Moving from Excel or paper to a POS: a step-by-step guide

• You do not know your real stock until you count it.
• Two people edited the sheet and now nobody trusts the numbers.
• Adding up the day's sales takes longer than an hour.
• Customers argue about their khata balance.
• You opened a second branch, or want to sell online.
• Prices changed and the shelf, the sheet and the till all show different numbers.

A POS fixes these because every sale updates stock, khata and reports at the same moment. Nobody has to copy numbers from one place to another.

You do not need years of history. You need three lists that are right today. Excel, Google Sheets or a CSV file all work.

1. Products

2. Customers (your khata)

Name, phone number, and the balance they owe you today. Add an email or address only if you have it.

3. Suppliers

Name, phone number, and the balance you owe them today.

1. 1Remove duplicates. Sort by name and look for the same item twice ("Coke 1.5L" and "Coca Cola 1.5 ltr").
2. 2One product per row. If an item comes in sizes or colours, either give each its own row or use a variant column.
3. 3Numbers as numbers. No "Rs" or commas inside price cells. In Excel, keep barcodes as text so a long barcode does not turn into 8.96E+12.
4. 4Phone numbers in one format, for example 03001234567 or +923001234567.
5. 5Delete dead items you have not sold in a year. You can add them back later.
6. 6Check the big balances with the customer before you load them.

Two numbers set your starting point. Get them right and everything after is accurate.

• Opening stock: count what is on the shelf on go-live day, or the night before. Do not trust the old sheet for this. Our stock counting guide shows how.
• Opening balances: each customer's and supplier's balance on go-live day, entered as an opening balance, not as a sale or purchase. That keeps your sales reports correct.

1. 1Pick a quiet day (not Friday, Eid week or the 1st of the month).
2. 2Import your lists and check ten random products: name, price, barcode, stock.
3. 3Print a test receipt and set your shop name, address and tax details on it.
4. 4Give each staff member their own login and role.
5. 5Do a few practice sales together: cash, card, credit (khata), a return.
6. 6Count opening stock and update it.
7. 7Open the register and start selling. Keep the old book or sheet for reference only; write nothing new in it.
8. 8At day end, run the Z-report and compare the cash in the drawer.

Expect the first week to feel slower. By week two most staff are faster on the POS than they ever were on paper.

Small shops with a few hundred products often finish faster. Larger shops with several branches should go live one branch at a time, so the team learns on the first one.

• Running Excel and the POS side by side for weeks. Pick a day and switch.
• Loading old khata balances as sales, which inflates your sales reports.
• Skipping the opening stock count and trusting the old sheet.
• Sharing one login for the whole shop, so nobody knows who did what.
• Importing thousands of dead products you never sell.

Send us your lists, or an export from your old POS, in Excel or CSV. Our team loads them into Tajir Point for you, free, before you go live:

• Products, prices, barcodes and categories
• Customers and suppliers, with their opening credit balances
• Opening stock for each branch or warehouse
• Staff logins and roles, set up with you on a call

Prefer to do it yourself? The back office has an Import / export page. It reads Excel (.xlsx) and CSV files, matches column names like "Product Name" or "product_name" for you, and tells you the row number of anything it cannot read. It also reads product exports from Shopify, WooCommerce, Loyverse, Square, Lightspeed and Odoo. Opening balances are added only once, so loading the same file twice never doubles a balance. Old sales history can be loaded as an archive for reference, without touching your stock or khata.

Ask for it when you book a free demo (tick "Move my data for me"), or ask for a call back. The Light plan is free for 3 months with no card; see pricing.