A commission and cash book for mobile money agents

The drawer is not your money

At six in the evening the tin is heavy and the day feels good. Most of what is in it belongs to someone who swapped cash for e-value an hour ago, and it goes back out as the next withdrawal. Float and profit sit in the same tin, which is how an agent works six days a week and cannot say whether the week paid.

Commission is the only part that is truly earnings, and it lands late and in a lump. By then you have already paid rent, the assistant and twenty boda trips out of that same tin.

Say the honest part first: PesaScope does not connect to MTN or Airtel. It cannot read your float, count your transactions or calculate a shilling of commission. What it gives you is the other book — what you were paid, what you spent, what you came up short, and what that leaves.

How an agent runs it

1. Record the commission each network actually paidSet up MTN, Airtel and any bank agency as separate lines, then enter the figure when the statement or the SMS arrives. You type it; nothing is fetched.
2. Put every cost through the expense bookRent, the assistant, boda trips to rebalance, airtime, receipt books — each with a category and whether it left as cash, Mobile Money or bank. Rent can be set as recurring.
3. Record the shortfall on the day it happensAdd a Till shortage expense category and enter the 30,000 missing on Tuesday. Over a quarter it either disappears or lines up with one person's shifts.
4. Keep the float out of the booksBuying float is not spending — it is the same money in another form, and booking it as an expense would show a loss every month. Record only what getting it cost you.

The lines you earn from

Pick "Mobile money agent" at sign-up and this list is already there. Keep each network separate: one combined total tells you nothing about which SIM is carrying the kiosk.

Commissions are set up as services, since there is nothing to count. Airtime, data and accessories are products and carry a stock level.

A month at a busy kiosk

Float appears nowhere in this table, and that is the point. The trips and the shortages quietly took 277,000 — nearly a quarter of what the kiosk kept — and neither shows on any telco statement.

What PesaScope cannot do for an agent

There is no integration with MTN, Airtel or any other network. Nothing is read from your SIM, your agent line or your float wallet. PesaScope does not know the commission bands, does not calculate commission, and cannot check itself against a telco statement.

It holds no float balance either. Your float lives in the SIM menu, and that is where it should stay — a second copy typed in by hand would only ever be wrong.

What it is, is a set of books for the shop around the SIM: commission per network, every cost out of the drawer, cash lent to regulars, and shortfalls you would otherwise absorb without noticing. That half decides whether the kiosk is a business or a job, and it is the half nobody keeps.

Where an agent's money actually goes

1. The trips to rebalanceFive a week at 6,000 is over 130,000 a month, paid in small notes and never added up.
2. The regular who needs 50,000 until tomorrowRecorded as a debt, the ageing report shows which of those tomorrows never came.
3. The drawer that is short againA shortfall absorbed silently is a shortfall repeated. Three recorded months make a pattern.
4. The second SIM you assume is earningOne network can take half your float and return a third of the commission.

The detail, if you want it

Questions agents ask