How to track business expenses on Meku

You can probably say what you sold yesterday. Can you say what you spent? Most owners cannot. The difference between your sales and your profit is hidden in the boda fare, the soda for a customer, the M-Pesa fee, the loan repayment and the airtime. Meku makes recording them easy enough that you will really do it.

What you need before you start

Receipts, M-Pesa messages, or notes of the day’s spending (the more recent, the better)
A few minutes to look at the expense categories and switch off the ones you do not use

Step 1: Look at your categories

Meku gives every business the same standard list of expense categories, such as Rent, Salaries & wages, Electricity & water, Transport & fuel, and Airtime & internet. The list matches an income statement, so an accountant can read your records directly.

Go to Settings → Expense categories and switch off the ones you never use. You cannot add your own category, but you can write your own words in What it was for on each expense.

Step 2: Record expenses when they happen

At the home page, tap Add Expense. Fill in:

Amount: in TZS
Category: choose from the list
What it was for: your own words, useful for unusual expenses
Account: the account the money came from, such as CASH or your Lipa namba

You can also take a photo of the receipt.

Step 3: Make it a daily habit

Record every day, not every week. Recording at the end of each day catches the small things, such as the boda fare home or the free water for a customer, that you would otherwise forget. Five expenses a day take 90 seconds. Writing a whole week from memory on Sunday takes 30 minutes and misses half of them.

Tip: Take a photo of every receipt before you leave the counter. Whether you record it the same evening or three days later, the photo protects you if the paper is lost.

Step 4: Read the expenses report

Open Reports → Expenses. You see your total spending for the period, with each category shown as a bar. The result usually surprises owners. “I did not know I was spending that much on transport” is the most common reaction.

Use it for next month’s decisions. If marketing brings no results you can see, stop it. If transport takes 15% of your sales, try to combine your deliveries.

Step 5: Let your staff record their own

Your staff can record expenses too, under their own login, such as boda fares they paid from their own money, or supplies they bought when you sent them to Kariakoo. They see only their own expenses, and you see everyone’s. This is how a small business stops losing the small amounts that add up.

Common questions

Can I change an expense after I have recorded it? Yes. Tap any expense in the list to change it. If it was a clear mistake, you can cancel it. It stays in your history, marked as cancelled.

Should I record my own salary as an expense? Yes, if you pay yourself a fixed amount. It is the only way your profit figure means something. If you take cash for yourself at different times, use Account → Take money out. Meku records it as money you took for yourself, not as a business expense.

What about loan repayments? Record the loan under Financing, and record each repayment on the loan. Meku separates the interest, which is an expense, from the loan itself, which is not.