Running your shop

Not a manual for the buttons — a short book about running a shop, written with the software that runs it.

What would you like to sort out?

Chapter 1 I sell clothes. What is this thing? Not an accounting program you have to learn, and not a till that only rings up sales — something in between, built to run a real shop without asking you to become a bookkeeper first.
Chapter 3 40 shirts in 5 colours and 4 sizes. Do I make 800 products? No — you describe the shirt once, and describe colour and size as two things any shirt can have; the system builds every real combination for you.
Chapter 6 I already have stock. How do I tell it? You state what you already have, once, and the system takes it from there — every sale afterwards reduces exactly this starting figure.
Chapter 8 How do I make my first sale? You do not need your setup finished to sell something today — the till works before your day's accounting ceremony does.
Chapter 9 How do I serve somebody at the counter? The till is built to work without a mouse, because a real queue does not wait for anyone to aim and select — search by name or scan a barcode, and both land the item the same way.
Chapter 10 When do I need an invoice, and when is a receipt enough? For most counter sales, a receipt is the whole answer — the same sale becomes an invoice the moment the buyer needs their own name and details on the paper, not because you did anything differently in the sale itself.
Chapter 11 A customer brings a shirt back. You find the return by the receipt or invoice number the customer is holding — never by asking who they are, because a walk-in customer has no account to look up.
Chapter 13 They paid with a cheque dated in 45 days. Am I richer today? No. You are owed the money, which is not the same as having it — and a shop that treats the two as one thing can be profitable on paper and unable to pay the rent on Friday.
Chapter 16 There is 50 short in the drawer. Whose problem is that? Not the till's and not the shift's. Cash belongs to a cash box, and a shortage is a question about that cash box.
Chapter 17 Who owes me, and who do I owe? The customer side of this — who has not paid you — already has its own answer elsewhere in this guide; this is about the other direction: what you owe your own suppliers, and by when.
Chapter 20 What should I actually be looking at, and how often? Not everything needs checking every day, and a few things need checking every single day without exception. Confusing the two is how a shop misses a problem that was visible for a month.
Chapter 21 Do I really have to count the drawer every night? Yes — but what you count is a cash box, not a till. And the reason is not distrust of your staff: a difference found tonight has an obvious cause, and the same difference found in three weeks does not.
Chapter 22 Which of my stock is not selling? Not "what has sold zero units" — that question flatters cheap items and hides expensive ones. The real question is how much money is sitting still, and for how long.
Chapter 23 Coats sold nothing in July. Should I dump them? Almost certainly not — but the report cannot tell you that, and it is important to know why it cannot rather than to distrust it.
Chapter 24 What am I about to run out of? The moment you notice an empty shelf is the moment a sale was already lost. This report exists so the noticing happens earlier than that.
Chapter 25 Who has not paid me? A customer who owes you thirty days is normal business. A customer who owes you ninety days is a decision you have not made yet, and this list is what makes the difference between the two visible.
Chapter 26 Will there be enough money next month? Profitable and solvent are not the same question. A shop can be making money on paper and still be unable to pay next week's supplier, if too much of that money is owed to it rather than held.
Chapter 27 Why do I have profit but no money? Because profit and cash answer two different questions, and a shop can be right about both at once. This chapter is about where the money went — and in a healthy shop it has usually gone somewhere you can point at.
Chapter 28 The report says 7,207 and the drawer says 7,000. They are answers to two different questions. One says what was recorded; the other says what is there. Finding out which is wrong is a short, ordered job, and it is almost never the arithmetic.
Chapter 29 I took a return and last month's profit moved. It can, and whether it does comes down to one thing: the date on the return document, and whether the month it lands in has been closed.
Chapter 30 Which product actually makes me money? The item that sells the most is not always the item that earns the most, and this report is the only place in the shop where the two are told apart.
Chapter 31 Do I have to close each month? No — but a shop that never closes a month is a shop that never really knows its cost of goods sold, because that figure only becomes real at the moment of closing.
Chapter 32 Do I have to close the year? What happens if I don't? Yes — and what happens if you do not is worse than nothing happening. Your second year's balance sheet is wrong, and it balances, so nothing on the page tells you.
Chapter 33 Why does my profit jump at the end of the month? Because the cost of what you sold arrives once, when you close the month. Until then your sales carry their price and not their cost, so the figure reads high — and the close is what makes it true.
Chapter 34 My accountant wants the books. What do I send them? Three reports cover almost everything an accountant asks for, and none of them need explaining beforehand — they are the standard shape any accountant already reads.
Chapter 35 Is it time for a second shop? There is no report that decides this for you — opening a second branch is a decision about your own business, not a number this guide can supply.
Chapter 37 How do I keep an eye on a shop I am not standing in? With more than one branch, you cannot be in two places at once — three reports exist so you do not have to be.
Chapter 38 Is it time to hire, and what should they be allowed to do? Two separate questions, and the second one matters more: the moment you add a second person, you decide what they can see and touch, not only that they can sign in.
Chapter 40 Should I sell online, or stay on the marketplace? This is not a guide telling you to leave the marketplace — a platform sells your goods and the customers who were already looking for something; your own shop window sells neither on its own.
Chapter 41 How do I open my own shop window? Turning it on is one setting; sharing it is one link — the shop window itself is already built, quietly, out of the same catalogue your till already reads from.
Chapter 42 How do I arrange what a customer sees first? Groups arrange your shop window into sections with headings — they never decide who gets to see a product, only where it appears.
Chapter 44 e-Fatura and e-Arşiv — what do I have to do? Whether you are legally required to send e-Fatura is a question for your accountant or GİB, not for this guide — what the guide can tell you is what the product does once you are.
Chapter 46 Can I put my own logo and layout on an invoice? Your logo is already there — every invoice on every plan carries your shop's name and logo automatically. This is about going further: moving things, or adding to what is printed.
Chapter 47 Which plan should I be on, and when should I move? For most shops starting out, the honest answer is: stay on Free, and you will know the moment that stops being true.