The question nobody had asked
We spent two months with a wholesaler in Kimironko, tracking every shilling lost to paper-based accounting. The operator — he asked us not to name him — wanted to know, honestly, what his filing cabinet was costing him.
The final number was 3.8 million RWF per year. For a business doing ~180 million RWF in annual sales, that’s roughly 2.1% of revenue disappearing into a cost nobody had put a name on. Here is how that 3.8M breaks down.
Late VAT filings — 720,000 RWF
Two late filings in 2024, both because the invoice pile took longer to assemble than the deadline allowed. The penalties plus the accountant’s overtime came to 720K.
Unallocated payments — 1,100,000 RWF
MoMo payments came in without clear invoice references. By the time someone sat down to match them, the corresponding invoices had moved around or been re-issued. Of the year’s unallocated bucket, about 1.1M was simply written off as unrecoverable.
Expired stock, uncaught — 960,000 RWF
Without a batch-level expiry system, the first-in, first-out rule was enforced by the storekeeper’s memory. Two batches of cooking oil and one of milk expired on the shelf. All three were saleable stock the day before they weren’t.
Duplicate invoicing — 540,000 RWF
Three customers received the same invoice twice across the year. Two paid both. One noticed and refused to pay anything until the duplicate was reversed — and held up an 800K order while it was sorted out. The cost includes the refunds plus the lost goodwill trip we can’t fully price.
Accountant time on reconciliation — 480,000 RWF
At 20,000 RWF per hour, the external accountant spent an extra 24 hours per year reconciling paper. That’s 480K in billable time that existed solely because the numbers didn’t tie out on their own.
Before we walked through the numbers, he thought his biggest cost was electricity. It was actually the filing cabinet.
We share this not to sell software — the owner has now switched, yes — but because the 3.8M number is probably conservative for most wholesalers of similar scale. Put a name on the cost before you decide whether to pay it.