Industries · Retail & ecommerce
Retail POS system and online store for South African shops
Your shop and your online store sell from the same stock count.
01Proof
Already live
Sites and systems we run for businesses in this sector.
victoriapackaging.co.za
Victoria Packaging
Online store for a Pietermaritzburg supplier of packaging, farming and safety equipment, trading since 1993.
Case studyOur store system
Online store for a Pietermaritzburg supplier of packaging and farming equipment, trading since 1993. It was the first shop on our store system and still runs on it.
celltrader.co.za
Cell Trader
Online store for a cellphone dealer, with stock shared between the shop and the website.
Case studyOur store system
Online store for a Durban cellphone dealer, listing new and pre-owned stock separately. Stock is shared between the shop and the website.
sizabantufabrics.co.za
Sizabantu Fabrics
Durban fabric store with two shops in the CBD: bridal satins, shweshwe, lace and haberdashery, sold online nationwide.
Live siteOur store system
Store on Retail OS for a Durban fabric retailer with two shops in the CBD, selling fabric and haberdashery nationwide.
luminhaus.co.za
Lumin Haus
Designer lighting and architectural fittings: brass pendants, alabaster wall lights, trimless downlights and smart control.
Live siteOur store system
Store on Retail OS for designer lighting and architectural fittings, from brass pendants and alabaster wall lights to trimless downlights.
A normal week
Most shoppers look a shop up before they drive to it. They search for the item and want to know it's in stock, usually on a phone. When the website says a product is available and the shelf is empty, you lose the sale and a bit of trust with it.
The owners we speak to often run the counter and the website on two separate systems. Someone reconciles them by hand, and the gap between the two numbers grows every time a busy Saturday gets ahead of the spreadsheet.
A POS system in South Africa also has to take local payments without a foreign fee on top. Shopify Payments isn't available here, so Shopify adds a fee to each sale made through a local provider. On our store system you pay only your payment provider's own fee.
02Problems we hear
What goes wrong
- We sold the last one in the shop, and an hour later someone paid for it online.
- Stock is counted in two places and the numbers never agree.
- Our platform bills in dollars, so the monthly cost moves with the exchange rate.
- Every marketing tool is another app with another subscription.
- People fill a cart, leave, and we never hear from them again.
- Staff at one branch can see and change stock at the other branch.
- Layby lives in a notebook behind the counter.
- Moving off WooCommerce feels like losing our old links and customer list.
03Build
What we'd set up
An online store in your brand
We design the store in your brand and build it on Sirat Retail OS. Setup is once-off and quoted after a call, because it depends on the design and what the store needs. It covers the design and build, payments, your domain and staff training.
Online stores & POS →Tills on the same stock
On Pro, a till on a tablet or phone with receipts, cash-ups and shift reports sells from the same stock as the website. Pro includes one till. More tills, or more than five branches, are priced with you on an Enterprise plan.
Online stores & POS →Branches, suppliers and receiving
Purchase orders, goods received, stock-takes and transfers between branches come with every plan, so each stock change has a paper trail. Staff see only their own branch while you see all of them.
Online stores & POS →Marketing already in the admin
Email campaigns come with every plan. Growth adds SMS campaigns, loyalty points and referrals, with 100 SMS a month included, and Pro includes 200.
Online stores & POS →SEO for product pages
Grow, at R2 000 a month, rewrites 20 product and category pages and writes 2 articles a month.
SEO →Google Ads for stores
We run your campaigns for R2 500 a month, whatever your ad spend. The ad account stays in your name and you pay Google directly.
Google Ads →04AI
Tasks AI can take over
- Product photos: from Growth, AI removes backgrounds and turns a phone photo into a styled product shot. You look at each image before it goes on the store.
- Product descriptions: AI writes a first draft from the product name and a few facts. Someone who knows the product edits it before it's published.
- Unfinished orders: a reminder email goes out on its own, one on Starter and a series of three on Growth and Pro. You approve the wording once and can change it any time.
05Steps
From first call to launch
A 20-minute call
We ask how you sell today: how many branches, whether you need tills, and where the stock list lives. A fixed quote follows within two working days.
Your catalogue comes across
We load products from a spreadsheet, or move your WooCommerce store across with its customers and old links, so pages Google already knows still lead somewhere.
A working store from week one
Working pages go up on a private link in the first week, where staff can try orders before anything goes public.
Training, then launch
Staff training is part of setup. Once you're live, we reply to questions within one working day.
Questions
What people ask on the first call
If yours isn't here, WhatsApp it and you'll have an answer within one working day.
Setup is once-off and quoted after a 20-minute call: it depends on the design and what your store needs. After that the plans are R400, R900 or R1 500 a month, and a year paid upfront costs 10 months' fee. Tills are on Pro only, and Pro includes one till.
Only if you want to ring up sales at a till through our system. Starter and Growth run the online store with one stock count, suppliers and receiving. Starter covers 1 branch, Growth 3 and Pro 5. Past that, we price an Enterprise plan with you.
Checkout takes BobPay, Paystack, Payfast, Payflex, PayJustNow and EFT, and you pay only the provider's own fee. A customer whose card is declined is offered your other methods and a link to pay.
We move your products and customers across, and the old links come too. Old addresses point to the matching page on the new store, so a customer arriving from an old search result doesn't land on an error.
The domain is registered in your name, and your products, customers and orders are yours to export any time. The platform itself is ours, licensed to you while you subscribe.
Selling online and the ECTA
The Electronic Communications and Transactions Act lets someone who buys online cancel within 7 days of receiving the goods, and the store may charge only the direct cost of sending them back. Section 43 also lists what an online store must show, including your physical address and your returns policy. We build the pages that hold this information, but you approve the policy wording. This is a summary, not legal advice.
Tell us what you need
Answer a few questions and the estimate shows on screen. The fixed quote follows within two working days of a short call.