How a butchery sells
A butchery sells meat by weight, fast, mostly for cash and M-Pesa, with the busiest hours after work and at weekends. Money leaks away in small amounts: a price per kilo worked out wrongly in a hurry, a bit extra thrown in, trimming that is never written down, and a drawer that is short at night.
Many butcheries also supply hotels, restaurants and school kitchens on credit, recorded in a book that only the owner can follow. Wave POS puts the weight, the price per kilo, the customer and the cash on one record, so each of these can be checked.
Selling by weight, to three decimals
Each cut has a price per kilo, the cashier types the weight shown on the scale, and Wave POS works out the amount. Quantities go to three decimals, so 0.375 kg is priced exactly instead of being rounded to the nearest quarter kilo.
Wave POS does not connect to the scale: the cashier reads the weight and types it on the numpad. A typical evening sale:
| Item | Weight | Price per kg | Amount |
|---|---|---|---|
| Beef on the bone | 1.250 kg | KSh 700 | KSh 875 |
| Liver | 0.500 kg | KSh 760 | KSh 380 |
| Matumbo | 0.750 kg | KSh 420 | KSh 315 |
| Total | KSh 1,570 |
The customer pays by M-Pesa, either with the transaction code typed in or with a prompt sent to their phone. Work you charge for, such as mincing, can be a service item that sells without touching stock.
Cuts as products or as variants
Set up each cut as its own product, or make one product per animal with the cuts as variants. Either way each cut has its own price per kilo and its own stock in kilos. Beef might be one product with on the bone, steak and mince as variants, while goat meat, liver and matumbo are products of their own.
When meat arrives from the slaughterhouse, receive it into stock in kilos at what you paid, for example 120 kg of beef at KSh 540 a kilo. That cost is what profit is measured against, and if you pay the supplier at the end of the week, the purchase waits on their account until you do. Supplier accounts are covered under purchasing and suppliers.
Trade prices for hotels and restaurants
Give a wholesale price per kilo that applies by itself from a set quantity, so a hotel’s large order is priced at the trade rate without the cashier changing anything. For a trade buyer taking a smaller amount, the cashier can press F3 to switch the till to wholesale. The wholesale pricing page has the detail.
A worked example: beef on the bone sells at KSh 700 a kilo, and at KSh 640 from 10 kg. A restaurant in Nakuru orders 25 kg, so the till prices it at 25 × KSh 640 = KSh 16,000. The restaurant has a customer account with a KSh 60,000 credit limit, so the meat goes on account. The account’s ledger shows every delivery and payment, the restaurant settles its balance at the till at month end, and the debtors ageing report shows any customer who is paying late. A second printer can print the order as a large ticket without prices for whoever packs it.
Cash control, shift by shift
Each cash drawer session is a shift: the opening float, cash paid in and out, and a counted close that shows whether the drawer is over or short. Cashiers switch in with their own PIN, so every sale records who made it, and the till can be locked between customers.
Cash taken from the drawer to pay a casual who helped offload the delivery is recorded as petty cash under an expense category, not lost in the count. The shift report prints at close with the sales, payments, cash movements and the count. The guide to cash drawer reconciliation shows how to close a drawer properly.
Trimming loss and the day’s profit
Record trimming loss and spoiled meat as stock adjustments. Each one waits for a manager’s approval before it changes the stock, so the kilos lost to fat and bone are written down instead of guessed. At closing, for example, the butcher weighs 2.400 kg of trimmings that cannot be sold, enters it as a loss, and the manager approves it.
The profit and loss report then shows the day for one branch or all of them: sales, the cost of the meat sold, gross profit, stock written off at cost, expenses and net profit. Profit uses each cut’s cost at the time of sale, so a price rise from the slaughterhouse shows up in your margin. See expenses and profit.