Getting started

Create your account, your organization and your first branch, then follow the setup order that gets you selling the same day.

8 min readOwnerManager

How Wezo is put together

Wezo has three layers. Your organization is the business itself and owns your team, your customers, your discount codes and your menu templates. A branch is one physical location — a shop, restaurant or outlet — and owns its stock, menu, orders, tables and reports. The POS is the till screen a cashier works on, and it always runs inside one branch.

The branch type you choose in the middle decides which catalog you build next — and it is the one choice that is painful to change later.

Read this diagram as text

Sign up → Verify email
Verify email → Sign in
Sign in → Already in an organization?
Already in an organization? → Create organization (no)
Already in an organization? → Open the organization (yes)
Create organization → Create a branch
Open the organization → Create a branch
Create a branch → Branch type?
Branch type? → Menu categories, then menu items (restaurant)
Branch type? → Inventory categories, then items (retail)
Menu categories, then menu items → Set VAT, service charge and payment methods
Inventory categories, then items → Set VAT, service charge and payment methods
Set VAT, service charge and payment methods → Open the POS and sell

One organization holds many branches. Each branch has a back office, a till, and — for restaurants — a kitchen board and a customer screen.

Read this diagram as text

Organization → Branch A
Organization → Branch B
Branch A → Branch dashboard
Branch A → POS
Branch A → Kitchen & customer screens

Everything is scoped to a branch

Stock counts, menus, orders, shifts, tables and reports belong to a single branch. Staff members, customers, loyalty points, discount codes and menu templates are shared across the whole organization.

Create your account

wezo.africa → Sign Up

Open the Sign Up page and enter your name, email address and password.
Use an address you can open right now — the next step needs it.
Click Sign Up.
A verification email is sent to the address you entered.
Open the email and click the verification link.
You land back on the app with a confirmed address.
Sign in with your email and password.
If you ever lose the password, use Forgot Password? on the sign-in page to get a reset link by email.

Verify before you invite anyone

Invitations, password resets and emailed receipts all go through the same mail path. If your own verification email never arrived, check the spam folder before inviting staff.

Create your organization

Organization → Create

On your first sign-in you are sent straight to the create-organization screen. If you already belong to an organization, you land on its dashboard instead.

Enter the Organization Name — your registered or trading business name.
Optionally upload a logo.
It is stored with the organization and shown in the app.
Click Create Organization.
You are taken straight to creating your first branch.

Create your first branch

Organization → Branch → Create

What you are asked for

Branch Namerequired: How staff will recognise this location in the branch switcher.
Email and Phone Numberrequired: Contact details for the location; they print on receipts.
Country and Locationrequired: Used for localisation and for grouping branches in reports.
Branch Typerequired: Restaurant or Retail. This decides the whole shape of the branch — see below.
Addressrequired: Street address printed on receipts.
Order Prefixrequired: Short code such as ORD that starts every order number at this branch. Give each branch its own prefix so order numbers never look alike across locations.

What Branch Type changes

	Restaurant	Retail
Sells from	Menu items	Inventory items
Kitchen display	Available	Not shown
Tables and reservations	Available	Not shown
Recipes deduct ingredients	Yes	Sale deducts the item itself
POS captures a table number	Yes	No

Choose the type carefully

Branch type drives which catalog the POS sells from. Switching an established branch from restaurant to retail means its orders point at a catalog the till no longer reads. Create a second branch instead of converting a busy one.

The order to set things up

You can sell with nothing but a catalog, but each step below removes a manual workaround later. Work down the list.

Day one — get to a first sale

Create categories, then items.
Restaurant: Menu Categories then Menu. Retail: Inventory Categories then Inventory. Items need a category before they show up cleanly at the till.
Set VAT and service charge.
Dashboard → Settings. Leave both at 0 if you do not charge them.
Pick how you get paid.
Cash and card need no setup. M-Pesa needs credentials configured on the branch before an STK push can be sent.
Open the POS and ring up a test order, then refund it.
This proves pricing, stock deduction and receipts end to end.

Week one — make it run without you

Invite your team and set roles.
Roles decide who can refund, discount, reconcile or see profit figures.
Add suppliers and record your first purchase order.
Receiving stock through a purchase order keeps costs and margins honest.
Set reorder levels on the items you cannot run out of.
These drive low-stock notifications.
Have cashiers clock in, and reconcile the drawer at close.
Reconciliation compares counted cash against what the system expected.
Restaurants: add tables, then recipes for dishes that consume stock.

Finding your way around

The four surfaces

Organization — branch list, members, organization settings, and orders across every branch.
Branch dashboard — the back office: catalog, orders, purchasing, reports, settings.
POS — the till. Opened per branch from the branch page or the Open POS button.
Kitchen display — a full-screen ticket board for the kitchen, opened in its own tab.

Switch branches from the sidebar: pick the organization, then the branch you want to work in. The dashboard navigation changes with the branch type, so a retail branch shows Products where a restaurant shows Inventory and Menu.