For Botswana

Ask about the bench before you ask about the features

The pula is the calmest currency in the region to run a business in. The hard question in Gaborone is who is actually reachable when something breaks on the last day of the month — so this page answers that first and the capability question second.

Read the support answer first Talk to us about Botswana

Support first, features second

The support question, answered before you ask it

Botswana hands you the easiest currency environment in the region and the hardest supply of people who can implement and support a mid-market operations system. Here is our honest position, and the questions you should put to every vendor on your list — including us.

What we are

A remote-first team based in Nairobi, one hour ahead of Gaborone — so the working day overlaps almost completely, unlike a European or American vendor.
Support by in-app chat, email and scheduled calls, with implementation run as guided sessions on your own data rather than a fly-in project.
A product deliberately built so your own finance lead can configure approvals, reports and users without a consultant in the room.

What we are not

We have no office in Gaborone and no permanent staff in Botswana. If your requirement is somebody on site the same afternoon, we are not that, and we would rather say it now.
We are not the right buy if your evaluation weights on-site presence above everything else — in that case shortlist a local or Gauteng-based implementer and hold them to the same questions.
We do not staff a 24-hour desk. Support runs on business hours in East African Time with an overlap that covers your whole working day, not your whole night.

Five questions worth asking every vendor on your list — including us

Name the people who would support us, where they sit, and the last three projects they finished for a customer in Botswana.
What is the response commitment in writing, and what happens on the last two working days of a month?
Which parts of configuration can our own staff change without raising a ticket?
If your implementer leaves, who inside the vendor knows our configuration?
What does year two cost, including support, once the discount on year one has gone?

What we keep seeing in Gaborone

Four expensive habits

Three of these are decided before anyone opens the software, which is why they cost so much to undo afterwards.

A shortlist ranked on feature depth

The clever product with the deepest module list wins the evaluation and then waits three weeks for a consultant with availability. The simpler system somebody nearby can actually run would have been worth more.

An implementer who flies in

Configuration happens in an intense fortnight, the knowledge leaves on a plane, and the first real month-end arrives with nobody in the country who has seen the inside of the system.

Tender and audit files assembled by hand

Approvals, quotations, delivery notes and supplier documents live in four places, so every submission and every audit is a two-day assembly job rather than a search.

Imports priced off the supplier invoice

Goods arrive through Durban or Walvis Bay carrying freight, duty, clearing and a long inland leg — none of which reached the unit cost the price list was built on.

Operations in Botswana

The question is not what the software can do. It is what your own team can do with it in month seven.

The support argument is above and it is the reason this page leads where it does. The operational consequence is unusual: the subject here is who runs the system, not what it holds. The pattern is consistent — the product with the deepest module list wins the evaluation, configuration happens in an intense fortnight, the knowledge leaves on a plane, and the first real change request goes unanswered for three weeks. So every item below is something your own finance lead can operate without us in the room.

Suppliers

Expiry dates the system watches, not a person

Trade licences, tax clearances and registrations held against the supplier with dates the system tracks — so the control survives the person who set it up leaving, which is the entire test in a market with a thin bench.

Reporting

A report your own team builds, without a consultant

Datasets, filters and saved outputs your finance lead can assemble and change. The measure of this is not how impressive the first report was — it is whether the second one, needed in month seven for a reason nobody predicted, requires a support ticket.

Documents

A tender or audit file that assembles itself

Approvals, quotations, delivery notes and supplier documents held against the transactions they belong to rather than in four places — so a submission is a retrieval instead of a fortnight of collation.

Procurement

Thresholds your own team sets and changes

Approvals that refuse rather than warn, with the limits and the delegation configurable by you. A control you cannot adjust without the vendor is a control that will be worked around by Christmas.

Assets

Named custody, maintained by whoever hands things over

Check-out and check-in, condition at each hand-off, movement history — operated by the storeman rather than by an administrator, because a register only stays true if the person moving the item is the person recording it.

Landed cost

Cost components you define and can revise

Goods arriving through Durban or Walvis Bay carry freight, duty, clearing and a long inland leg. The components are yours to define and change, which matters more here than the mechanism — a costing model only you understand is one only we can fix.

One thing this section is deliberately not: a claim that you will not need us. You will, and the honest questions to put to every vendor including us are in the bench section below. The claim is narrower — that the day-to-day of running this should not require a call, and that the right test of a shortlist is not module depth but what happens three weeks after the implementer's flight.

Scope, stated plainly

BURS, payroll, bank feeds — and the support line

The last item in the right-hand column is about us, not about the software. It belongs there because it is the line most likely to decide whether we are the right vendor for you.

Botswana — what is built, and what we would build next

Running in the product today

The pula as a base currency preset, with the base locked so money is stored, invoiced, printed and reported in one denomination.
Foreign-currency transactions at the rate actually applied, held on the record, with suppliers and customers keeping their own trading currency.
Landed cost from freight, duty, clearing and inland transport allocated onto the receipt for goods arriving via Durban or Walvis Bay.
Multi-site stock with governed transfers, in-transit positions, blind cycle counting and valued variance on close.
Procurement with approval thresholds that refuse, RFQ comparison, three-way matching, supplier prequalification and document expiry tracking.
Asset registers with named custody, movements, verification, condition and disposal — with documents attached where they belong.
Offline capture on mobile with a device register, queued operations and duplicate-safe sync for sites away from reliable connectivity.

On the roadmap — and commissionable now

Transmission to BURS. Electronic VAT invoicing arrangements have been progressing here, and whatever applies to you is met today through an accredited route rather than through us. Our one fiscal integration anywhere is Kenya's eTIMS, and it is the precedent for building this one.
Turnkey statutory payroll. Botswana income tax bands and statutory contribution rules are maintained calculations in Kenya, our one market where they are, and would be built here the same way.
Automatic bank feeds and a local mobile money integration. Statements are imported and matched rather than pulled.

Where we point you to a specialist — and the second one is deliberate rather than lazy

Support is remote from Nairobi rather than from an office or permanent staff in Botswana. The working day overlaps, and on-site presence is not something we can promise.
The VAT preset is a starting value you own, not maintained regulatory content. Confirm the current rate and treatment with BURS or your practitioner.

Every item in the middle column is buildable. A BURS pipeline, a turnkey Botswana payroll engine and bank or mobile money feeds are all ordinary builds, and Kenya's eTIMS integration and its maintained payroll engine exist because Kenyan clients needed them and commissioned them — neither appeared by itself. Say which one stands between you and a decision and we will scope it as a build: written specification, timeline and price, before you commit to anything.

The support line belongs in this column as much as the technical ones, because it is the line most likely to matter to you and the one most vendors leave out of the conversation until the contract is signed. If any of the others is genuinely blocking — BURS transmission, local payroll, a bank feed — tell us and we will price it as a scoped build with a written spec rather than promise it vaguely.

How this starts

Three moves, in this order

Put the support questions to us first

Before any demo. Who supports you, from where, on what commitment, and what your own team can change unaided. If our answers do not fit how you buy, nothing after that matters.

Run one import and one tender file

A consignment through Durban or Walvis Bay costed properly, and one submission file assembled from the record rather than from four folders.

Divide the work in writing

What stays with your local accountant, payroll bureau and clearing agent, what lives here, and what crosses between them each month. One page, before go-live.

Read before you shortlist

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Questions we are asked here

Straight answers, and what happens next on every one

Do you support BURS electronic VAT invoicing?

No. Nothing is transmitted to the Botswana Unified Revenue Service from our system, and our only fiscal e-invoicing integration anywhere is Kenya's eTIMS, which is not portable. Electronic VAT invoicing arrangements here have been progressing, so confirm the current requirement and timeline directly with BURS or your practitioner rather than relying on any vendor's summary — and where an obligation applies to you, plan for a compliant route alongside us. What we hold is the record the return is built from, with net, tax and gross separated line by line. That is on the roadmap rather than a boundary, and it is commissionable now. A pipeline to a published BURS interface is scoped work rather than a research project. Kenya's eTIMS transmission and its maintained statutory payroll engine both exist because Kenyan clients needed them and commissioned them — neither arrived on a roadmap by itself. If this is the thing standing between you and a decision, say so and we will come back with a written specification, a timeline and a price before you commit to anything. What we will not do is print a date nobody has paid for.

You have no office here. Why would we buy from you?

Only for a specific reason: your complexity sits in operations rather than compliance, and you value a product your own team can run over a consultant who visits. We work from Nairobi, one hour ahead of Gaborone, so your entire working day is covered; implementation runs as guided sessions on your own data; and the system is deliberately built so a finance lead can change approvals, reports and users without raising a ticket. If on-site presence is genuinely your first criterion, a local or Gauteng-based implementer is the better buy and we will say so on the first call.

Is Botswana payroll handled?

Not statutorily. Employee records, contracts, compensation, leave with balances, attendance and payroll cost allocation to projects and cost centres all work anywhere. Income tax bands and statutory contribution rules are maintained for Kenya only, so here we recommend a local payroll bureau for the computation and filing with the employee and cost side held in AWRA. That split is genuinely workable, and it is more honest than presenting a configurable tax table as compliance.

How is the pula handled, and multi-currency alongside it?

The pula ships as a base currency preset and the organization's base is locked, so money is stored, invoiced, printed and reported in one denomination. Purchases in rand or dollars are recorded in their own currency at the rate actually applied, and that rate stays on the record — which is what makes a real margin visible afterwards. Suppliers and customers keep their own trading currency. Confirm the VAT preset against the current BURS rate at setup; presets are defaults you own rather than regulatory content we maintain.

We supply mines and government. Does the evidence side hold up?

That is the strongest case for us here. Approvals that refuse above a threshold, quotation comparisons with the award reason recorded, three-way matching before payment, supplier documents with expiry dates the system watches, and asset custody with movement history — all attached to the transaction they belong to. A tender submission or an audit request then becomes a search rather than a two-day assembly job. Bring a real submission to a demo and time how long it takes to reproduce.

Will it work at sites away from Gaborone?

For stock movement, yes: a registered device queues four operations locally — stock transfers, inventory check-out and check-in, and asset movements — syncs when connectivity returns, and duplicate-safe sync means a retried operation does not create a second record. Counting and receiving against a purchase order need a connection, so schedule those for a day with signal. Site staff can be given genuinely restricted access, which is a control as well as a simplification. As always, test it at the worst-connected site rather than in the boardroom.

What does the first year actually involve?

Configuration of your locations, approval thresholds, suppliers and opening stock, then one real cycle run end to end — a purchase approved, received, matched and paid — before anything is switched over wholesale. Most Botswana implementations of the operations layer are weeks rather than months, because the compliance half stays with your existing accountant and payroll bureau. Ask us for a written sequence with dates and owners before you sign; if we cannot produce one, that tells you something.