Mobile money for a small business, without losing track of it

A woman selling produce in Kasangati takes payment on the same number her sister uses to send her something for the children, the same number that pays for airtime, and the same number a customer sends 20,000 to on a Tuesday evening. By Friday she cannot say which of the money on the line was hers to spend. Nothing was stolen. The business simply ate itself.

This is the most common way a small trade stops growing. Not theft, not a bad market, just money that was never separated long enough to be counted. If the business and the household share one line, the business will always be the one that loses, because the household has a face and the business does not.

Separating the two costs you nothing except the discipline of one extra step. It also means that when you want to know whether the trade is worth doing at all, you can actually answer.

The cleanest arrangement is a second registered line used only for the business, kept in the same phone or in a cheap second handset. Customers pay in there. Suppliers are paid from there. Nothing else touches it.

Once a week, on a fixed day, you move an agreed amount from the business line to the household line and call that your pay. It feels strange the first month. It is the single change that most often turns a trade that was busy into a trade that puts something aside.

If you are running the shop, float is the cash and the line balance you need to serve a normal day without turning anyone away. Look back over three or four ordinary weeks and find your busiest day, then hold enough for that day plus a little. Holding much more than that is money sleeping.

Traders get this wrong in both directions. Some hold so little that a customer with a large order goes to the next stall, which is a loss you never see written anywhere. Others keep a big balance on the line because it feels like success, and then spend it because it is there.

Whatever you decide, write the number down and treat it as the floor. When the line drops below it, you restock or you top up. When it goes above it, that surplus is the part you are allowed to think about.

One exercise book, one line per transaction, written the same day. Date, who, what it was for, money in, money out, and the balance you are left holding. That is the whole system, and it beats any arrangement that depends on remembering.

Keep the charge separate from the amount. Sending and withdrawing both cost something, and a trader who ignores those charges slowly prices her goods below what they actually cost her. Ask your agent what the current charges are for the amounts you usually move, and write them into your prices.

If you cannot write easily, use a column of ticks and a trusted family member who reconciles with you weekly, or keep the printed receipts an agent gives you in a tin. Something on paper that survives a lost phone is the point.

Pick a quiet time, Sunday evening for most people. Check the balance on the line, count the cash in the lockbox, and add them together. Then add up your book. The two numbers should match.

They usually will not, the first few weeks. The gap is nearly always one of four things: a charge you forgot to write, a withdrawal you made for the household, stock taken from the shop without paying, or an entry written twice. Find it while it is a small gap and one week old.

A group treasurer, a husband or a grown daughter sitting with you while you do this once a month is worth the half hour. Two people looking at the same book is what stops the book from quietly becoming fiction.

The common one is a call or a message saying you have won something, or that money was sent to you in error, followed by a request for your PIN or for a code you have just received. Real network staff do not ask for either. Hang up. If you are worried, walk to a registered agent and ask there.

The second is the reversed sale. A customer shows you a message on their screen saying they have paid, and you hand over the goods. The message was typed by them, or was an old one. Wait for the message on your own phone, read the amount and the name, and only then release the stock. A busy queue is exactly when this is tried.

The third happens at the agent point. Someone helpful offers to key it in for you, or watches your hand while you enter the PIN. Turn your body, cover the keypad, and do it yourself even if it is slow.

Stop and act the same hour. The longer the money sits with a stranger, the more likely it has been withdrawn and the less anyone can do. Do not send a second payment to the same number hoping to explain later.

Call the network's customer care line from the sending number, read them the transaction reference from your message, and ask them to open a reversal. Keep the reference number they give you and the time you called, written in the same book. Then follow up rather than waiting to be called.

If the number belongs to someone you can reach, a polite call often solves it faster than anything official. Many people do return it. Some do not, which is the whole reason for reading the number back to the customer before you press send.

It will go down, often on the busiest day, and the honest answer is that you need a small cash reserve that is not on the line. This is one of the few good reasons to keep notes in a lockbox rather than putting everything on the phone.

Agree in advance what you will do with a regular customer who cannot pay because the system is out. Some traders keep a credit page in the back of the same book, with the name, the amount, the date and the customer's signature or thumbprint. Anything given on trust that is not written down will be argued about.

Keep the number of people on that page small and known to you. A shop that lends to everybody when the network fails is a shop that is financing the whole trading centre out of its own float.