Tutorial 3 — Record your first sale

Time: about 10 minutes. You will record a sale, a purchase and an expense, and see what NairaFlow does with each one automatically.

The whole of bookkeeping in one idea: every naira that moves in or out of your business gets recorded here, and every report you will ever read is built from these records. A sale you forget to record is money your business did not make.

The three records

There are only three kinds of record, and you will use all of them from day one.

An expense is for costs that are not stock. Rent, salaries, electricity, internet, transport, gas, ingredients, cleaning, a market run. If you bought 40 bags of cement, that is a purchase. If you paid ₦50,000 for the shop space, that is an expense.

Part 1 — Record a sale

Go to Sales → Record sale.

Step 1 — Add what was sold

Tap Add item and choose a product, or type a name for something that is not in your inventory.

The unit price defaults to the product's selling price. Change it if you charged something different — a price you negotiated, a wholesale price, a staff discount.

Add a second line the same way if they bought more than one thing.

Step 2 — How did they pay?

If the customer pays you by card on a POS terminal, record it as Cash or Transfer. Sales records accept those two and Credit — card payments on a POS are still money that arrived, and your cash book only cares that it did.

Step 3 — Who was it?

Optional, but link a contact if this is a customer you know. It is what lets you later see their balance and their history. For a genuine walk-in, type their name instead — NairaFlow still records who it was, even without a full contact record.

Step 4 — Anything else worth noting

Step 5 — Save

Here is what just happened, without you doing anything:

If you sold more than you had

NairaFlow refuses the sale and tells you there is not enough stock. It will not let you sell what you do not have.

That is a feature, not an annoyance. If you are selling something you do not track as stock, turn Track stock off for that product, or record the sale as a quick sale (below).

Discounts

A discount is a flat naira amount off the sale — ₦500 off, not 10% off.

NairaFlow keeps the gross amount (what the items came to) and the discount beside it. The net amount is what the sale was really worth:

2 × USB-C Fast Charger @ ₦4,500  =  ₦9,000   gross
Less discount                      =  ₦500
                                     ─────
Net amount                          =  ₦8,500

The discount is applied to what is actually payable — the cash received, and any credit owed. A discounted sale is never counted as more revenue than it was.

A discount deeper than the sale itself is refused.

Part 2 — Quick sale

Some sales do not deserve a product record: a one-off service, a walk-in buying a single item, miscellaneous income, a delivery fee.

Sales → Quick sale takes the same information with one line:

The sale is recorded, it appears in your cash book, and it is marked in the right column — but no product is involved and no stock moves.

When in doubt, use a quick sale. A sale recorded wrongly is easy to delete. A sale recorded as the wrong product distorts your stock count.

Part 3 — Record a purchase

Sales → Record purchase. Same shape as a sale, but the other way round.

What happens automatically: stock goes up by ten.

If you bought on credit, NairaFlow records what you now owe that supplier — a payable. See Sell on credit →.

Part 4 — Record an expense

Sales → Record expense.

What happens automatically: nothing to your stock, and the amount appears in your cash book as money out. It shows up in your reports, so you can see what the business really costs.

The category is free text — you can type "Market run" or "Staff salary — Musa" if that is more useful to you. NairaFlow does not force you into a list.

Part 5 — Fixing a mistake

If you got the details wrong

Edit the transaction. You can change the description, the amount and the payment method.

Two things to know:

1. Editing the amount does not move stock. If you sold 2 items and meant to sell 3, the stock count is still wrong. Delete the sale and record it again — that fixes both.
2. A part payment is preserved. If the customer paid ₦5,000 of ₦10,000 and you correct the amount to ₦12,000, the ₦5,000 they already paid stays ₦5,000. It is a record of cash that actually arrived, not a proportion of the total.

If the whole record is wrong

Delete it, and NairaFlow tidies up after itself:

Deleting is safe. It is the right tool for a sale that should not have happened. It is the wrong tool for a sale that happened but was recorded slightly wrong — edit that one, so you keep the history.

What you have now

Three kinds of record, and the reports start to mean something.

Next, the thing that keeps a shop open when a customer's money is late.

→ Sell on credit and track debts →

If something did not go as expected