Software for steel and building suppliers who trade on thin margins

The margin is set the day you buy

A yard can push sixteen million shillings through the gate in a week and keep less than a hundred thousand of it. The margin on bars and cement is a few per cent, so the profit is decided at the mill, not the counter.

The bars in your yard came from three deliveries at three prices. When a contractor rings for a quote you price from memory, and memory reaches for the cheapest, oldest load. The replacement then costs more than you sold at.

PesaScope records the cost per unit on every stock-in, so what you last paid sits beside what you sell it for.

A lorry load, from gate to ledger

1. Book the delivery inAdd Stock takes the branch, the items, the quantities, the supplier and the cost per unit for this load. That cost is what later sales are measured against.
2. Put the freight where you can see itLorry hire and offloading are real costs on a 6% margin. Record transport as an expense so it lands in the week it belongs to.
3. Sell on accountEnter what the site handed over. Anything outstanding sits against that customer's name with the date, so the sale and the debt book are one record.
4. Watch what you owe upstreamEach supplier carries payment terms and a running balance, so before the next load you can see what is due on the last.

The lines a yard sets up first

Pick "Steel & building supplier" at sign-up and this list is already there. Name each item the way customers ask for it.

Sizes are the whole catalogue here. Y8, Y10, Y12 and Y16 belong as separate products — a blended "iron bar" line hides which size earns.

A week on the yard, in real money

Sixteen million through the gate and seventy thousand kept. Five hundred shillings more per bar on the next load is a hundred thousand — more than the whole week's profit. The cost on each delivery is where you see it coming.

What PesaScope will not do for you

There is no delivery scheduling. It will not plan a lorry route, assign a driver or remind you which site expects a load on Thursday.

It will not apportion freight across a delivery. If a lorry costs 380,000 for eleven tonnes, you fold that into the cost per unit or record it as a transport expense.

And there are no credit limits, so it will not stop a sale to a contractor who already owes you. It records what is owed and how long. The decision stays yours.

Where a yard quietly loses money

1. Offcuts and bent barsSteel damaged in handling never appears as a sale. Adjust stock with a reason — Damaged, Stolen, Transfer, Correction — logged with your name and the date.
2. The load nobody countedStock on Hand values every line at cost. Walk the yard against it monthly; the gap is usually one item, not all of them.
3. Quoting from an old price sheetCost is captured per delivery, so a mill price rise shows the day the lorry arrives.
4. Account customers who slow downA contractor who paid in two weeks and now takes seven is a warning long before he is a bad debt.

The detail, if you want it

Questions steel and building suppliers ask