# How Sukbay works

The whole system in one page: shops, products, batches, warehouses, sales, customers, money, staff and the customer app.

Source: https://about.sukbay.com/docs/how-it-works · Part of the Sukbay documentation (Start here).

**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. |

> **Note:** Want the details of one area? Each page in this documentation covers one topic from start to finish. For finding shops and ordering, go to sukbay.com.