Soko Sensei gives your business an online shop, appointment bookings and M-Pesa and Pesapal payments, all run from one dashboard. This guide walks you through it in the order most businesses set things up.
Logging in
Sign in at /admin with the email and password we send you. The menu on the left is grouped by what you do: Shop for products and orders, Services for services and bookings, Inventory Management for stock, Finance for payments, Marketing for leads, and Settings for your store's details and integrations.
You only see the parts your plan includes. If something has expired, it stays in the menu marked Expired until it is renewed (see Renewals).
Your store details
Go to Settings → Store Settings. Fill in:
- Store identity: your business name, a short tagline and a description customers will see.
- Contact details and address: shown on your website so customers can reach you.
- Branding: your logo and the small icon shown in browser tabs.
- White labeling: your website address (for example
shop.yourbrand.co.ke) and your brand colours. - Business hours and days: these also become the starting point when you create booking slots.
- Policies: links to your terms and privacy pages, and your refund policy.
Your currency, timezone and platform address are set by our team. Ask us if any of them need to change.
Products
- Create your Categories first (top of the menu), for example Shoes or Hair care. Categories are shared by products and services.
- Go to Shop → Products and add each product: name, description, price, how many you have in stock, and photos.
- Mark products as On sale or Featured to highlight them on your website.
Services and bookings
- Go to Services → Services and add each service. Choose how it is priced: a fixed price, a price range, quote on request, or free.
- Switch on Requires appointment for anything customers book a time for.
- Edit the service and click View Slots to create the times customers can book. You can add slots one by one, fill a single day, or generate across dates (for example every Monday to Friday, 9am to 5pm, in 1-hour slots, for the next month).
A slot can only be booked once, so two customers never get the same time. Bookings appear under Services → Appointments.
Orders
Orders from your website appear under Shop → Product Orders, and paid service bookings under Services → Service Orders. Each order shows the customer, what they ordered, the total, and its payment status (pending, paid, cancelled). Update the order status as you process, dispatch and deliver it.
Getting paid
Go to Settings → Integrations. Payments go straight into your own M-Pesa or Pesapal account; we never hold your money.
M-Pesa (Lipa na M-Pesa Online, the prompt that appears on the customer's phone):
- Choose Paybill or Till (Buy Goods) and enter your number.
- Enter the consumer key, consumer secret and passkey from your app on Safaricom's Daraja portal. We can help you get these.
- Use Sandbox while testing and switch to Live when you are ready.
Pesapal (cards and mobile money on a secure Pesapal page):
- Enter your Pesapal consumer key and consumer secret.
- Click Register IPN so Pesapal can tell us when a payment completes.
Click Test connection on each one to check your details. Saved keys are stored securely and never shown again. M-Pesa and Pesapal charge their usual transaction fees, which go to them.
Leads
When someone fills in the enquiry form on your website, it appears under Marketing → Leads. Move each lead along as you follow up: New, Contacted, Qualified, then Converted or Lost. Add notes so your team knows where things stand.
Stock
If your plan includes inventory, record the items you keep under Inventory Management. Log stock coming in and going out, and the dashboard lists items running low.
Dashboard and reports
The Dashboard shows your revenue and orders for the period you pick, compared with the period before, plus your best-selling products and services. Each section (orders, payments, products and so on) also has its own figures at the top of the page, which follow the filters you apply to the table.
Your team
Add staff accounts under Management → User Profile. Admins can change things; staff can look things up. Management → Activity Log shows who did what and when, including sign-ins.
Your website
Your customers shop and book on your own website, which reads everything from your Soko Sensei account. You can have us design it (see pricing), or have your own developer build it using our Developer API guide. Your developer will need your Store ID and API key from Settings → Integrations.
Renewals
We email your store's admins 30 days, 7 days and 2 days before a part of your plan is due for renewal, and show a reminder at the top of your dashboard. If a renewal is missed, that part is locked until it is renewed. Nothing is deleted: your products, orders and customers are all still there when you renew.
Getting help
Use the form on our home page, email info@volcha.co.ke or call 0743 417 198. We reply within one business day.