Know what every client owes and what every job earned

Most tailoring work is paid in pieces: something down at the order, the rest on collection, sometimes a bit in between. Each of those is a number somebody has to remember, and the one that gets remembered wrongly is always the balance.

The harder question comes later. A busy month and a profitable month are not the same thing, and a notebook of deposits cannot tell you which one you just had.

Payments record against the order, so there is no second ledger to keep in step. Log the deposit and the outstanding amount updates on its own; log a part-payment later and it updates again.

• Deposits and part-payments both record against the specific order
• Quick buttons for half, or for the whole remaining amount
• Outstanding balances roll up onto the dashboard
• Your own payment methods — mobile money, bank, paybill, payment link

The moment the money lands, Shona can send the receipt over WhatsApp or SMS, in Swahili or English, with the amount and the remaining balance filled in. Two of the eleven message templates exist for exactly this — one for a payment on an order, one for a ready-made sale — and both can be rewritten in your own words.

Record what the materials and labour cost against an order and Shona shows revenue, cost and profit for that job. Costs attributed to a particular tailor roll up into that person's earnings, so paying staff is not a separate reconstruction at the end of the month.

One limit to be clear about: costs attach to a specific order. There is no general expense tracking in Shona — rent, electricity and the machine service do not have a home in the app.

If you also sell finished pieces, there is an optional shop counter: build a cart, apply a discount, take payment, see the change due, and send a receipt straight away. It tracks stock, handles returns line by line, and gives you sales reports. If you do not sell ready-made items, switch it off and it disappears from the app entirely — no Sales tab, no dashboard cards.

Said plainly, so nothing is a surprise after you install it:

• No PDF invoices — receipts are plain text, for WhatsApp and SMS
• No general expense tracking; costs attach to an order
• No barcode or QR scanning at the counter
• Shona records payments — it does not collect them, so the money moves through whatever method you already use

Taking a deposit is the one thing that cannot wait for a signal. Payments record fully offline and sync afterwards, like everything else in the app.