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Practical answers from the work we do every week
Getting online, audits, custom systems, M-PESA, AI, business email, and support - grouped by topic so you can find the answer fast.
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Getting online
Websites, business email on your own domain, and the setup a small business needs before anything else
Do I really need a website, or is a Facebook page enough?
For some businesses a Facebook or Instagram page genuinely is enough, and we will tell you if yours is one of them. You need your own site when people search for what you sell before they buy, when you want to be found on Google Maps, when you need to take payment, or when looking established is part of winning the work.
How long does a website take?
A straightforward business site takes about two weeks from the first call. Add forms, payments, or a lot of pages and it moves toward six. We give you a date at the start and we work to it.
Can I change the words myself afterwards?
Yes. We set it up so somebody on your team can update text, prices, photos, and pages without calling us or knowing anything technical. We show you how before we hand over.
Who owns the domain and the hosting - you or me?
You do. Every account is opened in your name with your email on it, and you get the passwords. If you ever want to move to somebody else, nothing is holding you. We have seen too many businesses held hostage by whoever registered their domain.
Why do my business emails end up in people's spam?
Usually because your domain has not been set up to prove the mail is really from you, or because you are sending through a cheap inbox bundled with your hosting. It is a settings problem, not a writing problem, and it is fixable in a few days.
Google Workspace, Microsoft 365, or Zoho - which one?
Zoho if you are a small team watching every shilling. Google Workspace if your people already live in Gmail and Drive. Microsoft 365 if you work in Word and Excel all day or your clients expect Outlook. We will ask three questions and tell you which one fits.
Will I lose my old emails if we move to a new provider?
No. We copy the existing mail across before switching anything over, so your history, folders, and contacts arrive with you. The switch itself happens over a few days and your team keeps working through it.
Can you set up addresses like info@ or sales@ for the whole team?
Yes. Shared addresses several people can answer, personal addresses for each person, and forwarding so nothing lands in an inbox nobody opens. We set them up on everyone's phone and laptop as part of the work.
Will people find my business on Google?
We claim and verify your Google listing so you appear on Maps and in local search, and we set the site up so search engines can read it properly. That is the groundwork. Ranking above established competitors for competitive searches takes longer and we will be honest about which ones are realistic.
Audits and rescue
Checking software you built with an AI tool, took over from somebody else, or stopped trusting
We built it with an AI tool. Is that a problem?
Not by itself - AI tools build workable things. The problem is what they leave out, because they are not asked. Nobody checks whether one customer can open another one's records, whether the same person can be charged twice, or whether the backup has ever been tested. That is what the audit is for.
What exactly do you look at?
Six things, worst first: security, money, speed, staying up, your records, and whether anyone else could take it over. The full list of questions we work through is published on the audit page - go through it against your own system first, and if none of it worries you, you do not need us.
How is this different from just asking a developer to have a look?
A developer looking casually will tell you what they would have done differently. We work through the same written list every time and give you a report sorted into fix now, fix this quarter, and leave alone - so you get a decision you can act on rather than an opinion.
Do I have to hire you to fix whatever you find?
No. The report belongs to you. Plenty of people take it to their own developer, and that is a perfectly good outcome. We quote separately for fixing, and only if you ask.
What if you find nothing serious?
We say so, in writing. You will have paid to stop worrying about it, which is a fair result and happens more often than people expect. We would rather tell you it is fine than invent work.
The person who built my system has disappeared. Can you take it over?
Usually yes, and it is common. We start with the audit so you know what you have inherited before spending anything more on it. What we need is access to the code and the accounts - if you cannot get those back, say so early, because that changes the answer.
Can you check it without breaking anything or disturbing customers?
Yes. We work from a copy and from read-only access. We do not test on your live system while real customers are using it, and we do not need to take anything offline.
Custom systems
The system your staff open every morning - customers, orders, stock, approvals, and reports
How do you decide what to build?
We start with what is going wrong, not with a list of features. Then we follow the work through - how a customer moves in, who hands what to whom, who approves what - and build around that. If a smaller version would fix the problem, we say so.
How long does a system take to build?
Most take between four and twelve weeks depending on how much of the business it touches. We break it into stages so something useful is working early rather than everything arriving at the end.
Do we own the code?
Yes, once the work is paid for. You get the code, the accounts, and the ability to hand it to any other developer. We do not keep anything back as leverage.
Can it work with the systems we already use?
Usually. Accounting packages, M-PESA, spreadsheets your team will not give up, school or clinic software you already pay for. If something has no way to connect, we will tell you before you commit rather than after.
What if what we need changes halfway through?
Some change is normal and we plan for it. Big changes shift the date or the price, and we tell you which before doing the work rather than presenting it afterwards. Anything settled in the first two weeks is cheap to change; the same change in the last week is not.
Will our staff actually be able to use it?
That is most of the job. We build around how your team already works instead of expecting them to change, we train them before go-live, and we watch the first weeks closely. A system nobody uses is a failed system, however well it is built.
Do you build mobile apps?
Sometimes, but we usually talk people out of it. A site that works properly on a phone does the same job, costs less, and needs nobody to download anything. A real app makes sense when you need the camera, GPS, or to work with no network - field teams and delivery, for example.
We bill the same customers every month. Do you build that?
We will point you at Zana instead. It is our own software and it already does invoices, meter readings, school fees, service charge, subscriptions, and arrears, for a few thousand shillings a month rather than a few hundred thousand once. We only quote a build when the work around the billing is the hard part.
Payments and M-PESA
Taking money, recording it once, and making it agree with your statement at the end of the month
Can you put M-PESA into my website or system?
Yes, and this is most of what we do. The customer gets the prompt on their phone and approves it, the payment records itself against the right order or invoice, and both of you get a receipt. Card and bank can sit alongside it.
Paybill or till - which do I need, and can you help me get one?
A till suits over-the-counter selling. A paybill suits invoicing, where each customer has an account number so payments identify themselves. We advise on which fits and help with the Safaricom application, though the account has to be in your business name and the approval time is theirs, not ours.
What happens when a payment fails or gets stuck halfway?
This is the part most systems get wrong. Money arriving twice must not be counted twice, a message going missing must not lose the payment, and a customer closing their phone mid-way must not leave a half-finished order. We build and test for all three, because they happen every week rather than never.
My M-PESA statement and my books never agree. Can that be fixed?
Yes, and it is the most common thing we get called about. Zana takes the statement you already download - even a scanned one - reads every deposit, works out which invoice it settles, and leaves only what it genuinely cannot match for a person to decide. Uploading the same statement twice never double-counts anything.
Can the system pay people out, not just take money in?
Yes. Paying suppliers, staff, or refunds straight to mobile money or a bank account, with approvals and daily limits so one person cannot move money alone. Casual wages on a construction site work exactly this way in SiteBooks.
Who pays the transaction charges?
Safaricom and the card processors charge their own fees and those go to them, not to us. We do not add a percentage on top of your collections. We will show you what the charges look like at your volume so there are no surprises.
Is it safe to take payments through a system you build?
Card details never touch your system - they go straight to the processor. For M-PESA, the safety questions are whether prices are worked out on your side rather than trusted from the customer's phone, and whether a payment can be recorded without the money arriving. Both are on our audit list and both get tested.
AI and messaging
Work that runs on its own - reading documents, sorting messages, and keeping customers updated
What can AI actually do for a business like mine?
The useful things are dull ones. Reading supplier invoices, IDs, and statements so nobody retypes them. Sorting incoming messages so the urgent ones surface. Drafting replies for a person to check. Helping match payments to invoices. If someone is promising more than that, be careful.
Do I need a lot of data before AI is worth doing?
Not for most of it. Reading documents, sorting messages, and drafting replies work from day one. Predicting things - which customers will stop buying, what stock to order - does need history, usually a year or more of clean records.
Will AI make decisions about my money on its own?
No. Anything that moves money, changes a price, or sends something to a customer waits for a person to approve it. AI does the reading, sorting, and drafting; the decision stays with your team, and every action is logged so you can see what happened.
Can it work from our own information rather than general knowledge?
Yes, and it should. We point it at your own records, documents, and prices, and it answers from those. It also shows where an answer came from, so somebody can check it rather than taking its word.
Can customers get automatic WhatsApp or SMS updates?
Yes. Messages that send themselves when something happens - invoice raised, payment received, order on the way, fees due - so nobody is typing the same thing forty times. Delivery is tracked, and people can opt out.
What is the difference between WhatsApp and SMS for reaching customers?
WhatsApp is cheaper per message, handles pictures and documents, and people reply to it. SMS reaches every phone with no app and no data, which still matters. Most businesses want both: WhatsApp first, SMS for anything that absolutely must arrive.
Working with us
How we start, who you deal with, what happens after it goes live, and who we are a bad fit for
How do we start?
A short call, about half an hour, where you describe what is going wrong. You do not need to know what the solution is - working that out is our job. Afterwards you get a written summary of what we would do, roughly how long, and a price range.
How fast do you reply?
Within a working day, usually the same day. If we are not the right people for what you need, you will hear that quickly rather than being chased for weeks.
Do you work with businesses outside Nairobi?
Yes, across Kenya and East Africa. Almost all of the work happens over calls, WhatsApp, and screen sharing anyway. We travel when a project genuinely needs it, like watching how a shop floor or a school office actually runs.
Who do we actually deal with once work starts?
The same people from the first call onwards. You are not handed to a team you have never met, and nobody inexperienced inherits your project halfway. We are small, and that is the main advantage of it.
What happens after it goes live?
We watch the first weeks closely, because that is when real use finds what testing did not. After that you can leave it alone, keep us on a monthly arrangement, or call when something needs changing. We do not force a retainer on anyone.
Can you show us work you have done?
Zana and SiteBooks are ours - open them and use them. Zana bills our own customers on M-PESA every month, so whatever we say about payments holding up, ours already does. Client work is mostly under wraps, but we can walk you through what we did and why on a call.
What makes you different from hiring a freelancer?
Honestly, for a simple website a good freelancer may be the better buy and we will say so. The difference shows up later: when money moves through the system, when something breaks at month end, or when the work has to be picked up two years on by somebody else.
Who are you a bad fit for?
Projects where nobody can make a decision and the requirements change with whoever is in the room. Work where the only goal is the cheapest possible version with nothing afterwards. And anyone who has already decided what to build and wants an engineer to agree rather than think.
Still have questions?
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