POS and stock software for Kenyan bookshops and stationery stores

For two weeks in January, and again in May and September, parents arrive with school booklists and want twelve items each. A slow till, a manual price check for every exercise book size, and a handwritten receipt turn a five-minute sale into fifteen — and the queue spills onto the pavement while walk-in customers give up and leave.

A KLB Class 5 maths book, the revision edition and the workbook sit next to each other. A2 sugar paper, 120gsm and 80gsm, blue and black pens by three brands. With that much near-identical stock, staff guess prices, sell the wrong edition, and nobody really knows what is on the shelf until you close for a full stock count.

Schools, churches, NGOs and nearby offices order in bulk and pay on account — sometimes 30, 60 or 90 days later. Delivery notes, LPOs and invoices live in different books, so you chase payment from memory and only discover a term-old unpaid invoice when cash runs tight.

Textbooks, exercise books, pens and printing services do not all carry the same VAT treatment, and once you cross the KES 5,000,000 taxable turnover threshold you must register with KRA, issue compliant invoices through eTIMS and file a VAT3 return on iTax. Rebuilding that from a shoebox of receipts every month is a whole evening lost.

Scan a barcode or search by title, subject or class and the right item and price come up instantly. Build a parent's whole booklist in one sale, split payment between cash, card and M-Pesa records, and print or send the receipt. Because every plan has unlimited users, you can open extra tills with casual staff during the January rush without paying a shilling more per seat.

Every sale drops stock in real time, so you can see from your phone whether the Class 7 set is finished before a parent asks. Set reorder points per title and size, and Tallium AI flags what to order from your publisher or distributor before the term starts. Cycle-count a shelf at a time instead of closing the shop for a full count.

Raise a quote against a school's LPO, convert it to a delivery note and invoice, and track what each account owes on one screen. Ageing reports show who is 30, 60 or 90 days late, and you can send a polite reminder in a couple of taps — no rebuilding the story from three different notebooks.

Set the correct VAT treatment per product once and every sale posts to your books with it applied. Snap supplier invoices and delivery fuel receipts with your phone and the AI reads and categorises them, so your VAT3 return figures and input VAT are ready when you sit down at iTax instead of being reconstructed. Please confirm current rules, rates and eTIMS obligations with KRA or a qualified local tax professional.