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How Sukbay works
The whole system in one page: shops, products, batches, warehouses, sales, customers, money, staff and the customer app.
Sukbay is a shop management system for Ethiopian businesses. A shop owner and their staff use the dashboard (a website at app.sukbay.com and a mobile app) to run the business. Shoppers use the customer app at sukbay.com to find shops and order. Both read the same data, so what you set up in the dashboard is what shoppers see.
The idea in six steps#
- 1
Your shop and warehouses
You create a shop. Stock is kept in one or more warehouses: the shop floor, a storage room or a branch. Each warehouse can be set to sell online or in-store only.
- 2
Products
A product is something you sell: name, price, unit, category, pictures and a barcode. A product does not hold stock itself; its stock comes from batches.
- 3
Batches
Every delivery you receive is a batch: how many, what each cost you, the selling price and an optional expiry date. A product can have many batches, in many warehouses.
- 4
Selling
A sale (at the counter or from the customer app) takes stock from a batch, by default the oldest one first (FIFO). The batch's cost becomes the cost of the sale, so profit = selling price minus the real cost of that stock.
- 5
Money
Payments can be one method or split across several. Anything not paid becomes a customer debt. Expenses (including repeating ones like rent) and salaries are recorded, so net profit is revenue minus cost minus expenses.
- 6
Reports and alerts
Sukbay turns all of this into the dashboard, analytics, a daily performance report, a signed close-day report and alerts for low stock, expiring batches, debts and your subscription.
Who does what#
| Person | Where they work | What they can do |
|---|---|---|
| Shop owner (admin) | Dashboard on the web and the mobile app | Everything: products, batches, sales, staff, money, settings and subscription. |
| Manager, cashier, inventory or sales staff | The same dashboard, with their own sign-in | Only the pages and actions the owner allows. A cashier can sell without seeing reports. |
| Shopper (customer) | sukbay.com or the mobile app | Search shops, follow them, order for delivery or pickup, pay, track orders, rate and review. |
How profit is worked out#
Each batch has its own cost. When you sell, Sukbay takes units from batches in the order you chose in Settings › Selling Strategy (oldest first by default). If one sale uses units from two batches, each part uses its own batch's cost. Gross profit is revenue minus those costs. Net profit (in Analytics) also subtracts your expenses.
How stock stays correct#
- Selling, cancelling, deleting an order, receiving a batch, transferring between warehouses and reporting damage all change stock automatically.
- Every change to a product (price changed, stock added, stock reduced, updates, transfers) is written to the product's history.
- When a new batch is added to a warehouse that has staff, they get a verification card in Chat and confirm the physical count.
How the customer app connects#
A product reaches shoppers only when you confirm it in Customer Showcase and it has stock in a warehouse that has Sell online on. An online order arrives in your Orders list as Pending; you confirm it, prepare it and mark it ready or delivered, and the shopper is notified at each step.
Languages, devices and price#
- Languages: English and አማርኛ (Amharic), switchable at any time.
- Devices: any web browser, plus the Android and iOS mobile app.
- Price: every new shop starts with a free 30-day trial. After that the dashboard plan is 500 ETB per shop per month and 250 ETB per branch per month. See Subscription.
Glossary#
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Batch | One delivery of a product with its own quantity, cost, price and expiry date. |
| FIFO | First in, first out: the oldest batch is sold first. Other options are LIFO, cheapest cost first, and choosing the batch yourself. |
| Warehouse | A place stock is kept: shop floor, storage room or branch. |
| POS | Point of sale: the screen where you ring up a sale at the counter. |
| Split payment | Paying one sale with more than one method, for example half cash and half card. |
| Credit sale / debt | A sale not fully paid. The unpaid part is what the customer owes you. |
| VAT (inclusive) | Prices in Sukbay include VAT. The receipt shows the price without VAT, the VAT amount and the total. |
| Withholding | A percentage of the sale deducted at payment, which you can switch on per sale in the POS. |
| Verification | A warehouse employee counting a new batch or transfer and approving or disputing it in Chat. |
| Close day | Checking the day's sales and stock figures, closing the report and signing it. |
| Showcase | The part of the dashboard where you choose what shoppers see in the customer app. |