She Sells by the Crate. Our App Was Counting Bottles.

A trader who sells drinks sent us a message about a problem I'm still a little embarrassed by.

She set up her stock the way she buys it: by the crate. Say she brought in 10 crates of Coca-Cola at ₦10,000 a crate, 24 bottles to a crate. She added the product, told MyTreda there were 24 bottles in a crate, entered 10 crates, and typed ₦10,000 as the cost price.

MyTreda showed her stock as worth ₦2,400,000.

It should have said ₦100,000.

What went wrong

MyTreda counts stock in single pieces. The crate option on the form was only a shortcut for entering quantity: "10 crates" was saved as 240 bottles. The price boxes always meant the price of one bottle.

Nothing on the form said so.

So when she typed ₦10,000, the figure on her supplier's invoice for one crate, MyTreda read it as the cost of one bottle. 240 bottles at ₦10,000 each is how ₦100,000 of stock turned into ₦2,400,000. Every profit figure after that was wrong too, because every bottle she sold was being measured against a ₦10,000 cost.

That was not her mistake. She typed exactly what she had paid. The form was asking its question in our language, not hers.

Two more things she asked for

Once we got talking, she asked two more questions:

• She only ever sells whole crates. Why does the app keep offering "Pieces"?
• Customers buy half a crate. How is she supposed to record half a crate?

Both are fair questions, and both came from the same place as the price problem. The app was built around how software likes to count, not how a drinks seller counts.

Why this matters more than it looks

Nigerian traders buy and sell in bags, cartons, crates, dozens and paint buckets. A customer buys a whole crate on Friday and half a crate on Tuesday. If an app makes you convert all of that into single "units" in your head, it isn't making your work simpler. It's handing you a sum to do at the counter, and a wrong number the day you get the sum wrong.

And a wrong number on your stock screen is not cosmetic. It's the number you use to decide whether you can afford to restock, what you really made this month, and whether someone is taking goods they shouldn't. If you can't trust it, you stop using it, and then you're back to the exercise book.

How MyTreda Handles This Now

Prices are asked the way you buy

Once you tell MyTreda a product comes in crates of 24, the form asks what one crate cost you and what you sell one crate for. The cost of one bottle is worked out for you. The price for a single bottle fills itself in from the crate price, and you only change it if you sell single bottles for more.

Sell a crate, half a crate or a single bottle

When you add a crate product to a sale, it goes in as one crate at the crate price. Just under it, tap ½ Crate for half, or Pieces for single bottles, and the price changes to match. You can still change the price by hand. The receipt says "1 Crate" or "½ Crate", so your customer's copy never shows a bare "1".

If you only ever sell by the crate

Set the product's unit to Crate (or Carton). Then one unit is one crate, and the sale shows two buttons, Crate and ½ Crate. No pieces, and no typing 0.5.

Stock that reads like your shelf

Your Products page now says "5 crates", "5½ crates" or "26½ cartons" instead of 132 bottles or 26.5, and it updates the moment you record a sale.

Your spreadsheet can carry crate prices

If you bring your products in from a spreadsheet, it can now carry the pack name, pieces per pack, the cost of a pack and the selling price of a pack.

What to Do This Week

If you set up a product by the crate or carton before this update, it still holds the old figures until you edit it. It takes about a minute per product.

1. Find them. Open Products and look for anything you buy by the crate, carton or pack.
2. If you only sell whole or half crates: tap Restock, set Unit of Measure to Crate (or Carton), set the quantity to how many crates you have (10, not 240), and put the crate prices in Cost per Crate and Selling Price per Crate. MyTreda will ask why the stock went down. Choose "Miscount / stock recount", then tap Update Product.
3. If you sell crates and single bottles: tap Restock, keep the pack name and the pieces per pack, fill in Cost per Crate and Selling Price per Crate, and leave the quantity in bottles (10 crates of 24 is 240). Tap Update Product.
4. Check the result. Your stock value on the Products page should now match what you actually paid for what's on your shelf.

Keep Telling Us

To everyone who set up a crate product before this update: I'm sorry for the confusion it caused. You did everything right. The form didn't.

The best changes we make come from traders who take the time to say "this doesn't match how I trade". This one came from a woman selling drinks by the crate who told us exactly what was wrong, and asked for exactly what she needed. If something in MyTreda doesn't match how you buy, count or sell, tell us. That's how the app learns your language instead of making you learn its.