Building a single source of truth for a Kenyan automotive business
Carsoko was running sales, stock, and customer follow-up across spreadsheets and chats. We built a custom platform that tracks every vehicle from listing to sale - with deposits, follow-ups, and profit visibility in one place.
What the business was facing
Automotive sales move fast, but the operation behind them was held together by spreadsheets, WhatsApp threads, and memory. That works until stock grows and leads start slipping.
An automotive sales business in Nairobi does not fail loudly - it leaks. A car quoted to two buyers, a deposit no one can trace back to a unit, a lead that goes cold because whoever took the call travelled: each is small on its own, but together they quietly erode margin and reputation in a market where buyers compare yards on WhatsApp within minutes.
The deeper cost was that leadership could never see the business as it actually was. Stock lived in one spreadsheet, deposits in M-Pesa statements and follow-ups in individual heads, so every management question - what is really in stock, what did we make on that unit, which leads are worth chasing - had to be rebuilt by hand, usually too late to act on.
No single, trusted view of what was in stock, reserved, or already sold.
- The same vehicle could be quoted to two buyers at once.
- Reconciling actual stock against the list was manual and error-prone.
- Nobody could answer 'what do we have right now?' with confidence.
Inquiries arrived on many channels and were tracked in people's heads.
- Follow-ups depended on whoever picked up the call.
- Deposits and commitments weren't tied to a clear pipeline.
- No visibility into which leads were going cold.
Costs and selling price lived in different places, so real profit was a guess.
- Landed cost, repairs, and fees weren't captured against each vehicle.
- Discounts were given without knowing the true floor.
- Reporting to leadership meant rebuilding numbers by hand.
What we designed and shipped
We built a custom vehicle sales and inventory platform on a hardened ERPNext foundation - designed around how the business actually sells.
We started from how the yard actually sells rather than from a generic ERP template. Before writing features we mapped the real lifecycle of a vehicle - acquisition, reconditioning cost, listing, reservation, deposit, delivery - and modelled each stage on a hardened ERPNext foundation so the system mirrored the business instead of forcing the business to mirror the system.
M-Pesa was integrated so a deposit is captured against a specific customer and unit the moment it lands, giving finance an evidence trail rather than a reconciliation chore. Reservation status was made visible to everyone at once - the single change that stops the same car being sold twice - and margin was computed per unit by capturing landed cost, repairs and fees against the vehicle itself.
Every unit tracked from acquisition to sale, with status, reservation, and a real-time view of available stock.
Inquiries captured in one place and moved through follow-up, quote, deposit, and delivery - so nothing goes cold silently.
Deposits reconciled against the right customer and unit, with cost and price captured per vehicle for true margin.
What changed for the business
The operational difference the system made day to day.
The operational shift is that a question now has one answer. Any staff member can say what is available, reserved or sold without checking a colleague, and follow-up sits in a shared pipeline that survives someone being away, so leads stop dying silently between channels.
Commercially, the business can finally see its own profitability. Because cost and price live against each vehicle, discounting happens against a known floor rather than a hopeful guess, and leadership gets stock and margin reporting without a monthly scramble - the difference between reacting to last month and steering this week.
Staff can answer what's available, reserved, or sold without cross-checking spreadsheets.
Leads sit in a visible pipeline instead of individual inboxes and memory.
Leadership gets margin and stock reporting without rebuilding numbers by hand.
Frequently asked questions
Common questions from businesses looking for a solution like this.
Yes. Upeosoft builds custom vehicle sales and inventory systems for Kenyan automotive businesses - covering stock control, a lead-to-sale pipeline, M-Pesa deposit reconciliation, and margin visibility per unit, built on a hardened ERPNext foundation.
Stock is tracked in one place with status and reservation, so a unit that's reserved or sold is visible to everyone immediately, preventing double-quoting.
Yes. Customer deposits are reconciled against the correct customer and vehicle with an evidence trail, so finance can prove what was paid.
Run a business like Carsoko?
If this problem sounds familiar, we can build the system that solves it for you. Tell us how your operation works and we'll propose an approach.