The POS system for Uganda that keeps selling, internet or not
With a connection, Stem syncs your shop to the cloud: live dashboard, backups, multi-branch reports. When the network drops, the till keeps selling at full speed from its own local copy and catches the cloud up later. Either way, the counter never stops.
What is a POS system?
A POS (point of sale) system is the software and hardware a business uses to ring up a sale: it records what was sold, takes the payment, prints a receipt and subtracts the item from stock. A good one also tracks customers, credit and daily takings, so the shop's numbers are done by closing time.
Stem is a POS system built for Uganda specifically. It runs on a Windows till at the counter or in any browser, and takes cash, card, MTN and Airtel mobile money and customer credit. Unlike a cloud-only till, it keeps selling at full speed when the internet drops.
The problems Stem was built to end
If even one of these is your normal week, Stem will pay for itself.
“The network is down, so the till is down.”
Not with Stem. The till keeps a full copy of your shop on the machine itself, sells at full speed with zero connection, and syncs the moment internet returns. Nothing waits, nothing is lost.
“Stock just… disappears, and nobody can explain it.”
Every item is tracked from the day it arrives to the day it sells, with wastage recorded, low-stock alerts, and counts that show exactly where the numbers stopped matching.
“The credit notebook never collects the money.”
Customer credit lives in the till, not a book: limits per customer, the balance printed on their receipt, repayments taken at the counter, and overdue debts flagged before they go bad.
“The evening cash never matches the sales.”
Every cashier works a shift with an opening float and a closing count. Expected against actual, per person, every day, so a drawer difference always has a name next to it.
“I close the shop, then start the paperwork.”
The day closes itself into one honest report: what you sold, what it cost, what was refunded, what needs attention tomorrow. You read it rather than compile it.
“I’m not sure what my staff ring up when I’m away.”
Every sale, price change, discount and refund carries the name of the person who did it. When your tills sync, you can watch the day from your phone’s browser, wherever you are.
Built around your kind of counter
Shops & supermarkets
Fast lanes, big catalogues, goods that expire.
- ✓Barcode scanning and exact-tender keypad
- ✓Batch-level stock with expiry-first selling
- ✓Low-stock alerts and Excel catalogue import
Restaurants & cafés
Orders that move: to the kitchen, to tables, to split bills.
- ✓Menus with modifiers, kitchen tickets at the pass
- ✓Table tabs with rounds and split bills
- ✓Recipes that deduct ingredients per dish sold
Wholesale & credit sellers
Customers you know by name, and balances you need to trust.
- ✓A credit book with limits and repayments at the till
- ✓Wholesale pricing, marked and audited
- ✓Verified transfers between branches
Everything a real counter needs. Nothing it doesn't.
A till that never stops selling
The Windows till runs fully offline. Sales, receipts, held orders and drawer accounting keep working with no connection at all, then sync when the internet returns.
- ✓Barcode scanning, split payments, exact-tender keypad
- ✓Cash, card, mobile money and customer credit in one flow
- ✓Offline sales book on the day they actually happened
Stock that tells the truth
Batch-level stock with expiry dates and first-expiry-first-out selling, low-stock alerts, wastage tracking, purchase orders, and verified branch-to-branch transfers.
- ✓Import your whole catalogue from Excel in one go
- ✓Made-to-order menu items never block on stock
- ✓Per-branch stock with verified transfers and variance rulings
Reports you can run a business on
A daily story of every shop day: net revenue, drawer expectations, refunds surfaced honestly, profit margins with real costs, and insights that flag risks before they bite.
- ✓Business-day reporting that survives late nights and offline tills
- ✓Profit margins that include real food and stock costs
- ✓Action queue that tells you what needs attention today
Restaurant mode
Menus with modifiers, kitchen tickets at the pass, table tabs with rounds and split bills, and recipes that deduct ingredients so you see food cost per dish.
See restaurant mode →Receipts customers can verify
Every receipt is cryptographically signed and carries a QR code. Anyone can scan it and see the genuine receipt, a real answer to fake-receipt disputes.
A credit book that follows up
Sell on credit with limits per customer, take repayments at the till, and see overdue balances before they become bad debt, even for offline sales.
Watch your shop from anywhere
When your tills sync to the cloud, your dashboard opens in any browser, including the one on your phone. Live sales, stock alerts and shift status without standing at the counter.
EFRIS, in development
The settings for your URA TIN, fiscal device and endpoint are in place and the plumbing is built, but sales are not yet transmitted to URA. Do not rely on Stem for EFRIS compliance yet.
Phones tracked by IMEI, in development
Serialized stock being built for phone and electronics dealers: every unit scanned in by serial or IMEI, the exact unit picked at sale, and its history kept for the warranty conversation.
What serialized stock will do →Video library mode, in development
A mode being built for Uganda’s movie and content-copy shops: the drive catalogued, copies metered onto customer USBs as sales, and a record of what left on which drive.
See what is planned →Selling by this afternoon
Register your store
Self-service signup: name your shop, choose retail or restaurant, set your till PIN, and you are in. No sales call required.
Load your products
Type them in, or import your whole catalogue (prices, stock, categories) from an Excel sheet in one go, with every row checked before anything is created.
Sell anywhere
Use the web till on any browser, or install the Windows till for full offline selling with thermal receipts and a cash drawer.
Installing the Windows till? See the install walkthrough, screen by screen →
Inside the Windows till
The installable till is a full point of sale in its own right, built to run the counter all day, with or without internet. It runs on any ordinary Windows laptop and plugs into the ESC/POS thermal printers, barcode scanners and cash drawers you already own.
The installed Windows till itself. Staff sign in with a PIN, even with no internet.
Thermal receipts, print-perfect
80mm raster receipts on any ESC/POS printer, USB or network, printed exactly like the signed artwork, QR and all.
Kitchen tickets at the pass
Dine-in and takeaway tickets fire to the kitchen printer the moment the order lands.
Shifts & drawer accounting
Opening floats, cash counts, expected-vs-actual per cashier, and a clean close of the business day.
Returns & exchanges at the counter
Refunds and exchanges settle against the original receipt, with printed audit-grade slips.
Credit sales & repayments offline
The customer credit book works right at the till: sell on credit and take repayments with no connection.
Held orders & table tabs
Park a sale and come back to it, run table tabs with rounds, and split bills when the party pays separately.
Batch labels & expiry-first selling
Print scannable batch labels and let the till sell first-expiry-first-out, so old stock leaves the shelf first.
Installs once, updates itself
Silent over-the-air updates, staff PIN sign-in per cashier, and themes from cosy to high-contrast.
Stem POS 1.7.3 for Windows
The full offline till in one small installer (37 MB): everything included, installs without administrator rights, updates itself. macOS and Android versions are on the way, and the web till already runs on any device with a browser today.
How much does Stem cost?
Stem starts free, and it is a starter rather than a demo: one user gets offline retail selling with the catalogue synced, stock, the credit book, shifts, the day’s report and analytics, at no cost and with no expiring trial. Paid plans are USh 20,000, USh 55,000 or USh 100,000 a month, billed by MTN or Airtel mobile money, adding staff accounts, the web till, advanced analytics and higher branch limits. You can change plan at any time from inside the app.
Built for the counter, not the boardroom
Most point-of-sale software assumes perfect internet, expensive hardware and a patient cashier. Real shops have none of those. Stem was built offline-first from day one: the till on your counter owns its own data, sells at full speed with no connection, and treats the cloud as a place to sync to rather than a thing to depend on.
That one decision shapes everything else: receipts that can be verified even when they were printed offline, reports that put every sale on the day it really happened, and a credit book that survives a lost connection. Stem is what your business looks like when the software respects how you actually work.
Stem is built in Uganda by Talemwa Solomon and a small team, for Ugandan shops and restaurants, not a foreign product translated for this market.
Not sure Stem fits your shop? Ask.
Describe your business: how you sell, what keeps going wrong, what you've tried. Then ask us anything. Your message goes straight to the people who build Stem, and a real person replies on the phone number or email you leave.
No newsletter and no spam. Your details are used only to answer your question.
Or reach us directly
We answer during business hours, East Africa Time (UTC+3).
Not sure yet? Start with a guide
Practical answers to what shop owners ask before changing how they sell, written to be useful whichever POS you end up choosing.
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How to choose a POS system in Uganda
The seven questions that actually separate a POS you can run a Ugandan shop on from one you will fight every day.
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How to move your shop from a paper notebook to a POS
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How mobile money works with a POS in Uganda
What “mobile money integration” really means on a Ugandan till, and how to reconcile MTN and Airtel at close without guesswork.
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How to stop losing money to expired stock
Expiry losses are invisible until you count. Here is how batch tracking, oldest-first selling and honest counts turn that leak into a number you can see.
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Do I need QuickBooks or a POS system?
Accounting software and a till solve different problems. Which one a Ugandan shop needs first, and where Stem stops.
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Asked before, answered honestly
›Why does my profit look higher than it feels?
One common reason: on most tills, a product added quickly at the counter records what it sells for and nothing about what it cost, so every one of those lines reports as pure profit. The lines it happens to are usually your fastest movers, which is exactly where it matters. Stem asks what you paid when you add the product and shows the margin as you type, so the reports start from a real cost rather than an assumed one.
›Does it really work without internet?
Yes, with one honest caveat. You need a connection to register your store and for the till’s first sign-in (it downloads your catalogue). From then on, day-to-day selling is fully offline: sales queue on the device and sync to the cloud when the connection returns. Nothing is lost, and reports book each sale on the day it actually happened.
›Is my data safe?
Your data lives in the cloud with nightly backups, and each till keeps its own local copy, so neither a dead laptop nor a dead connection loses your records.
›What hardware do I need?
Any Windows machine for the till, or just a browser for the web till. Standard ESC/POS thermal printers (USB or network), barcode scanners and cash drawers work out of the box.
›Can it run a restaurant?
Yes. Restaurant mode adds menus with modifiers, kitchen tickets, table tabs with rounds and split bills, and recipe-based ingredient tracking, on top of everything the retail till does.
›I have more than one branch.
Branches are first-class: per-branch stock, verified transfers between branches, per-branch reporting, and tills that belong to the branch they stand in.
›Does it run on Mac or Android?
The web till already runs on any device with a browser: Mac, Android, iPad, anything. Native offline tills for macOS and Android POS devices are on the way; the Windows till is available today.
›Does it work with EFRIS?
Not yet; EFRIS is in development. Stem holds the settings for your URA TIN, fiscal device and endpoint, and the structure around them is built, but completed sales are not yet transmitted to URA. Please do not rely on Stem for EFRIS compliance today; keep filing the way you do now. It is opt-in, so shops that are not EFRIS-registered never see it, and when live submission ships it reaches your till over the air.
›How much does Stem cost, and how do I pay?
The Free plan covers one user at no cost, with no expiring trial. Paid plans are USh 20,000 a month for Basic, USh 55,000 for Standard and USh 100,000 for Premium, all billed monthly by MTN or Airtel mobile money. Start free and upgrade when you grow. You can change plan at any time from inside the app.
Your counter, running by tonight
Register your store, load your products from Excel, and take your first sale, online or off.
Page updated 25 July 2026