Daftari and Hisaab: the talking record book for small businesses

Built for voice

• Works with TalkBack on every screen: large, clearly labelled buttons in a simple order.
• Speaks the total first, then the detail: “Sales today: 4,350 shillings, 23 sales.”
• A short vibration confirms every save; a double buzz means it did not save.
• Not using TalkBack? Daftari can read its answers aloud with the phone’s own voice.
• Say the amount instead of typing it.
• Amounts are spoken the way people say them: in Swahili words, and in lakh and crore in India.
• Finds a customer even when a name is misheard or misspelled, and suggests what you meant.

Every day in the shop

• Record a sale in seconds, paid by cash, mobile money, bank or credit.
• Quick-sale buttons for your common items, so a sale is one tap.
• Record expenses by category: stock, rent, transport, electricity, salary and more.
• Count the cash at the start or end of the day. Daftari tells you what should be in the box and the difference.
• Hear today’s totals at any moment: sales, spending, profit and cash expected.
• Undo the last entry, or correct an older one. The original is always kept.

Customers and credit

• Record goods given on credit (deni, udhaar) and payments received. Each balance is spoken after every entry.
• “Who owes me”: the total and number of customers first, then each person.
• See how long money has been owed: under a month, one to three months, or longer.
• Customer statements with a running balance, to send by SMS or WhatsApp or save as a PDF.
• Polite payment reminders by SMS or WhatsApp, with your till, paybill or UPI number. You check and send each one.
• Receipts for sales and payments, sent by SMS or WhatsApp.
• Add customers from your phone contacts. Overpayments are kept as advances.

M-Pesa and UPI

• Share an M-Pesa or UPI confirmation message into Daftari, and it reads the amount, the name and the reference for you.
• Save it as a sale, a customer’s payment, an expense or a supplier payment.
• The same payment can never be recorded twice.
• Or type the reference with any payment.

Suppliers and stock

• Track what you owe each supplier, and record payments to them.
• Stock bought adds to what you have; every sale takes it away.
• A spoken warning when an item is running low.
• Record goods spoiled, damaged or stolen, and correct stock after a count.
• Reminders for goods that are about to expire.

Invoices and quotes

• Make quotes and turn them into invoices in one step.
• VAT or GST on each line.
• Record part payments; overdue invoices are flagged and spoken.

Loans and helpers

• Loan repayment schedules: what is due, when, what is paid and whether you are behind.
• Each helper signs in with their own code, so you know who sold what.
• Record salaries and advances, and what each helper still owes back.

Reports

• Week, month and year summaries: sales, costs, profit, best-selling items, and best and slowest days.
• Spending broken down by category.
• Export everything to Excel.
• The year’s turnover (April to March in India, for Udyam).
• A business record for a lender: month-by-month sales, costs, profit and loan repayments.
• A monthly report in the plain layout programme offices ask for.

For government and disability programmes

• Document checklists with expiry reminders: Kenya’s AGPO, India’s NHFDC loans and Udyam registration, and the U.S. Randolph-Sheppard vending programme.
• Reminders for licence and permit renewals, rent and loan dates.
• VAT and profit-margin calculators.

Programme requirements change; Daftari reminds you to confirm them with the programme office.

Your records stay yours

• Every record is kept on the owner’s own phone, not on a company’s servers.
• No account and no login. The app does not use the internet at all, so it works anywhere, with no signal.
• An unlock code keeps your records private.
• Nothing leaves the phone unless you choose to share it.
• Run more than one shop or branch, each with its own records.

Records a lender can trust

• Add-only history: a correction is added as a new entry and never overwrites the old one.
• Every entry is linked to the one before, so “Check records” can prove nothing has been changed.
• A sale is saved completely or not at all, even if the battery dies mid-entry.
• Backups are checked before they are saved. Copy them to a memory card or Google Drive, and restore them on a new phone.

Languages

• Swahili and English, with M-Pesa, for Kenya.
• Hindi and English, with UPI, for India. Hindi answers are spoken now; Hindi screens are coming.

Coming next

• Payments that post automatically from M-Pesa tills and UPI, with a payment partner.
• More Indian languages.
• The same records on a desktop computer.