How Fikastore works

How it all fits together

Four things, in a chain. Almost every question below is really a question about one link in it.

The one idea worth understanding

The till never needs the internet to sell. It keeps its own copy of your products, prices and staff, and it records every sale on the machine itself. When a connection is available it sends those sales up. When there isn't one, it keeps selling and sends them later.

This is why the power going out or the network dropping does not stop your shop. It is also why a sale can appear in the portal a few minutes after it happened rather than instantly — the till has to reach the internet first.

Who can do what

Roles exist so that the person handling money is not the same person checking it. That separation is what makes the numbers worth anything.

Set up the business Owner / Admin

Do these in order. Each one depends on the one before it.

1. Add your branches

   Portal → Locations → Register a location. Even a single shop needs one. Each branch gets a short code you will use when setting up a till.

2. Add your products

   Portal → Products. Add them one by one, or use the Excel template to bring in hundreds at once. Set a cost price as well as a selling price — without cost, profit and shrinkage cannot be calculated.

3. Put stock on the shelf

   A product existing is not the same as having any. Open a branch and record what you actually received. Until you do, everything reads as out of stock.

4. Add your staff

   Portal → Staff. Each person gets their own PIN. Never share one — the receipt records who rang the sale, and a shared PIN erases that.

5. Register your card machines

   Portal → POS Terminals. Add each Moniepoint, Opay or other machine by name. This is what lets you check a day's card takings against that machine's own settlement report.

Install a till

About five minutes on the shop computer. It needs 64-bit Windows and internet for this part only.

1. Run the installer

   No administrator password needed. If Windows shows a blue warning, choose More info → Run anyway.

2. Enter the location code

   The shop's own name and colours appear when it is right.

3. A manager signs in

   Must be an administrator or location manager. A cashier cannot finish setup — the app will say so.

4. Name the till

   Something you would say out loud: Front counter, Till 2. It appears on receipts and reports.

5. Get it approved

   If an administrator signed in, the till is ready immediately. If a location manager did, it waits until an administrator approves it in Portal → Tills.

At the till Cashier

Ringing a sale

Scan the barcode, or type part of the name. Tap an item to add it. Change a quantity by typing over it — decimals work, so 0.5 of something priced ₦2,600 charges ₦1,300.

When what you have typed narrows the list to a single item, the till says Press Enter to add it. After every item — scanned, tapped or entered — the search box clears itself and the cursor returns, so a queue can be served without touching the mouse between items.

Taking payment

Choose Cash, Card/POS, Transfer or Credit. For a card payment, pick which machine it went through — that single tap is what makes end-of-day reconciliation possible. You can split one sale across several methods.

Change

Type what the customer handed you into Cash given, or tap one of the suggested notes above it, and the till works out the change. The suggestions are built from the actual total, so a ₦4,300 sale offers ₦4,300, ₦4,500 and ₦5,000 rather than a fixed row of buttons that rarely fits the basket.

When the sale completes, the change appears in the largest type on the screen and stays for five seconds. The sale is always recorded at the real total — what you type into Cash given can never change what the books say you took.

The cash drawer

The drawer opens by itself on any sale that took cash, once the receipt has finished printing. It stays shut on a card-only sale.

To open it without a sale — breaking a note, fixing a miscount — press F9. Every one of those is recorded against your name. That is not there to stop you; it is there so a drawer that opens twenty times on one shift and twice on everyone else's is something somebody can see.

Holding a sale

Customer forgot their wallet, or went back for one more item? Press Hold, give it a name you will recognise, and serve the next person. Held sales survive the computer being switched off.

The till locks itself

Left untouched for five minutes, the till locks and asks for your PIN. Everything it records — which cashier rang which receipt, who approved what — rests on the person at the keyboard being who the session says they are, and a till left signed in at an empty counter breaks that for every other control.

Your PIN is checked on the machine itself, so it unlocks during a blackout too. If somebody else is taking over, use Someone else is taking over rather than handing over an unlocked till. Lock it yourself on the way out with Ctrl + L.

Other things on the till

Keyboard shortcuts Cashier

Press F1 at the till for this same list on screen. The keys follow what till software has used for decades, so anyone who has worked a counter before already knows most of them.

Speed at a queue comes from never reaching for the mouse. Three are worth learning first: F3 to search, F12 to charge, F9 for the drawer.

Printing & receipts

Till → menu → Printer. Set this up once, on the day the till is installed.

Choosing the printer

Pick the printer from the list. The till then works out for itself whether that printer can accept thermal codes and sets the mode accordingly — you do not have to know. A till-roll printer gets the full receipt with your logo; an ordinary office printer or a “Print to PDF” gets the same receipt as plain text, because an ordinary printer cannot read thermal printer codes at all.

Press Print a test page before you leave. It sends a sample shaped exactly like a real receipt — far better than discovering a problem during a customer's first sale.

The logo on the receipt

A till-roll printer prints your store logo at the top of every receipt, and the test page prints it too — so if the test page comes out, a real sale will. The logo is shrunk to fit the roll before it is sent; a large logo that a cheap printer would quietly refuse is not a problem any more.

If the printer still struggles, or you simply prefer a plain header, turn off Print the store logo on receipts on the same Printer screen. Receipts then start at the store name and print faster. This switch is per till.

Reprinting a receipt

A cashier can reprint the sale they just rang, once, on the till that rang it — F8. A jam on the sale in front of you is routine, and making that need a manager only teaches managers to hand out their PIN.

Anything else — an older sale, somebody else's sale, or a second copy — needs a manager PIN. Every reprint is recorded either way, and the paper is stamped *** REPRINT *** in large type above the items so it can never pass as the original.

Shift handover Cashier / Manager

The point of a handover is that two people agree on a number before responsibility moves.

1. Print the shift report

   Till → menu → Shift report. An X report is a reading part-way through; a Z report is the final one at close.

2. Check the receipt range

   The report states the first and last receipt number issued, and lists any missing from between them. This should say unbroken. If it doesn't, see the next section.

3. Count the drawer

   Enter what you actually counted, not what the screen expects. The difference is the entire point of counting.

4. Reconcile the card machines

   Each terminal's total appears separately. Check each against that machine's own settlement slip.

5. Both people sign the printout

   The slip has signature lines for exactly this.

Handover items Admin / Cashier

The items counted every time a till changes hands — usually the small, valuable things: phones, power banks, recharge cards.

Choosing them Admin

Portal → Handover items → Items to count. Tick Count at handover against each product and press Save handover items. The choice is for the whole business; the tills pick it up on their next sync. The page also shows what the handover items are worth on each branch's shelf right now.

Handing over Cashier

When you close your shift, the till shows Handover items you are passing on — how many, their value at selling price, and the list. That is the figure the next person will check.

When the next person opens their shift, they enter the float as usual, then count the handover items on the shelf and enter their total value. The till does not show its own figure until they have entered theirs — otherwise people copy it instead of counting.

• If it matches, the shift opens and the count is recorded.
• If it does not, the till shows both figures and the difference. Count again first — a miscount is the commonest cause. If the figure is right, choose Open shift and record it and add a note. The shift opens; the difference is recorded against the person who handed over and the person who took over, and a shortfall raises an alert for the administrator.

Reviewing them Admin

Portal → Handover items → Counts & differences. Every handover, with who handed over to whom, the system value, the counted value and the difference. Filter by date or branch, or show only those with a difference. Open one to see what the system expected item by item.

Stock on the till Cashier

Till → the box icon at the top (Stock). Every product at this branch, how many are left, and what they are worth at selling price. Search by name, category or barcode, or show Handover items only.

Two values at the top, kept apart on purpose:

• Handover items value — shown first and highlighted. The figure checked at every handover.
• Whole shelf value — every product on the shelf. Context only; it is not the handover figure.

To see stock at an earlier moment, tap At a past date and time and choose the day and the time. Quantities are shown as they stood then, valued at today's prices. This needs the internet; today's stock works offline.

Closing the day Manager / Owner

Portal → Cash position → Close a day. A shift close covers one cashier's drawer; a day close covers the branch.

The page shows what should be in the drawer: opening floats, plus cash takings, less payouts, less anything already banked. You enter what was counted. The difference is recorded and the day is frozen under your name.

Opening & closing branches Admin

A catalogue change reaches every branch

Edit a product under Portal → Products and the change travels to every branch that stocks it, and on to their tills at the next sync — about two minutes.

What travels is what the thing is: its name, barcode, unit, category, minimum price — and its cost price. Fix a typo, add a barcode or update what you paid once and it is fixed everywhere. When a new cost leaves a branch selling below it, the save message names the branch and its price so you can put it right.

A product that has been taken off a branch's shelf is left alone — a catalogue edit will not quietly put it back.

Closing a branch

Portal → Locations → the branch → Close this branch. For a shop that has stopped trading.

Before you can, the page tells you what closing would actually do — how much stock is there, how many tills stop selling, how many people are assigned. Read it before you click.

Closing does all of this at once:

• Its tills are revoked and stop selling.
• Its shelf is cleared, and any stock still on it is written off into shrinkage.
• Its location code stops working, so no new till can be paired to it.
• It disappears from every list where you pick a branch.

Four things that stop a branch closing

These are refused rather than warned about, because each one means something is still moving and closing over the top of it loses money or strands goods:

• A shift is still open — a drawer nobody has counted. Close the shift first.
• Goods are in transit — a transfer has left but not arrived. Receive or cancel it first.
• It is your only open branch — a business needs somewhere to sell from.
• Your online shop is fulfilled from it — point the shopfront at another branch first.

Re-opening a branch

Portal → Locations → Closed lists them. Open one and choose Open this branch again.

Stock & products Admin

Stopping a branch selling what it does not have

Portal → Business profile → Stock. Tick Stop branches selling what they do not have.

Off by default, which means a till sells whatever is scanned and a shelf count can go negative. Switch it on once your counts are trusted — doing it before that would stop a branch trading over a counting error.

With it on, a till refuses an item once the branch's count reaches zero, and tells the cashier what is left rather than only saying no:

• “Rice 50kg Bag — only 3 left according to the count.”
• “Rice 50kg Bag is out of stock at this branch. If it is on the shelf, the count needs correcting in the portal.”

Fixing a product's name, price or unit

Portal → Products → the product → Edit details. Or Edit straight from the products list. A typo in a name, a wrong price, the wrong unit — change it and save.

The change reaches every till on its next sync, within about two minutes. Nothing needs reinstalling and nobody needs to restart anything.

Counting a whole branch at once

Portal → Locations → the branch → Count stock. Every product on that shelf is a row. Type what is physically there against each product you counted — Enter moves to the next row — and leave the rest blank. Then Save counts.

The page shows the difference as you type, and saving records each one as a stock count in that product's history, so you can always see that the shelf was counted and by how much it was out. Use it after a fresh start, at month end, or whenever the tills and the shelf disagree. Use the search box to count one category at a time.

One item over a period — before, sold, after

Portal → Locations → the branch → click the item's stock number (or its name on the Count stock page).

1. Pick the period at the top: Today, Yesterday, This week, This month, Last 30 days, or choose your own From and To dates and press Show.
2. The row of boxes answers the question in one line: Before the period (what was on the shelf when it began), what was received, sold and returned, any counts or transfers, and what was left after the period.
3. Every movement lists each sale with its time, receipt number, cashier and the price it went for, and what was on the shelf after each one.
4. Day by day gives one row per day: start of day, in, sold, end of day.
5. Print for a paper copy.

Fixing a quantity that is wrong

Portal → Products → the product → On the shelf → Count stock. Pick the branch, enter what is physically there, and save.

Two different mistakes, two different buttons, and it matters which you use:

• Count stock — for a number that is simply wrong. A miscount, a typo when the product was set up, a figure that has drifted. You enter the real count and Fikastore works out the difference.
• Receive — for stock that genuinely arrived. Use this when a delivery came in, not to correct a number.

Use Every movement on the same row to see how a figure was reached — every sale, delivery, transfer and correction that got it there.

Removing a product

Two different removals, because businesses mean two different things by it.

• Off one branch's shelf — Portal → Locations → the branch → Remove beside the product. That branch stops offering it. Every other branch carries on selling it exactly as before.
• Out of the catalogue — Portal → Products → the product → Remove from catalog. The business stops selling it, so it comes off every branch's shelf at the same time. A branch cannot keep selling something the business has stopped selling.

Either way the product disappears from the till within about two minutes, and from your online shop immediately.

If a product still has stock against it, you are told how much before anything happens. Removing it anyway writes that stock off, and the write-off shows in shrinkage like any other. That is deliberate: forty bags cannot quietly stop existing because somebody tidied the catalogue.

Putting a removed product back

Removals are visible, not hidden — a removal made by mistake should not look like a product nobody ever added.

• A branch lists them under Off the shelf here at the bottom of its products. Put back restores it, with no stock until you receive some.
• The catalogue has a Removed tab beside In your catalog. Open the product and choose Put back in the catalog.

Re-adding a product a branch had removed restores the original rather than creating a second copy, so its history stays in one piece.

Getting stock in

Open a branch, find the product, and record what arrived. Every movement is kept, so you can always see how a figure was reached rather than just the total.

Moving stock between branches

Portal → Transfer stock. Recent transfers are listed underneath the form on purpose: nothing confirms a transfer back to you, so seeing what you already sent is what stops the same crates going twice.

Stocktakes and shrinkage

A stocktake compares what is on the shelf against what the system expects. If you counted less, that difference becomes unexplained shrinkage and appears on the dashboard. Damage you know about should be recorded as a write-off instead — that keeps the unexplained figure meaningful.

Opening the unexplained figure

Click the Unexplained tile. Behind it is every adjustment that made it up — which product, which branch, which day, how much at cost — with the worst products and worst branches ranked. Filter by date, branch or product, and export it to Excel for whoever is investigating.

Start at the top of the worst-products list. One item short once is a miscount; the same item short every week is not.

Prices, discounts and the floor Owner / Admin

Three numbers govern what an item may sell for: the branch's price, the minimum a cashier may drop to, and the cost underneath both.

Each branch has its own price

Portal → Locations → the branch → Prices here. One page, every product on that shelf, one box each. Type the new figure, press Enter to move down the list, then Save prices. Only the rows you changed are saved, and each change is logged with who made it and what it was before.

The catalogue price under Products is only where a product starts when it is added to a shelf. A price highlighted on the branch page is one that branch has set for itself; the catalogue and other branches are untouched. Tills at that branch pick the change up on their next sync, about two minutes.

Changing a price at the till

Off by default. Switch it on under Settings → Business profile → Let cashiers change prices at the till. Once on, the cashier clicks the line and either types a new price or an amount off — the till stores it as a discount either way, so the receipt and the reports show the shelf price and what came off it.

An item whose shelf price is somehow already below its cost still sells at the shelf price — the till will not stop a branch trading over a portal mistake. It simply allows no discount on it. Fix the price in the portal.

Suppliers & orders Admin

Portal → Suppliers. Who you buy from, what you asked for, and what actually turned up.

Raising an order

Open a supplier and fill the top of the form once — branch, expected date, any note — then list the items underneath. A fresh row appears as you fill the last one, so a delivery of fifteen things is one order, not fifteen. The cost is filled in from what you normally pay but you can change it: what you agreed with this supplier is what the order should record.

When the delivery arrives

Open the order and enter what actually arrived, not what you ordered. That difference is the entire point of checking a delivery. Part deliveries are normal — record what came, and the rest stays outstanding until it does.

You do not have to raise an order first. Plenty of stock arrives without paperwork, and that still works — an order just gives you something to check the delivery against.

Staff & devices Admin

Click any staff member, till or terminal to open it. Each opens onto everything about it, already filtered — a branch's sales, a till's receipts, a terminal's settlements — so you never have to go back out to a menu and search again.

Moving a card machine

Open the terminal and change its branch. Past payments stay with the branch that actually took them, so an old reconciliation still adds up. Only future sales follow the machine.

Retiring a device

Set a terminal to hidden and cashiers stop seeing it at checkout, without losing any of its history.

Card machine reports Owner / Admin

Portal → POS Terminals → click the machine's name. A card machine settles into a bank account, so “what did this machine take” is a question with a real document on the other side of it.

What the page answers

Filter by date range, by till, or by receipt number, then take it away as Excel or Print it for a file.

Reading it honestly

A sale can be split across methods. Where that happened the row is badged Split, and the machine is credited only with its own share. The product figures are shared out the same way — exact for an ordinary single-payment sale, and proportional for a split one. A basket half paid in cash was not half paid by card, and the report does not pretend otherwise.

Card charges Owner / Admin

Portal → Card charges. What a customer pays extra for paying by card — decided product by product, not machine by machine.

How it works

A charge is a policy: a name, a rule, and the products it covers. You can have as many as you like — say Electronics at ₦150 flat and Everything else at ₦50 under ₦20,000 and ₦100 above. When a customer pays by card, the till looks at each item in the basket, finds the policy that names it, and works out the fee on that policy's share of the basket. Items no policy names carry no charge unless you have a catch-all.

Which products

Each policy is either all products — the catch-all, and there can be only one — or a selected set you pick from the catalogue. A product belongs to one policy at a time; picking it for a new policy moves it out of the old one, and the picker tells you when that is about to happen.

Who pays

One switch for the whole business, at the top of the page. Customer adds the fee to what is collected and prints it on the receipt as a separate line. Business keeps the ticket price as it is and records the fee against what reaches the bank, so the card machine report still reconciles.

Reaching the tills

Tills pick up a new or changed policy on their next sync — within a couple of minutes while online. A till that is offline keeps using the last policies it saw.

Customer & company credit

Individual customers

Customers register themselves through your link, top up, and receive a purchase code they spend at any till. Redeeming a code always needs a manager PIN.

Redeeming always happens online, at the moment of the sale. It is the one thing the till will not do offline, and that is deliberate: there is no window in which the same code could be spent at a second branch before the first one syncs.

Company accounts Owner

Larger companies will not sign up through a link. Open the account yourself in Portal → Company accounts, credit it when their transfer lands, and issue purchase codes their staff spend at the till. Codes last five days.

Already have a company that signed up as a normal customer? The company accounts page lists them with a Make it a company button. Their balance and codes are unaffected.

Customers on account Admin / Cashier

Customers you trust to take goods now and pay later — as often as they like — with a statement of everything they took and everything they paid.

Opening an account Admin

Portal → Customers on account → Open an account. Give the name the cashier will search for, a phone number and address (both print on the statement), and optionally:

• Current balance — their balance today from before Fikastore, so the cashiers carry on from the real figure. Minus if they owe you: −45000 means they owe ₦45,000. Plain if you owe them (they paid ahead): 5000 means they have ₦5,000 in credit. Leave it blank for a new customer. It appears as the first line on their statement, Opening balance.
• Credit limit — the most they may owe. The till refuses a sale that would go over it and says by how much.
• Branch — leave it on Every branch, or keep the account to one branch's tills.

The tills pick the account up on their next sync, within a couple of minutes. Then On account appears at checkout.

Selling on account Cashier

At checkout choose On account, type the customer's name or phone number, and pick them. The till shows what they owe now and what they will owe after this sale. Part of a sale can go on account and the rest be paid in cash or by card — use Split payment. The receipt names the account and the balance owed, so the customer leaves knowing it.

It works offline. The cloud checks the limit again when the sale arrives, in case the till did not know about a sale at another branch.

Taking a payment Cashier

Till → the book icon at the top (Customers on account) → the customer → Receive payment. Enter the amount, choose cash, transfer or card, add a reference if there is one, and Record payment. A receipt prints for the customer with the balance still owed.

A payment needs an open shift, because the money goes into that drawer. Cash paid towards accounts is counted in Expected in drawer at close, and shows on the X/Z report as Paid on account (cash).

A transfer that went straight to the bank can be recorded in the portal instead: Customers on account → the customer → Record a payment.

Statements

On the till: Customers on account → the customer. Choose This month, Last month, Last 90 days, Everything, or your own dates, then Print statement. It shows the balance brought forward, every line with the balance after it, and the balance owed at the end.

In the portal: Customers on account → the customer — the same statement for any period, naming the goods on each sale, with Print statement.

Returns, corrections and closing

• Goods brought back from an account sale go back on the account, not out of the drawer as cash. Refund from the sale as usual.
• A mistake or a write-off after the account is open: the customer → Correct the balance in the portal. The reason you give prints on the statement.
• On hold stops new sales on the account but still lets them pay. Closed is only allowed once nothing is owed.

Loyalty points Owner

Portal → Loyalty. Optional, off until you switch it on.

You set two numbers: how many points a naira of shopping earns, and what a point is worth when spent. The page works out what that means in plain terms — "₦1,000 of shopping earns 10 points, worth ₦10 — a 1% giveaway" — before you commit to it.

How a customer earns

At checkout the cashier types the customer's phone number into Customer phone (for points). That is all. The number is matched to a member afterwards, so it works with no internet and the cashier never has to look anybody up.

How a customer spends

Convert their points to credit from the Loyalty page. It becomes ordinary wallet credit, spent at the till with a purchase code like any other — which means it needs a manager and is checked online, the same as all credit.

VAT Owner / Admin

Set a rate once, per branch, and the till applies it to every sale.

VAT is added on top of the ticket price. The price on the shelf is the price of the goods; at 7.5%, a ₦4,100 basket is charged ₦4,407.50. The till shows subtotal, VAT and total separately as the cart is built, and the receipt prints all three, so a customer can see what they were charged tax on.

On your phone Owner / Admin

fikastore.com.ng/portal/m — save it to your home screen.

One page, built for a phone: what you took today against yesterday, cash on hand, anything that needs looking at, and what is selling. Deliberately read-only — nothing that moves money or stock can be tapped by accident from a pocket. Everything else is a tap away on the full portal.

Opening your shop Owner / Admin

Portal → Online orders → Shop settings. Your shop has its own web address that you can put on anything.

1. Choose the branch it sells from

   The shopfront sells that branch's shelves. Whatever is counted there is what customers can buy.

2. Say how customers get their goods

   Collection, delivery, or both. If you deliver, set the charge and — if you want — the basket size above which it is free.

3. Say how they pay

   Card online, when they receive it, or both. Card payments go into your own account, so add your Paystack details in Payment settings first, or that option cannot be offered.

4. Put products online

   Nothing appears until you put it there. Use the list on the right of the settings page and press Put online for each item you want to sell.

5. Open the shop

   Tick The shop is open and save. The page tells you the address to share.

Holding stock for unpaid orders

Someone who chooses to pay by card has the goods held for them while they pay — thirty minutes by default. If they never finish, the hold lapses and the items go back on the shelf on their own. Orders being paid on collection or delivery are a commitment from a named person, so they are confirmed straight away and do not expire.

Working the orders Any staff

Portal → Online orders. Oldest first, because whoever has waited longest should be served first.

Each order shows its own pick list — quantities and product names — so the screen is what you walk the shelves with. Move it along as you go: Start packing, then Ready for a collection or Out for delivery for a delivery. The customer sees each step on their own order page.

Handing it over

When the customer has the goods, press Collected or Delivered. If they are paying now, say how — cash, transfer or card — and that is the moment everything happens:

• The stock finally leaves the shelf. Until then it was only reserved.
• The order becomes an ordinary sale with its own receipt number, in the same books as the counter.
• The money is recorded the way it was actually taken.

Cancelling

Cancel an order and the goods go straight back on the shelf for someone else. Nothing was ever deducted, so nothing has to be put back — the reservation simply stops.

The three checks that prove your numbers

Most systems tell you what you earned. These tell you whether that figure can be believed.

Issuing a statement Owner / Admin

1. Pick the period

   Portal → Statements. It must be a period that has finished. A preview shows exactly what will be frozen.

2. Read the controls

   Beside the money you get receipt gaps, refunds, voided lines, drawer variance, shifts left open and unexplained stock. Exceptions are recorded, not hidden — a statement that concealed them would be worthless.

3. Issue it

   The figures freeze and the check code is generated.

4. Sign it

   Issuing says what the numbers are. Signing says you stand behind them, and that is what an accountant or a bank actually relies on.

Money questions

Till questions

When something is wrong

Getting help from us

Portal → Support. Anyone signed in can raise a ticket — the owner, an administrator, or whoever is standing at the counter when something breaks.

1. Say what happened

   A subject, what it is about, how urgent, and what you did and what happened instead. “Receipts not printing at Ikeja since this morning” is worth ten “it is not working”.

2. Keep the reference

   Every ticket gets one, like FS-00042. Quote it if you call.

3. Replies land in the same place

   Ours arrive on the ticket with the Fikastore mark beside them, so it is always clear which side said what. Nothing is buried in somebody's inbox.

A ticket says Waiting on you when we have replied and need something back, and With Fikastore when it is ours to answer. Close it when you are satisfied; replying afterwards reopens it.