How to track customer credit without a notebook

Almost every shop in Hargeisa sells on credit. A garage takes brake pads today and pays on Thursday. A regular customer picks up a carton of oil and settles at the end of the month. Credit is how trust works between people who know each other, and it brings in sales you would otherwise lose.

The trouble is not credit itself. The trouble is the notebook under the counter. This guide explains how to keep customer credit under control, with or without software, and what changes when you move it into a system like MaamulPlus.

Why the notebook stops working

A credit notebook works when one person runs the shop and remembers every customer. It starts to fail as soon as the business grows a little.

• Two people write in it. One cashier records a sale, another records a payment, and neither writes the running balance. At the end of the month nobody is sure what is owed.
• Payments arrive by Zaad or eDahab. The money lands on a phone, not at the counter, and it is easy to forget to cross the amount off.
• Pages go missing. A wet page, a torn page or a notebook that is simply full and replaced. The history goes with it.
• There is no limit. A customer who always paid on time slowly owes more and more, and you only notice when the amount is already too large to ask for politely.

None of these are failures of honesty. They are failures of the record. Money owed to you is your money; it deserves the same care as the cash in the drawer.

Rule 1: Every customer gets a limit

Before you give credit to anyone, decide how much they can owe at most. Base it on how much they buy in a typical week or month and how reliably they pay.

A good starting point:

• New customers: one week of their normal purchases.
• Regular customers who pay on time: two to four weeks of purchases.
• Businesses such as garages or smaller shops: a monthly limit agreed in advance.

Write the limit down and tell the customer. A limit is easier to enforce when both sides know it. When a sale would take them over the limit, the cashier asks for a part payment first. It is a short, polite conversation, not an argument.

In MaamulPlus, the limit sits on the customer record and the till checks it before saving a credit invoice. The cashier does not have to remember anything.

Rule 2: One statement per customer

The most important habit is to keep one running statement per customer: every invoice, every payment, in date order, with the balance after each line.

When the customer asks "how much do I owe?", you answer from the statement, not from memory. When they dispute an amount, you show them the line. Most disagreements end there.

With MaamulPlus the statement is built automatically from the invoices and payments themselves. You can print it or share it as a PDF on WhatsApp in a few seconds.

Rule 3: Record payments the moment they arrive

Most credit errors come from payments that were received but not recorded, or recorded against the wrong customer. Make it a rule that a payment is recorded before anything else happens.

• Cash at the counter: record it while the customer is still there and hand them a receipt.
• Zaad, eDahab or Sahal: when the message arrives on the merchant phone, record it against the customer and the wallet straight away.
• Bank transfer: record it when you see it on the statement, with the reference.

When each mobile money wallet is its own account in your records, the balance on screen should match the balance on the phone at the end of the day. If it does not, you know which day to check, and you will usually find a payment that was not recorded.

Rule 4: Look at the oldest debt every week

Once a week, sort your customers by the age of their oldest unpaid invoice, not by the amount. A small amount that is ninety days old is a bigger warning sign than a large amount from last week.

A simple weekly routine:

1. List every customer with an invoice older than 30 days.
2. Call each one. Be friendly and specific: "Your invoice from September 19 for $612.40 is still open. When can you settle it?"
3. Write down the promised date, and check it the next week.
4. Pause further credit for anyone more than 60 days behind until they pay something.

MaamulPlus shows the oldest unpaid invoice on each customer page and lists overdue customers on the finance dashboard, so the weekly list takes a minute instead of an afternoon.

Rule 5: Know the total, every day

The single most useful number for a shop that sells on credit is credit outstanding: the total that all customers owe you right now. Watch how it moves.

• If credit outstanding grows faster than sales, you are lending more than you are collecting.
• If it is larger than the cash you hold, your business is financing your customers.
• If one customer is a large share of it, you depend on them more than you might think.

On the MaamulPlus dashboard, credit outstanding sits next to cash on hand and stock value. Hargeisa Spare Parts, our sample business, has $1,284.36 outstanding on 9 invoices against $7,436.03 in cash, which is a comfortable position.

Handling USD and SLSH

Most shops keep prices and balances in dollars and accept shillings at the day's rate. The rule for credit is simple: the customer's balance stays in USD. When they pay in SLSH, convert at the rate of that day and record the dollar value received.

Save the rate with the payment. If the rate moves next week, the old payment should not change. MaamulPlus stores the rate on every payment for exactly this reason. Our guide on keeping USD and SLSH in one set of books goes into more detail.

What changes with software

You can follow every rule in this guide with a notebook and discipline. Software makes the discipline automatic:

• The limit is checked at the till, every time.
• The statement builds itself from invoices and payments.
• Mobile money wallets have balances you can reconcile.
• The oldest debts and the total owed are on the dashboard.

If you want to see how this looks for your shop, book a demo. We will set it up with a few of your real customers so you can see their statements on the first day. You can also read more about customer credit in MaamulPlus.