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Problem
East African SMBs run sales, stock, HR, and accounts across spreadsheets and disconnected tools, causing stockouts, write-offs, and slow month-end closes.
Global ERPs are too heavy, too expensive, and assume payment rails and connectivity that don't match local realities.
Operators need fast onboarding and offline resilience, not multi-month consultant-led implementations.
Solution
Built a unified operational platform spanning POS, multi-location inventory, HR/payroll, accounts, and reporting on shared data models.
Made payments local-first with M-Pesa, cash, card, and credit — including split payments, instant receipts, and WhatsApp share.
Designed offline-first POS that syncs when connectivity returns, plus low-stock alerts, batch/expiry tracking, and inter-branch transfers.
Shipped self-serve onboarding (currency, products, locations, team) so businesses go live in minutes with a 14-day free trial.
Technical deep-dive
Built for how East Africa actually trades
Soko handles the payment mix operators use every day — M-Pesa, cash, card, and customer credit — with split payments at checkout and instant receipt printing or WhatsApp share.
Multi-location inventory syncs in real time across branches in Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania, with stock transfers, low-stock alerts, and batch/expiry tracking before write-offs happen.
Self-serve tiers (Starter KES 2,500/mo through Enterprise) with a 14-day free trial mean businesses configure products, locations, and team in under an hour — not after a six-month implementation.
Multi-tenant architecture that survives field conditions
Each business is an isolated tenant in Postgres with location and role boundaries — the same RLS discipline described in the writing on streaming scans and multi-site WMS policies.
Offline-first POS queues writes and syncs when connectivity returns, which is non-negotiable for shops and counters outside fibre coverage.
Those operational constraints are exactly what later inform AI agent design: if the system of record cannot survive a network drop, neither can a long-horizon warehouse agent.
Architecture
Frontend: Next.js and TypeScript for fast, role-based operational UIs across POS, inventory, HR, and accounts.
Data layer: Supabase/Postgres with multi-tenant separation for businesses, locations, and team roles.
Sync layer: offline-capable POS with deferred synchronization and conflict-aware writes.
Reporting: real-time revenue, sales-by-cashier/location, profit margins, and CEO dashboard — exportable to PDF and Excel.
Outcomes
Launched a self-serve ERP product trusted by 500+ businesses across Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania.
Processed 2.1M+ transactions with 99.9% uptime — proving production scale beyond bespoke per-client builds.
Consolidated POS, inventory, HR, and accounts into a single source of truth for growing East African operators.
Reinforced the operational domain depth that informs AI-first products like WaybillAgent.
Links & artifacts
Related work
WaybillAgent
WaybillAgent transforms warehouse auditing from a multi-day manual process into an AI-assisted guided walk using phone capture and agentic reconciliation—flagship build for the Built with Opus 4.7 hackathon hosted by Cerebral Valley and Anthropic (selected top ~500 of 13,000+ applicants).
Read case studyAIDC Barcode Toolkit
Open-source toolkit that packages real-world AIDC workflows so Claude Code can generate, validate, and reason about barcode and labeling tasks with domain-correct defaults.
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