Your first week

A plan to get from an empty book to numbers you would show your bank. Nobody does all of this in one sitting — an hour a day for a week is plenty.

Do these in order

Each day builds on the one before. Getting money locations right on day one is what makes every later number correct.

Day 1 — Get your money right

1. Create your business and set the base currency (the one your reports total in). See Getting started.
2. Add every money location where money actually sits: cash box, MoMo wallet, Airtel wallet, bank account, till float.
3. Give each one its opening balance — what is genuinely there right now, counted. Do not round it to look tidy.

Done when: the balances screen matches what you would find if you counted every drawer and checked every wallet today.

Day 2 — Record a real day

Do not import history yet. Just record today, completely.

1. Every sale, every purchase, every payment — as it happens.
2. Use categories consistently. Two categories that mean the same thing will ruin your reports later.
3. At close of day, check your balances again.

Done when: end-of-day balances match the physical count. If they do not, something was missed — find it now while the day is still fresh. This habit is the whole game.

Day 3 — Bring in what you sell

Only if you hold stock:

1. Add your products — name, price, and cost if you know it. Use the import template for anything over about thirty items.
2. Set categories so the POS grid is fast to use.
3. Enter opening stock counts.
4. Pharmacies and grocers: switch on batch and expiry tracking now, before stock moves.

Done when: you can find any item at the POS in under three seconds.

Day 4 — Get paid properly

1. Add the customers who owe you or buy regularly.
2. Raise any invoices currently outstanding.
3. Record what customers already owe in the credit book and set credit limits.
4. Turn on the mobile money rails you accept.

Done when: you can answer "who owes me money and how much?" from the Aging screen instead of memory.

Day 5 — Bring in your history

Now import the past. See Importing your data.

1. Start with the current financial year. Older than that is rarely worth the effort.
2. Import in small batches and check the row-level error report each time.
3. Coming from QuickBooks Desktop? Upload the export directly — its grouped layout is understood natively.

Done when: your P&L for last month looks like what you remember happening.

Day 6 — Prove it against the bank

1. Go to Reconciliation.
2. Import your bank and mobile money statements, or tick entries off manually.
3. Work until the difference is zero.

Done when: at least one account is fully reconciled. This is the difference between books you hope are right and books you know are right.

Day 7 — Set it up to stay correct

1. Add your team under Collaboration with the right roles — cashiers do not need owner powers.
2. Invite your accountant.
3. Set up recurring transactions for rent, salaries, subscriptions and anything else predictable.
4. Turn on the alerts that matter to you.
5. Read the morning AI Brief and let Kiongozi tell you what needs attention.

Done when: you open SBB in the morning and it tells you something you did not already know.

The rhythm after that

When	What
Daily	Record as you go; glance at the AI Brief
Weekly	Clear the review queue; check aging and low stock
Monthly	Reconcile every account, then close the month
Quarterly	Check tax obligations and review your budget
Yearly	Depreciation on fixed assets; export a full backup

If you fall behind

You will, at some point. Do not try to fix six months in one night.

1. Get today correct first, and keep it correct going forward.
2. Then work backwards a week at a time.
3. Use Signals to pull transactions out of mobile money messages and photographed receipts instead of typing them all again.

Current and correct beats complete and abandoned.