cooking oils | Keep the list short |
| Brand | The brand on the pack | Useful for reports |
| Unit | Piece, kg, litre, metre | The unit you sell and count in |
| Barcode | Scanned from the pack | Check for duplicates |
| Shop code (SKU) | OIL-1L | For items without a barcode |
| Cost price | 310 | From the latest invoice |
| Selling price | 349 | Decide whether it includes VAT |
| VAT treatment | Standard-rated, zero-rated or exempt | Confirm with your accountant |
| Opening stock | 48 | Counted just before going live |
Column names and their order differ from one system to another, so keep your clean list as your master copy and copy the columns into the system’s own import file at the end.
How do you set prices and VAT before going live?
Decide whether your shelf prices include VAT, and give every item the right tax treatment before the first sale. If you are registered for VAT, a mistake here means wrong receipts and wrong VAT figures from day one. If you are not sure which items carry VAT, ask your accountant before you import.
Check the selling prices in your list against the prices on the shelves. Where they differ, decide which is right and fix it, then print new shelf labels after the import so the shelf and the till always agree. Customers notice a price difference at the till long before you do.
How do you get an accurate opening stock?
Count everything just before you go live, ideally after closing the day before, and use those counts as your opening stock. Quantities copied from an old book are often out of date, and a wrong starting figure makes every stock report after it wrong too.
Count the same way you would for a full stock take: tidy and divide the shop into areas, count in pairs, recount anything that looks odd, and value the stock at cost.
How do you run a pilot and train cashiers?
Run one till on the new system for a few days before you switch every till. A pilot shows up missing items, wrong prices and duplicate barcodes while there is still time to fix them calmly.
Train every cashier before their first shift on the new system, with practice sales before opening time. Cover:
- Selling: scanning, searching by name, quantities and weighed goods.
- Payments: cash, M-Pesa, split payments and customers on account.
- Returns and voids, and who is allowed to do them.
- Opening and closing a shift, and counting the drawer.
- What to do when an item is not found: never sell it as a different item; call a supervisor and note it.
- What to do when the internet or the power goes off.
Short sessions with real products work better than one long talk. Let cashiers make mistakes in practice, not with customers.
What should you check in the first week?
Check a short list every day for the first week, while problems are still small:
- Items not found at the till. Add them the same day.
- Wrong prices. Fix them at once and reprint the shelf label.
- Negative stock. Items that sell while the system shows none in stock usually mean a wrong opening count or sales rung up under the wrong item.
- Cash. Count the drawer at every shift close and compare it with the expected cash.
- M-Pesa. Compare the M-Pesa total in the system with your own M-Pesa statement.
- Deliveries. Record every delivery in the system the day it arrives.
- A quick count. At the end of the week, count two or three fast-moving categories and compare them with the system.
Once the first week is clean, stop updating the old book or spreadsheet. Keep it for reference.
How to move to Wave POS
Wave POS runs in Chrome on any computer or tablet, whether it uses Windows, macOS, Android or ChromeOS, and on phones. You can install it as an app from Chrome, and there is nothing to install from a disc or an app store, so the computer you use for Excel today can be your first till.
- Free trial. Sign up online for 14 days free, with no card needed. Your shop gets its own address, yourshop.wavepos.app, and after the trial your products, sales and settings stay as they are, so the work you do during the pilot is kept.
- Import and export. Copy your clean list into the import template and import it with Excel or CSV, with categories, brands, units and images. You can export your products the same way at any time.
- Opening stock. Run a stock take of the whole branch and enter your counts; the differences post when a manager completes it.
- Prices and VAT. Several tax rates, prices with or without VAT, cash rounding and prices per branch.
- Items without barcodes. Print barcode and shelf labels with prices, in batches.
- Cashiers. Each cashier has their own PIN, and roles (Owner, Manager, Cashier, Stock Clerk or your own) control what each person can do. The till keeps selling offline and sends the sales when the internet is back.
- Help. Support tickets from inside the app, and help on WhatsApp.
See the hardware setup guide for scanners and printers, compare plans on the pricing page, or start a free trial with your own product list.