For working from a phone

Android App

Running your shop from the phone in your pocket — including when there's no network.

18 min read · 24 screenshots

The Android app is not a smaller copy of the website. It is built to keep working when the internet does not: everything is saved on the phone first and pushed up when a connection returns. That one design decision explains most of what is different about it, and it is the thread running through this guide.

Worked examples use three of your own customers — Dozie, Adaora and Kenneth — the same names as the web guides, so the two read together.

1. Signing in

SmartShop Android login screen with Enter Email and Enter Password fields, a LOGIN button, a Forget password link and a Create a New Account button — Sign in with the same email and password as the website.

Android navigation drawer showing the store name, user and store id at the top, and menu items Sale Center, Main Dashboard, My Usage, Invite and Earn, Easy Sales, then Inventory and Sales groups — The drawer header confirms which store and user you're in.

One account, one set of credentials, both clients. Create a New Account registers a new store from the phone; if you already have a store on the web, just sign in.

If you have access to more than one store, you're asked which one to open. The drawer header then shows User and Store Id so you can always confirm where you are before entering anything.

Sign in while you have a connection. The app runs offline afterwards, but the first sign-in on a device has to reach the server. Get the phone signed in and synced in the shop before sending it out to a market stall or a delivery round.

2. Sale Center — the home screen

Where the app opens, and where a counter spends its day.

Sale Center home screen showing the store name with a green Synced badge, Today's Sales and Outstanding cards, quick action buttons for New Sale, Collect Payment, Add Stock and Scan Doc, a follow-up carousel of quiet customers with WhatsApp buttons, and an invoice pipeline with All, Unpaid, Part-paid, Paid and Quotes filters — Sale Center — takings, debts, four actions, and the invoice pipeline.

Element	What it gives you
✓ Synced badge	Whether this phone's data has reached the server. See section 10 — this is the single most important indicator on the screen.
Today's Sales	Today's takings, compared with yesterday.
Outstanding	Everything owed to you, with Tap to collect › straight into chasing it.
New Sale · Collect Payment · Add Stock · Scan Doc	The four things a counter actually does, one tap from the home screen.
Follow up — quiet customers	A swipeable row of customers who've stopped buying, each showing how long they've been quiet and what they owe, with a WhatsApp button.
Invoice pipeline	Filter chips — All, Unpaid, Part-paid, Paid, Quotes — over recent invoices, each card carrying its balance and a Collect › link.

Tap the ☰ icon at the top left. The drawer is long — swipe up inside it to reach the lower groups.

Upper part of the Android drawer showing Sale Center, Main Dashboard, My Usage, Invite and Earn 500 Usage, Easy Sales, then Inventory group with Inventory Center, Inventory List and Purchase List, and the start of the Sales group — Upper drawer.

Lower part of the Android drawer showing Customers, Wildfire, Customer Follow-Up, Sales List, Quotation List, Customer Payment, Payment Type, then Expenses, Update From Web with Download, and Admin Management with This Sales Point and Admin User — Lower drawer.

Group	Items
(top)	Sale Center · Main Dashboard · My Usage · Invite & Earn 500 Usage Units · Easy Sales
Inventory	Inventory Center · Inventory List · Purchase List
Sales	Scan / Upload Document · Quick Sell · Enter Sales / Quotation · Customer Center · Customers · Wildfire · Customer Follow-Up · Sales List · Quotation List · Customer Payment · Payment Type
Expenses	Expense Class · Expense
Update From Web	Download
Admin Management	This Sales Point · Admin User · Other Users · User Permissions · Subscription
Report	Sales · Daily Sales · Inventory Value · Profit And Loss · Expense · Tax · Customer Follow Up
Settings	Edit Shop · Auto-Sync Interval · Version · Validate Data · Sign Out

4. Main Dashboard

Android Main Dashboard showing the store name with Synced badge, cash collected this month, a profit and loss panel with a LOSS bar and sales, cost of sales and expenses figures, a Money Owed To You card with Chase Details, Top Owing Customers and Customers Gone Quiet — Main Dashboard — the month's position, and who to chase.

Cash Collected This Month — money actually received, not invoiced.
P&L for a date range you can change, with a PROFIT or LOSS bar and the three figures underneath: Sales, Cost of Sales, Expenses. Each carries an up/down arrow against the previous period.
Money Owed To You, with Chase Details →.
Top Owing Customers — tap to collect → takes you straight into recording their payment.
Customers Gone Quiet — 30+ days without a purchase.

A loss showing here with zero expenses usually means cost of sales exceeded sales for the period — worth checking that stock was brought in as purchases with real costs, not zero-cost adjustments. The Items & Purchases guide covers why.

5. Quick Sell — the fastest way to ring up a sale

Android-only, and the reason many shops keep a phone on the counter even when a PC is available.

Customer — starts as Cash — walk-in. Tap to attach a real customer (e.g. Kenneth) if the sale isn't fully paid.
Sale date — Today unless you change it.
Type item — the clever part. Enter it as you'd say it: Zoom, or 3 Zoom @900 for three at ₦900 each. Quantity and price are read out of what you typed.
Quick picks — chips for your fastest movers; one tap adds a line.
+ New item — create a product you don't stock yet without leaving the sale.
Discount, Tax, Loyalty and Clear apply to the whole sale.
The footer keeps Net, Tax, Total and Balance in view. Finish with Save Invoice or Save Quote.

Attach the customer before you save a credit sale. Left as Cash — walk-in, the balance belongs to nobody: it won't show on a customer's account, won't appear in Customer Center, and Customer Follow-Up will never chase it.

5.1 A full walkthrough: sale → invoice → payment → the customer's account

To show the whole loop end to end, here is one real sale — one Basket Ball to Dozie — followed all the way through to his updated balance.

Customer picker over Quick Sell with a search box and a list of customers, plus New Customer and Cash Walk-in options at the foot — Tap the customer row, then search.

Quick Sell with 1 Basket Ball typed into the item box and a matching suggestion below reading Basket Ball, 3184 in stock, 490.00 — Typing `1 Basket Ball` — the suggestion shows live stock and price.

Dozie is attached — the customer row immediately shows "dozie — Owes 121,658.25", so the till sees his existing balance before adding to it. Tapping the suggestion adds the line:

Quick Sell with one line, Basket Ball at 490.00, quantity 1, and the footer showing Net 490.00, Tax 0.00, Total 490.00, Balance 490.00, and a green Collect 490.00 button replacing the grey Add items to sell button — One line loaded. The footer button has turned into **Collect 490.00**.

This is the fork mentioned above: with items in the cart the grey Add items to sell button becomes a live green Collect button for the full amount. Tapping it — or Save Invoice for a credit sale — prompts for a payment type before saving:

Save unpaid invoice dialog reading 490.00 due, with a radio list of payment types including No payment type, Cash, Cash Discount, Diamond Bank, Fidelity Bank, GTbank, Mini Bank, Opay account, three System Payment Types, UBA POS and Zenith Bank, each marked no details, plus New Type, Cancel and Save Invoice — Save unpaid invoice — every payment type on the list reads "no details" on this phone.

Every payment type here shows no details — none of the bank/wallet information configured on the web has come down to this device. That's worth checking: an unpaid invoice saved here still names Zenith Bank as the settlement route (the invoice below proves the bank name itself did sync), but if the underlying account number is what's missing on the phone, that's a sync gap worth raising.

Choosing Zenith Bank and Save Invoice writes a real invoice:

Sales Detail for invoice 3945-405, customer dozie, UNPAID, one line Basket Ball qty 1 amount 490.00, amount paid 0.00, balance 490.00, a red banner reading balance 490.00 please settle via Zenith Bank, and a green Pay Balance 490.00 button — Invoice 3945-405 — UNPAID, with a Pay Balance button right on the page.

Pay Balance opens a Collect Payment dialog, pre-filled with the outstanding amount and the payment method from the invoice:

Collect Payment dialog showing outstanding balance 490.00, an editable amount field pre-filled 490.00, a payment method dropdown set to Zenith Bank, and Cancel and Collect buttons — Collect Payment — amount and method both pre-filled; either can be changed before confirming.

Tapping COLLECT posts the payment immediately and offers a receipt:

Sales Detail behind a Payment receipt dialog reading Generate a receipt for this 490.00 payment, with Cancel and Share / Download buttons; the invoice behind now shows PAID, amount paid 490.00, balance 0.00 — Payment receipt — Cancel, or Share / Download to hand the customer proof on the spot.

The Android app has a working payment receipt. The website's invoice does not. The Sales & Customers guide documents that the web invoice carries no Payment Receipt button in this build — Save & Print Receipt only exists inside the Receive Payment dialog there. On the phone, every payment you collect is immediately offered as a shareable or downloadable receipt from the invoice itself. If a customer needs proof of payment on the spot, collecting it from the Android app is the more complete route right now.

Dismiss or share the receipt, and the invoice reflects the finished sale — PAID, with a diagonal watermark, balance zero:

Sales Detail for invoice 3945-405 now showing a green PAID pill, a large diagonal PAID watermark across the item table, amount paid 490.00 and balance 0.00, with Print and Delete buttons at the foot — Settled — PAID pill, watermark, zero balance.

Back on Sale Center, two things confirm it landed: the Paid filter count moved from 6 to 7, and Dozie's card sits at the top of the pipeline with a Receipt › link where Collect › used to be.

Sale Center after the sale, with an amber Sync now badge in place of the green Synced badge, Today's Sales still 0.00 with a red down arrow against yesterday, an invoice pipeline with All 50, Unpaid 43, Part-paid 0 and Paid 7, and dozie's card at the top marked PAID with a Receipt link — Sale Center afterward — Paid count up by one, and the badge has turned to **Sync now**.

Notice the badge at the top: it now reads Sync now in amber rather than the green ✓ Synced from section 2. That is the offline-first design in action — the sale, the payment and the receipt all exist on this phone the instant they're saved, before the server has seen any of it. Tapping Sync now (or waiting for the auto-sync interval) is what pushes them up; see section 10.

Finally, Dozie's own profile shows both sides of the transaction landed together:

Dozie's profile — Total Purchases and Payments Made both moved by exactly ₦490, and Last Transaction updated to today.

Total Purchases and Payments Made each rose by exactly ₦490 — the sale increased what he owes and the payment reduced it by the same figure in the same moment, which is why Outstanding is unchanged at ₦121,658. That is the correct result for a fully-paid sale: it passes through the balance without leaving anything behind.

6. Enter Sales / Quotation

The full sale screen, matching the web's New Sale & Quotation: customer, payment type, transaction class, line items with quantity, rate and tax, discount and loyalty, then save as a sale or a quotation. Use this when a sale needs more than Quick Sell's speed — several lines, a specific payment type, a quotation to convert later.

Easy Sales, near the top of the drawer, is a further-stripped-down flow for a single item and a price. Between the three, pick by how much detail the sale actually needs.

7. Inventory Center, Inventory List and Purchase List

Android Inventory Center showing an inventory overview with total products, low stock, out of stock and stock value, then fastest sellers by quantity sold and by sales value, and slow movers in stock — Inventory Center — what you hold, what's moving, and what isn't.

Fastest Sellers is split by quantity sold and by sales value — high-volume cheap lines and low-volume valuable ones are different businesses and this shows both. Slow Movers (in stock) is the money sitting on your shelves.

Android Inventory List with a search box, an item count, an ADD ITEMS button and a table of items showing name, purchase rate, selling rate, quantity and reorder level — Inventory List — search, then **ADD ITEMS**.

Android Purchase List with a search box, a purchase count, an ENTER PURCHASE button and a table of movements showing name, date, rate, quantity and a status of Opening, Purchase or Adjustment — Purchase List — every movement, badged by status.

The Purchase List's Status column is the one to read: Opening (stock the item started with), Purchase (bought from a vendor, with a cost) and Adjustment (a correction). ENTER PURCHASE records a new delivery.

Record deliveries as purchases, not adjustments. An adjustment moves the quantity but carries no vendor and often no cost — and a zero-cost entry drags the item's average cost down, which quietly inflates the profit on every later sale.

8. Customers

Android Customer Center showing a customer overview with total customers, active, owing, settled and total owed, a Top Owing ranked list, and a monthly trend chart of invoiced, paid and owed — Customer Center — the credit position at a glance.

Customer Profile — history, and one tap to reach them.

Customer Center gives you totals, a Top Owing ranking and a Monthly Trend chart plotting Invoiced, Paid and Owed together — the gap between the blue and green lines is your collection problem, drawn.

Tap any customer for their Profile: Total Purchases, Payments Made, Outstanding, Last Transaction, a Transaction History and a Balance Timeline. WHATSAPP and CALL sit right on the card — the app's real advantage over the desktop when chasing money.

Customers (below Customer Center) is the searchable list for adding and editing. Customer Payment records money received.

8.1 Customer Follow-Up on the phone

The same four audiences as the web — Open Balance, Gone Quiet, Bought Once, Birthdays — drawing on the same SMS unit balance, but the phone lays the numbers out more plainly.

Android Customer Follow-Up screen with tabs for Open Balance, Gone Quiet, Bought Once and Birthdays, a line reading 89 SMS units available this run needs 59, a breakdown of how many match and why some cannot be texted, minimum balance and days filters with an Apply button, a payment details dropdown set to Zenith Bank, token buttons, the message text, a live preview for a real customer, a character and page count, and a Send Reminder button — Customer Follow-Up — every exclusion named, and the cost stated before you send.

The line under the unit balance is the one to read:

59 match · 47 can be texted now · 1 on DND (corporate route) · 2 with a dead number · 12 without a phone number

That breaks the gap down further than the website does — the web tells you how many have no phone number, while the phone additionally separates DND numbers (reachable only on the costlier corporate route) from dead numbers (ones that have already failed delivery and are worth correcting on the customer's record).

Everything else works as documented in the Customer Follow-Up guide: filters, the Payment details to quote dropdown feeding {paymentdetails}, the token buttons, the automatic Hi <name> greeting, and a live preview against a real customer with the exact character and page count beneath it. Send Reminder stays disabled until there is something to send.

The same message can be priced differently on the phone and on the web. The 167-character reminder above is billed at 4 pages here, while the identical text on the website is billed at 2. Before sending a large run, check the page count on the client you're actually sending from — on a 47-recipient run that difference is roughly 94 units against 188. If the counts disagree for the same wording, send from the cheaper one and raise it with support.

9. Scan a document

Android Scan Document screen reading point your camera at an invoice, receipt or product label, with an Auto-detect selector, an OPEN SCANNER button and an UPLOAD FILE INSTEAD button — Scan Document — the phone's camera is the natural home for this.

Photograph a written or printed sheet and the app reads the names and numbers off it. On Android the document type defaults to Auto-detect — tap it to state the type yourself when the sheet is ambiguous.

Open Scanner uses the camera; Upload File Instead takes a photo already in the gallery.
Nothing is saved until you have checked the result. Every line can be corrected, re-matched or removed first.
Each photo costs a DocScan unit, so a long sheet costs by the page.

The review stage — matching read lines to your items, the prices-versus-quantities question, and the cross-checks that catch a dropped line — works the same as on the web and is documented in full in the Upload & Scan guide. Read that section before your first real scan; the traps are identical and they matter more here, because a phone photo of a creased counter book is exactly the input that loses lines.

10. Offline, sync and your data

The part of the app there is no web equivalent for, and the part worth understanding properly.

10.1 How it works

Every sale, payment, purchase and customer you enter is written to the phone immediately, whether or not there is a network. When a connection is available the app pushes those records to the server, and the ✓ Synced badge on Sale Center and Main Dashboard turns green.

Check the badge before the day's records matter. A phone that has been out of signal holds sales nobody else can see — they are not lost, but they are not on the web, not in anyone else's totals, and not backed up. Get the phone onto Wi-Fi and confirm the badge before you close up, hand the device over, or wipe it.

10.2 The sync controls

Menu item	What it does
Download (under Update From Web)	Pulls the current picture down from the server onto this phone — items, customers, prices and the rest. Use it after someone has been working on the web or another device.
Auto-Sync Interval (Settings)	How often the app syncs by itself. Shorter keeps devices closer together; longer saves battery and data.
Validate Data (Settings)	Checks the phone's own records for problems. Run it if figures look wrong before assuming the server is at fault.
Version (Settings)	Which build this phone runs. Have it ready when contacting support.

10.3 When the phone and the web disagree

They will, occasionally, and it is almost always a sync gap rather than a fault. If the phone shows a different product count or stock value from the website, the phone is holding a different picture: run Download to pull the web's version, and confirm the ✓ Synced badge so anything entered on the phone has gone up. Only if a gap survives both is it worth raising.

11. Sales points and this device

A sales point is a till. On the web you pick one at each sign-in; on Android the device is bound to one, which is why a phone can keep selling with no network — it already knows which till it is.

This Sales Point (Admin Management) shows and changes the till this device is registered to.
Invoice numbers are stamped with the sales point, so you can tell a phone sale from a web sale in the Sales List.
Two devices must not share one till. That is what the engagement rules on the web are protecting against, and it is why a lost or retired phone should be released by an admin rather than simply switched off.

12. Users, permissions and admin

Menu item	Use
Admin User	The store's owner account.
Other Users	Staff accounts on this store.
User Permissions	What each staff member may do. The same catalogue of rights as the web, enforced identically here — a right removed on the web is removed on the phone.
Subscription / My Usage	Your plan, your usage-unit balance and top-ups.
Invite & Earn 500 Usage Units	Referral rewards.

Give counter staff the narrowest set of rights that lets them work. A phone is lost far more easily than a desktop, and permissions are the difference between losing a device and losing control of your books.

13. Reports

Seven reports, all available offline from the phone's own records: Sales, Daily Sales, Inventory Value, Profit And Loss, Expense, Tax and Customer Follow Up.

Daily Sales Report is the Android-only one, and it is the natural end-of-day tool: what this till took today, ready to reconcile against the cash drawer before you close.

Reports read the phone's data. If the phone hasn't synced, its reports describe the phone — not the business. Sync first, then report.

14. Settings

Edit Shop — name, address, contact details and tax rate, as they appear on invoices.
Auto-Sync Interval, Validate Data, Version — section 10.
Payment Type (Sales group) — the payment methods offered at the till, and the bank or wallet details quoted on an unpaid invoice.
Sign Out — ends the session on this device. Sync first: signing out with unsynced records leaves them stranded on the phone.

The app also prints to Bluetooth and thermal printers, which is what makes a phone a complete till — pair the printer in Android's own Bluetooth settings first, then select it in the app.

15. Android vs web — what's different

Capability	Android	Web
Works with no internet	Yes — entered locally, synced later	No
Quick Sell / Easy Sales	Yes	No
Daily Sales Report	Yes	No
Auto-Sync Interval, Download, Validate Data	Yes	Not applicable
Camera scanning	Camera, in your hand	Upload a photo
WhatsApp / call a customer	One tap from their profile	Link only
Bluetooth / thermal printing	Yes	Via the PC's printer
Sales point	Bound to the device	Chosen at each sign-in
Consolidator (multi-store roll-up)	No — web only	Yes
Storefront setup and order management	Opens Wildfire	Full
Bulk spreadsheet upload	No	Yes

In practice: sell on the phone, administer on the web. The phone is better at the counter, on a delivery round and in a market; the website is better for bulk data, the storefront, multi-store roll-ups and anything involving a spreadsheet.

16. Quick reference

I want to…	Do this
Sell something fast	Sale Center → New Sale, or drawer → Quick Sell
Sell with full detail or quote	Drawer → Enter Sales / Quotation
Take money off an old debt	Sale Center → Collect Payment, or Customer Payment
Record a delivery	Sale Center → Add Stock, or Purchase List → ENTER PURCHASE
Enter a paper sheet	Sale Center → Scan Doc
Chase a customer now	Customer Center → tap them → WHATSAPP or CALL
Text a whole segment	Drawer → Customer Follow-Up (check the page count first — §8.1)
Check the day's takings	Reports → Daily Sales Report
Make sure nothing is stranded on the phone	Check the ✓ Synced badge
Pull down what was done on the web	Drawer → Download
See which till this phone is	Admin Management → This Sales Point

If something looks wrong

The badge isn't green. The phone has records the server hasn't got. Get onto Wi-Fi and let it sync before doing anything else.
The phone shows different figures from the website. Run Download, then confirm the badge. A gap that survives both is worth reporting.
A sale isn't on the customer's account. It was probably saved as Cash — walk-in rather than against them.
Stock didn't drop. Check whether it was saved as a quotation rather than a sale.
Staff can see something they shouldn't. Fix it under User Permissions — it applies on web and phone alike.
The printer won't print. Pair it in Android's Bluetooth settings first; the app can only use a printer the phone already knows.
Figures look wrong and sync is fine. Settings → Validate Data.
An SMS run costs more than expected. Compare the page count against the same message on the web — see §8.1.

PreviousMerchant Storefront (Wildfire) NextDesktop (Windows Till)

More guides

Sales & CustomersMaking a sale, invoices, payments, and customer statements. Items & PurchasesYour item list, stock history, purchases and adjustments, and reorder levels. Upload & ScanLoad data in bulk from a spreadsheet, or straight from a photo of your counter book. Customer Follow-UpText customers who owe you, have gone quiet, or bought once, and win them back. Merchant Storefront (Wildfire)Publish items online, take orders, handle back-orders, and get paid on your own store link. Desktop (Windows Till)Setting up and running MatSmartShop on a PC till, with its own offline database. Shopper's GuideHow to order from your storefront link. Share it with buyers as it is.

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Android App

1. Signing in

2. Sale Center — the home screen

3. The menu

4. Main Dashboard

5. Quick Sell — the fastest way to ring up a sale

5.1 A full walkthrough: sale → invoice → payment → the customer's account

6. Enter Sales / Quotation

7. Inventory Center, Inventory List and Purchase List

8. Customers

8.1 Customer Follow-Up on the phone

9. Scan a document

10. Offline, sync and your data

10.1 How it works

10.2 The sync controls

10.3 When the phone and the web disagree

11. Sales points and this device

12. Users, permissions and admin

13. Reports

14. Settings

15. Android vs web — what's different

16. Quick reference

If something looks wrong

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