Create an Invoice in Minutes

Open Invoices and build your invoice from your own products (or services). Add quantities, prices, discounts, and tax. Set a due date — 14 days by default — and either save it as a draft or save and send it in one go. Keel numbers every invoice automatically, so you always know what's what.

Send It Their Way

Your customer gets the invoice however they prefer: by WhatsApp (if you have their phone number), by email, or through a secure share link they can open on any device. No account needed on their side — the link just works, on a phone or a laptop.

Get Paid Online

From that link, your customer can pay the balance directly with M-Pesa or a card — processed securely through Paystack. The moment payment lands, the invoice flips to paid and you get notified. You can also record a payment manually (cash at the counter, for example) whenever money changes hands.

Track Every Status

Every invoice carries a clear status: draft, sent, paid, overdue, or cancelled. Overdue invoices stand out so nothing slips through the cracks, and partial payments are tracked so the remaining balance is always obvious.

Your Numbers Stay Honest

Invoice payments count as revenue across your dashboard, Finance, and Reports — so your numbers reflect everything you actually received, not just counter sales. If you're on the Pro plan, you can also connect a settlement bank from Payments & Billing and have online payments paid out straight to your account.

One Place for Your Money

Payments & Billing shows the total money received through Paystack, what came in this month, and a six-month trend so you can see how online payments are growing. A table lists your recent online payments with the invoice, customer, payment method, and amount — everything you need at a glance.

Connect Your Settlement Bank

You don't need your own Paystack account — Keel processes payments on your behalf. You just add the bank account you want payouts sent to. Once it's connected, money from online payments is settled to that account, typically within 1–2 days.

Transparent Fees

There are no hidden cuts. Keel keeps a small 3% service fee on online payments to run the platform, and everything else flows through to your bank. The page shows you the money coming in so you always know exactly what to expect in your payouts.

Where to Find It

Find Payments & Billing in the Other section of your sidebar, or under Settings → Billing. It's part of the Pro plan, along with invoices and online payments — the tools that turn Keel from a record-keeper into a money collector.

Four Themes, Pick Your Vibe

Choose between Keel Light, Forest, Keel Dark, and Midnight from Settings → Preferences. Each theme recolours the whole app instantly — no reload, no flicker — and your choice is remembered per shop. Pick a calm light theme for daytime work or a dark one for late-night stock counting.

The Quick Menu: Right-Click for Everything

Right-click anywhere on your dashboard and you get Keel's quick menu instead of the browser default. It remembers your recent pages, jumps to any section of the app, switches themes, refreshes the page, copies the current link, and even signs you out — all in one menu. You can navigate the whole app without ever touching the sidebar.

Actions Where You Are

The quick menu is context-aware. Right-click a product in Inventory and you can edit it directly. Right-click a sale and the receipt opens. Right-click an invoice and you can view, send, record payment, or print it — no hunting through menus to find the action you need.

Tune It to Your Taste

Not every action suits every shop. Head to Settings → Quick Menu to toggle each item on or off, so your menu shows exactly what you use. New actions appear as Keel grows — and you control whether they show up for you.

The Big Picture Up Top

A hero card leads with today's revenue and a six-month trend line, so you can see not just what came in today but how today compares to yesterday and last week. Next to it: net profit, items sold, and low-stock warnings — the three numbers that tell you if the machine is running.

Understand How You're Paid

A payment donut breaks down where your money comes from — M-Pesa, cash, card, bank — so you can spot trends like a shift to mobile money. A sales trend chart switches between day, week, and month views to reveal the rhythm of your business.

See What's Selling (and What Isn't)

Your top products now show revenue bars and profit-margin chips, so the most valuable items stand out instantly. A revenue-vs-expenses chart keeps profit honest, and a slow-moving stock panel flags money sitting idle on shelves.

Everything That's Moving

A recent-activity feed rolls sales, stock movements, and other changes into one live timeline, and your upcoming scheduled posts appear so you always know what's going out next. For service businesses, the Overview adapts to show order status and pipeline instead of product stats.

Built for Your Business

Whether you run a product shop or a service business, the Overview shapes itself around how you work — and if you have a live website, your site analytics are woven in too. One screen, your whole business.

The WhatsApp Bot, Set Up in Three Steps

A WhatsApp bot answers customer questions instantly — stock, prices, opening hours — even while you sleep. Setting it up used to mean understanding APIs and webhooks. Now it's a three-step wizard: type your number, confirm the code we send you, and the bot is live. Keel handles all the technical onboarding behind the scenes.

Google Calendar, Synced

If you run a service business — appointments, bookings, pickups — connect your Google Calendar and every scheduled order appears in it automatically. No double-entry, no missed appointments, no copying times across apps. Your day plans itself.

A Store That Grows

Each integration has its own page explaining exactly what it does and how to set it up, with a step-by-step wizard so you always know where you are. Connect what you need today and leave the rest for later — more integrations are on the way.

Why Connect at All

Every integration is designed to save you real time: the bot answers while you serve customers, the calendar syncs while you run the floor. Set them up once and they keep working in the background, so you can focus on the parts of the business only you can do.

Daily Summaries

Every day you get a digest of your shop's day: sales, low-stock items, and anything that needs your attention. Open it over chai and you know exactly where things stand before you even unlock the door. If a day's too quiet, you'll spot it immediately instead of finding out weeks later.

Weekly Reports

A weekly report zooms out to the big picture — your top products, average daily revenue, and how the week trended. It's your short-term P&L in one email, perfect for deciding what to restock and what to push harder next week.

Low-Stock Alerts Before You Run Out

Set a low-stock threshold and Keel emails you the moment a product crosses it. Bestsellers sell out fast — this warning gives you time to reorder before a customer asks and you have to say no. Each product only alerts once per restock cycle, so your inbox doesn't get noisy.

Know the Moment You're Paid

When a customer pays an invoice online, you get a 'paid' notification. The money's in motion and you knew about it before the customer even closed the app.

Set It Once, Forget It

Everything is managed in Settings → Notifications: choose which email receives alerts and turn each type on or off to suit your routine. Keel even notices when a shop goes quiet and pauses routine mail until activity picks up — so alerts stay useful, not annoying.

What It Is

The Assistant is a floating chat button that lives in your dashboard. Open it and ask a question in plain English — Swahili works too. It answers from two sources: the Keel help docs (so the guidance is always up to date with your business type) and, when relevant, your own shop data. It isn't a generic chatbot guessing in the dark.

The More You Tell It, the Better It Answers

Keel knows whether you run a product shop or a service business — a salon, a laundry, a repair shop. The Assistant scopes its answers to your business type automatically. Ask 'how should I price my services?' and you'll get service-pricing guidance, not a product-pricing essay.

Built on Your Docs, Not on Guesswork

Before answering, the Assistant finds the most relevant help articles for your question and grounds its reply in them. That means the advice stays consistent with what you'd find in the help centre — and it cites the docs so you can read deeper if you want.

Honest Feedback Loop

After each answer, give a quick thumbs up or down. If something isn't helpful, tell it why. Your feedback teaches us which answers miss the mark so we can keep improving the guidance for every shop owner.

When to Use It

Use the Assistant for quick how-tos ('How do I log a sale?'), for advice ('What's a good low stock threshold?'), or for ideas ('What should I post on social media this week?'). For hard numbers, your Reports and Overview pages remain the source of truth — the Assistant points you there.

The Keel Assistant is included with your plan. Look for the chat bubble in the corner of your dashboard and ask away — it's like having a business partner who never sleeps.

Start with What You Actually Sell

Before you take a single order, list every service you offer on the Services page. Be specific: 'Wash & Fold' and 'Wash & Iron' are different jobs with different prices. For laundries, set weight-based pricing. For salons, give each treatment a duration — it helps you see how many you can fit in a day.

Take Orders Like a Pro

When a customer walks in, create an order: their name and phone, the services they need, any notes ('extra starch', 'no gel'), and the total. Keel keeps a running record of everything a customer has ever had done — so returning clients get recognised instantly by their number.

Move Work Through the Queue

Orders flow through a simple status: Pending → In Progress → Ready → Completed. Use the Queue page as your workspace — see everything in the shop at a glance and update status as work moves. No more shouting across the room to ask whose order is ready.

Schedule It (and Sync It)

For appointments — salon bookings, service appointments — give each order a scheduled date and time. If you're on the Pro plan and have Google Calendar connected, orders sync straight to your calendar so your day plans itself.

Know Your Revenue and Your Costs

Service orders feed your sales figures the same way product sales do, so today's revenue, your P&L, and profit margins all stay accurate. Track expenses like products, rent, and utilities to see what your services actually net you — not just what you ring up.

The shops that run the tightest operations are the ones whose owners can see the whole day in one place. Set up your services, take your first order, and let Keel keep the queue moving.

Day 1: Set Up Your Shop

After signing up, the setup wizard will guide you through choosing your business category (product or service-based), entering your store name, and configuring basic settings. Don't skip this — it determines how your dashboard behaves.

Key decisions in setup: your business category (Clothing, Electronics, Salon, Laundry, etc.) controls which variant fields and features are available. A laundry shop gets weight-based billing; an electronics shop gets barcode scanning.

Day 2: Add Your Products

Head to the Inventory page and start adding products. You don't need to add everything at once — start with your top 10-20 bestsellers. For each product, add a name, price, stock quantity, and optionally a cost price (needed for profit margin calculations).

If you're in electronics or electricals, use the barcode scanner to add products quickly. Just point your phone camera at the barcode and Keel fills in the details.

Day 3: Log Your First Sale

Go to Sales and log a sale. Select a product, enter the quantity and amount, choose the payment method (Cash, M-Pesa, Bank, etc.), and save. Watch your stock decrease automatically and your dashboard revenue update in real time.

Day 4-5: Explore Reports & Finance

Check the Overview dashboard to see your sales chart, top products, and low stock alerts. Visit Reports to view profit margins per product. Go to Finance to record any expenses you've incurred.

Day 6-7: Set Up Your Website

If you're on the Pro plan, set up your website URL in Settings. Publish products from Inventory to your live catalogue. Configure banners, business info, and the WhatsApp chat widget on the Website page. Share your new site with customers!

Always Track Cost Prices

Enter the cost price for every product you add. Even if you think you know your margins, seeing them calculated automatically in Reports helps you spot products that aren't profitable enough. Keel shows you revenue, cost, profit, and margin percentage for every product.

Use Low Stock Alerts

Set your low stock threshold in Settings → Notifications. Keel will highlight products that fall below this threshold on your dashboard and in the sidebar. This prevents stockouts on your bestsellers.

Review Slow-Moving Stock

The Slow-Moving Stock report on the Overview page shows products with little or no sales in the last 30 days. Use this to decide which products to discount, bundle, or remove. Holding inventory that doesn't sell ties up cash.

Audit with Stock History

Every stock change — sale, adjustment, restock — is logged in Stock History with a timestamp and reason. If stock numbers look wrong, check the history to trace what happened.

Use Barcode Scanning

For electronics and electricals, barcode scanning speeds up product entry and checkout. Scan a barcode to find a product instantly during sales or to auto-fill fields when adding new stock.

Dashboard Overview

The Overview page is your command centre. It shows today's sales amount and quantity, total products, low stock count, and a 30-day sales chart. The chart helps you spot trends — are sales growing week over week? Which days are your strongest?

Profit Margins Report

Found in Reports → Profit Margins. This shows every product you've sold with its revenue, cost, profit, and margin percentage. Products with high revenue but low margin may need a price increase. Products with high margin but low sales may need more marketing.

P&L Statement

The Profit & Loss bar chart compares your total revenue against expenses over a week or month. Your net profit is revenue minus expenses. Use the week view for tactical decisions and the month view for strategic planning.

Exporting Reports

Export your P&L data as CSV or PDF for accountants, investors, or your own records. The CSV export includes revenue, expenses, and net profit for the selected period.

Prerequisites

The live website feature requires a Pro subscription. You'll also need a domain or subdomain where your site will live. Configure your website URL in Settings → Store.

Setting Up

Once your website URL is set, the Website tab appears in your sidebar. From there, you can manage banners, update business info, add gallery images, and configure the chat widget.

Publishing Products

Products don't automatically appear on your website. Go to Inventory and click the 'Publish' button on each product you want to showcase. Published products appear in your website's catalogue with their name, price, image, and description.

Customising Your Site

Use the Website tab to add promotional banners, update your business hours, upload shop photos, and enable a WhatsApp chat widget. Changes appear on your live site instantly.

Know Your Numbers

Use Keel's reports to understand which products sell best, which have the best margins, and which aren't moving. Data beats gut feelings. Check your dashboard daily and review your P&L weekly.

Go Digital

A website and social media presence are no longer optional. Keel gives you both. Publish your products online, share them on Instagram and TikTok, and let customers message you via WhatsApp directly from your site.

Use QR Codes

Print QR codes for your products and put them on physical displays. Customers scan with their phone and see product details instantly. It bridges the gap between your physical shop and online catalogue.

Track Expenses

Small expenses add up. Record every business expense in Keel to see where your money is going. You might be surprised how much you're spending on categories you didn't expect.

Build Customer Relationships

Use the customers feature to track who buys from you and what they buy. Follow up with regular customers, offer loyalty discounts, and ask for referrals. A retained customer is worth more than a new one.

Real-Time Stock Updates

When you log a sale in Keel, stock is deducted automatically. In a spreadsheet, you have to manually update stock levels — and it's easy to forget or make a typo. A missed update means you might sell a product you don't have.

Automatic Reports

Keel generates sales charts, profit margins, and P&L statements automatically. With a spreadsheet, you build these yourself — and most people don't have the time or skills to do it properly.

Multi-Device Access

Keel works in any browser on any device. Log sales from your phone, check reports on your laptop. Spreadsheets require file sharing, version management, and constant emailing back and forth.

Built-in Website & Social

Keel includes a live website, WhatsApp chat, and social media tools. Spreadsheets can't do any of this. You'd need separate tools for each function, adding cost and complexity.

Data Safety

Your Keel data is backed up, encrypted, and secure. A spreadsheet on your laptop can be lost to a hard drive crash, accidental deletion, or a corrupted file. Keel also tracks every change with timestamps.

Setting Up Services

On the Services page, define what you offer. Each service can have a name, category, price, and optional variants. For laundries, set weight-based pricing. For salons, list each treatment with its duration and price.

Creating Orders

When a customer walks in, create an order on the Orders page. Add the customer's name and phone number, select the services they need, add notes (e.g., 'add starch' for laundry), and set the total.

Tracking Order Status

Orders move through statuses: Pending → In Progress → Ready → Completed. Use the Queue page to see all active orders at a glance. Drag or click to update status as work progresses.

Customer Profiles

Returning customers are automatically recognised by their phone number. View their order history, total spent, and notes from previous visits. Great for personalised service.

1. Product QR Codes on Shelves

Print QR codes for individual products and place them next to the physical item on your shelf. Customers scan to see product details, variants, and pricing on their phone. This works especially well for electronics where customers want to compare specs.

2. Website QR on Your Shop Door

Put your website QR code on your shop door or window. Passers-by can scan it to browse your catalogue even when your shop is closed. It's like having a 24-hour storefront.

3. WhatsApp QR at the Counter

Place your WhatsApp QR code at the payment counter. Customers scan it to save your number and message you later for orders, inquiries, or referrals.

4. QR Codes on Receipts

Print your website QR code on receipts so customers can easily find you online for repeat purchases.

5. Share in Social Media

Download your QR codes and include them in Instagram posts, TikTok videos, or WhatsApp status updates. Make it easy for followers to browse your catalogue without leaving the app.