Small-scale traders benefit from new mobile accounting software

Jamobi is a mobile and web based software solution that allows informal sector traders to effectively manage their small businesses through their mobile phones or over the Internet.

The software allows the traders to easily record sales, purchases, and create budgets — thus providing an affordable and reliable method of simple book keeping as well as an efficient way of maintaining financial records of their business over long periods of time.

Access software

To access the software, traders will be levied Sh20 per month which will be automatically deducted from their phones after sending a blank SMS to 2242 beginning January. Many see the software as a godsend to informal sector traders who cannot afford to hire accounts clerks.

The clerks charge between Sh15,000 and Sh20,000 for book keeping depending on the size of the business.

Lack of proper book keeping is not only stifling the growth of the sector, which employs more than 60 per cent of the country’s work force, but has also denied them access to loans from financial institutions.

OTB managing director Edwin Seno said the firm was working with Century, a deposit taking micro finance, to carry out a pilot test before the product is made available to informal sector traders.

“Before we developed the software we carried out a survey among informal traders in some parts of the country and realised that while most operate their outfits just as big firms do in terms of having various outlets, there was a serious gap in their book keeping,” said Mr Seno.
Some of the traders could not keep track of their income and expenditure accounts or profit and loss accounts, thus making it difficult to dispose of their ventures to other people, or access loans.

With the Jamobi software, all a trader needs is an Internet enabled handset, log on to the website (www.jamobi.co.ke), and send a blank SMS to 2242.

The move enables the user to access accounting templates in which can fill relevant information.

After filling in the information the software can automatically prepare, for example, a loss and profit account which can be shared with others, sent it to an email account, or print it for the purposes of filing.

A trader with several branches can also create a user group, thus allowing his or employees to forward daily translations which can later be consolidated into one account. With close to 24 million mobile handset subscribers in to country, manufacturers and software developers have intensified activities to develop applications to tap into the growing market.

Budding software firms

OTB is among several budding software firms in the country that have benefited from World Bank and Kenya ICT Board grants to the tune of Sh3.8 million.

The money has enabled the firm to develop the product and market it.

Kenyan software developers have benefited from a Sh300 million government grant meant to promote the development of local digital content and computer applications.

“The main purpose of this grant is to propel the emergent lucrative, yet under-exploited, local content industry to growth,” said Kenya ICT Board CEO Paul Kukubo.

Digital content, a major driver of economic growth in developed countries, includes data accessed from electronic devices such as personal computers, game consoles, mobile phones, and digital TV.

The Internet offers the most common form of distribution of digital content.

The grant, which targets content developers including software developers, film, animation, advertising, publishing, gaming and education professionals, will provide an impetus for creating of quality applications relevant to the government and private sector.

The money, part of a $114.4 million grant from the World Bank’s Transparency and Communications Infrastructure Project (TCIP), is limited to a maximum of $50,000 (Sh5 million) for firms and $10,000 (Sh1,000,000) for individuals.

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