BizBook User Manual

BizBook: AI POS & Inventory — run your whole business from one app. Version: production v4 (July 2026) · Android · Available on Google Play

BizBook works 100% offline. Every feature in this manual works with no internet connection; cloud sync is an optional extra, never a requirement.

Getting started
The Dashboard
Selling — Point of Sale
Products & inventory
Purchases & suppliers
Invoices, estimates & quotes
Clients, credit & loyalty
Money — banks, cash, expenses
Reports
Staff, roles & attendance
AI features
Connected devices & accessories
Languages & settings
Backup — your data is always yours
Plans, trial & subscription
Troubleshooting & FAQ
Support

1. Getting started

Install BizBook from Google Play and open it.
The setup wizard asks for:
- Your business name.
- Your business type — pharmacy, supermarket, provision store, hardware, restaurant, or general retail. This adapts the whole app: a pharmacy sees batch numbers and expiry dates; a provision store doesn’t. You can change any of this later in Settings.
- Your currency and tax — e.g. FCFA with 19.25% VAT. BizBook supports FCFA (XAF/XOF), USD, EUR, NGN, GHS, INR, GBP, ZAR and more, with configurable tax name, rate, inclusive/exclusive mode, and cash rounding.
- An optional logo — it appears on your receipts and invoices.
That’s it — you land on the Dashboard. Every step is skippable and editable later under Settings → Business Profile.

Every new business starts with a 14-day free trial of everything (see Plans).

Tip: at first, BizBook shows you just the core actions — New Sale, Scan Product, New Invoice, Record Expense. The rest appears as you need it.

2. The Dashboard

Your home screen shows, at a glance:

Metric cards — inventory value, today’s sales, product count, and expiring-soon or low-stock (depending on your business type).
Ask BizBook AI — type a plain question (“what should I reorder?”) and get an answer with suggested actions (see AI features).
Quick actions — New Sale, Scan Product, New Invoice, Record Expense.
Alerts — low stock, expiring batches, overdue invoices, backup status, pending sync.
A 30-day cash-flow sparkline.

3. Selling — Point of Sale

Open POS from the bottom navigation or the New Sale quick action.

Making a sale

Add items to the cart any of these ways:
- Search by name, SKU, or barcode.
- Camera scan — tap the scan icon and point at the barcode.
- Hardware barcode scanner — a USB or Bluetooth scanner just works; scan and the item drops into the cart (see Connected devices).
- Tap products in the grid (layout adapts to your business type — restaurants get category tiles, supermarkets get barcode-first).
Adjust quantity, add a line discount, or remove items in the cart. Bulk businesses can sell decimal quantities (kg, L, m).
Tap Checkout and choose the payment method:
- Cash — a change calculator shows exactly what to give back.
- Mobile money (MTN MoMo / Orange Money) — the payment is recorded as “pending” until you confirm the money actually arrived (when the SMS comes in, tap Mark received). No more “did they really pay?” disputes.
- Bank, card (recorded), or credit (on the customer’s account).
- You can split payment across multiple methods.
Optionally attach a customer — leave it blank and the receipt just says “Walk-in customer”.
Confirm. Stock is decremented automatically and a receipt is created — print it on a thermal printer, share it as PDF/WhatsApp, or skip it.

POS receipts are free and unlimited on every plan, forever.

Restaurant extras

Split the bill — divide one table’s cart into separate bills by item, by seat, or evenly. Each split becomes its own sale with its own receipt.
Modifiers — “extra cheese”, “large portion” — price add-ons attached to a product without separate stock.

Returns & corrections

Returns/refunds: open the sale in Sales history → Return. Stock goes back in automatically and the refund is recorded.
Fix a mistake: use the correction action on a sale or stock entry. BizBook writes a clean reversing entry with your reason — the books stay accurate and auditable, and you never have to delete-and-retype.

4. Products & inventory

Adding products

Three ways, from Inventory → +:

Manual — name, price, unit, category, optional barcode/SKU, cost price, reorder level, photo.
AI Scan — photograph the product or its label; the AI fills in the form (name, price suggestion, barcode, expiry…). You review, edit, and save. (Uses AI credits — see Plans.)
Barcode — scan the barcode with camera or hardware scanner to attach it to the product for instant POS lookup.

Products support variants (size, colour, flavour — each tracked with its own stock) and categories.

Stock control

On-hand quantity is always exact — every movement (purchase, sale, return, adjustment, waste) is a ledger entry, so you have a complete audit trail of who changed what, when, and why.
Adjust stock from the product page (requires a reason — e.g. “damaged”, “count correction”).
Low-stock alerts fire when a product drops below its reorder level.
Batches & expiry (pharmacy, supermarket, restaurant): each restock can carry a batch number and expiry date; the Expiring Soon tab and alerts warn you in time to sell or promote before losses.
Reorder suggestions — BizBook watches your real sales pace per product and predicts when you’ll run out.

5. Purchases & suppliers

Record what you buy so stock and supplier balances stay true:

Purchases → New Purchase — pick or add a supplier, add line items (product, quantity, unit cost; batch number and expiry if your business tracks them). Saving the purchase adds the stock automatically.
Scan a supplier invoice — photograph the paper invoice; the AI extracts the line items into a draft purchase for you to review and confirm. A huge time-saver for big deliveries. (Uses AI credits.)
Partial payments — pay some now, the rest later; the purchase shows paid/partial/unpaid and the supplier ledger keeps the running balance.

6. Invoices, estimates & quotes

Create professional documents from Invoices → +:

Types: Invoice, Estimate, Quote, Proforma. Convert an estimate to an invoice in one tap (the link between them is kept).
Add items from inventory or as free-text lines; per-line or whole-document discount; your configured tax applied automatically.
The customer is always optional — blank prints as “Walk-in customer”.
The PDF carries your logo, business details, tax setup, and footer note. Pro unlocks multiple templates and removes the “made with BizBook” footer.
Share by WhatsApp, email, print, or save the PDF — all generated on the phone, no internet needed.
Track status: open / partial / paid / overdue / cancelled. Record payments directly against an invoice.
Automatic reminders: set a follow-up date and BizBook nudges you (and can draft a polite reminder) when an invoice is overdue.

Free plan: 40 formal invoices/estimates/quotes per calendar month (POS receipts don’t count and are unlimited). Need more? Upgrade to Pro or buy a one-off invoice pack.

7. Clients, credit & loyalty

Client directory (optional — you never need a client to sell): name, phone, email, notes, credit limit.
Per-client ledger: every sale, every payment, running balance, unpaid bills, outstanding total. Call, message, or share a statement from the client page.
Credit sales: sell on credit at POS, record repayments later; the ledger tracks paid / pending / partially-paid.
Loyalty points: simple stamps/points per purchase for registered clients — “every 10th purchase free” style. Points are earned and redeemed at POS.

8. Money — banks, cash, expenses

The Financial section tracks where your money actually is:

Bank accounts — add accounts with opening balances; see the total.
Hand cash / cash drawer — the cash physically in the shop.
Transfers between accounts (e.g. banking the day’s cash).
Expenses — record and categorize any business expense, attach a photo of the receipt, or let the AI scan the receipt and fill in the amount and a suggested category.
Payments in/out — every payment (sales, invoices, purchases, manual) in one searchable list.

9. Reports

Under Reports:

Cash Flow — money in, money out, net cash flow, gross profit, expenses, net profit, with date filters and breakdowns.
Business reports — daily/weekly/monthly sales, top sellers, slow movers, profit margins, per-client and per-product breakdowns, charts.
Inventory reports — stock valuation, expiry forecast, reorder suggestions, dead stock.
AI reports — ask in plain English or French (“top 5 products by profit this month”) and get the answer as a chart/table (Pro / AI credits).
Export: print or export PDF/CSV free; Excel (.xlsx) workbooks with formatted sheets and totals on Pro.

Sensitive numbers in reports respect staff permissions — see next section.

10. Staff, roles & attendance

For shops with a team (multi-user requires Pro after the trial):

Every person gets their own login — never a shared password. The Owner creates users and assigns a role: Admin, Manager, Pharmacist, Cashier, or Viewer.
Permissions are yours to control, per person — both what they can do (run POS, give discounts, void sales, record expenses…) and what they can see. Cost prices, profit margins, daily takings, and supplier pricing can be hidden from any user — a cashier sees selling prices only, with a lock icon where the sensitive numbers would be.
Audit log: voids, price edits, exports, and user changes are recorded (who, what, when) — visible to Owner/Admin only.
Integrity dashboard: flags unusual patterns per staff member — high void rates, discount outliers, frequent stock write-offs.
QR attendance: print your business QR; staff scan it to check in/out. Manual entry works as fallback. Simple hours totals and optional payroll (monthly or hourly, mark as paid).

11. AI features

AI in BizBook removes typing — it never blocks you. Everything has a manual path, every AI result is shown to you for review before it is saved, and each result carries a confidence indicator.

Feature	What it does
Scan-to-Inventory	Photograph a product → the Add Product form is pre-filled
Invoice/receipt OCR	Photograph a supplier invoice or expense receipt → draft purchase/expense with line items
Voice entry	Speak a sale or expense (“two bags of rice at 15,000”) → a draft entry to review
Ask BizBook	Plain-language questions about your business, answered from your own data on your phone
Forecasts & alerts	Cash-flow forecasts, reorder predictions, unusual-activity flags

Notes:

AI needs an internet connection and AI credits. The trial includes a generous allowance; Pro includes a monthly allowance; anyone can buy a credit pack. Selling, invoicing, and everything else never depend on AI.
The camera view warns you about blur or glare before a photo is sent, so credits aren’t wasted on unusable shots.
Your business data stays on your phone — questions are answered by running the analysis locally, not by uploading your books.

12. Connected devices & accessories

BizBook is designed to work with cheap, widely available hardware. Nothing here is required — the app is fully usable with just a phone.

Bluetooth thermal receipt printers ✅

What works: generic 58mm and 80mm Bluetooth thermal printers that speak ESC/POS — the inexpensive receipt printers sold in phone shops and online (typically 15,000–40,000 FCFA). Most no-name and big-brand (Xprinter, Goojprt, etc.) ESC/POS models work.
How to connect:
1. Charge/power the printer and turn on Bluetooth pairing.
2. Pair it in your phone’s Bluetooth settings (common PINs: 0000/1234).
3. In BizBook, print a receipt → choose the paired printer. Set it as the default in Settings → Printing.
What prints: POS receipts with your business name, items, totals, and footer. Receipts print as text — fast and ink-free (thermal paper).
Not supported: printer-driven cash-drawer kick-out and printing scannable barcodes on receipts (planned).

Regular printers (A4 / office printers) ✅

Invoices, estimates, reports, and statements are generated as PDFs on the phone and print through Android’s standard print dialog — so any printer your phone can see works: Wi-Fi printers, or any printer via Google-/manufacturer print services (HP Smart, Epson, Canon plugins from Play Store). You can also share the PDF to a computer and print from there.

Barcode scanners ✅

Camera scanning is built in — no accessory needed. The camera scans barcodes for POS, product lookup, and adding products.
Hardware scanners: any USB or Bluetooth barcode scanner that works in “keyboard-wedge” (HID) mode — which is almost all of them:
- Bluetooth scanner: pair in phone Bluetooth settings, open POS, scan.
- USB scanner: plug into the phone/tablet with a USB-OTG adapter.
- Scans land in the POS search instantly and add the item to the cart — ideal for supermarket-style checkout. 1D (EAN/UPC/Code128) and 2D (QR) scanners both work.

The phone camera 📷

Used for: barcode scanning, AI product scan, supplier-invoice/receipt OCR, product photos, and QR attendance check-in for staff.

Devices BizBook runs on

Android phones (primary) and Android tablets — the layout adapts; a cheap tablet + Bluetooth printer + USB scanner makes a full POS counter.
Chromebooks that run Android apps.
Multiple devices, one business: with Pro cloud sync, your counter tablet and your own phone stay in sync automatically — including correct stock counts when both devices sell at the same time, even after working offline all day.
A Windows/desktop version is on the roadmap.

Receipts, invoices, and reports share to WhatsApp, email, Bluetooth, or any app on your phone via the standard Android share sheet. Exports come out as PDF, CSV, or (Pro) Excel .xlsx files.

What BizBook does not connect to

Card payment terminals / mobile-money APIs — BizBook records payments; it never processes or moves money. Take the payment on your usual terminal or MoMo line, then record it in BizBook (mobile-money entries stay “pending” until you confirm receipt).
Electronic cash drawers and kitchen display systems (not yet).

13. Languages & settings

10 languages, fully translated: English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Italian, Arabic, Hindi, Swahili, and Hausa. Change anytime in Settings → Language. Arabic runs right-to-left.
Settings covers: business profile & branding; currency, tax and rounding; document numbering (your own prefixes); business-type feature overrides (e.g. switch batch tracking on/off); printing; backup & sync; security (app PIN or fingerprint lock, auto-lock timeout); language; subscription & AI credits; data export and account deletion.

14. Backup — your data is always yours

This is a core BizBook promise, on every plan including Free:

One-tap full backup from the Dashboard or Settings — every product, sale, invoice, client, and setting is exported to a single portable file you keep (share it to your email, Drive, or a computer).
Restore that file on any device to get your business back.
Pro cloud sync adds automatic continuous backup and multi-device sync on top — but the local backup is free forever. Your business is never locked in and never held hostage.

Do a backup at least weekly, and always before changing phones.

15. Plans, trial & subscription

14-day free trial — every new business gets everything unlocked for 14 days (AI runs on a trial credit allowance). Near the end, BizBook looks at what you actually used and recommends the cheapest plan that covers it. After the trial the app downgrades gracefully to Free — no data is ever deleted.

	Free (forever)	Pro	Business
POS sales & receipts	✅ Unlimited	✅ Unlimited	✅ Unlimited
Offline everything	✅	✅	✅
Formal invoices/quotes	40/month	Unlimited	Unlimited
Products	Generous cap	Unlimited	Unlimited
Local backup/export	✅ Always free	✅	✅
Cloud sync + auto-backup	—	✅	✅
Multi-user + permissions	—	✅	✅ larger team
Invoice templates	1	Multiple, no footer	Multiple, no footer
Excel (.xlsx) export	—	✅	✅ + scheduled
AI monthly allowance	— (packs only)	✅	✅ larger

One-off purchases (no subscription needed): AI credit packs and invoice packs (extra invoices in a busy month).

Manage your plan in Settings → Subscription. Prices are set low for the local market, in FCFA.

16. Troubleshooting & FAQ

Does it really work without internet? Yes — selling, receipts, invoices, stock, reports, everything. Only cloud sync and AI features need a connection.

My printer won’t print. Check it’s paired in phone Bluetooth settings and powered on; keep it within a few meters; make sure the paper roll faces the right way (thermal paper only prints on one side). Try switching it off/on and reprinting.

My scanner types numbers into the wrong place. It’s acting as a keyboard — make sure the POS screen is open with the search field active. Set the scanner to “HID/keyboard” mode per its manual.

The mobile-money sale still shows “pending”. That’s by design — open the sale/payment and tap Mark received once the MoMo/OM confirmation SMS arrives.

I made a wrong entry. Use the correction/return actions rather than trying to delete — the mistake is reversed cleanly and the books stay accurate.

I’m changing phones. Settings → Backup → export the backup file, move it to the new phone ( WhatsApp yourself, email, SD card), install BizBook, and restore. Pro users can simply sign in and sync.

A staff member left. Staff → set their user to inactive. Their history stays; their access ends.

The AI scan gave a wrong price/name. That’s why every AI result is shown for review first — correct the field and save. Blurry photos are the usual cause; retake with more light.

17. Support

In-app: Settings → Report a bug (one tap; works for every user).
Email: henry@fieldhealthafrica.org
Web: https://fieldhealthafrica.org/bizbook
Privacy policy: linked on the Play Store listing.

BizBook — FieldHealth-Africa. BHSS LLC. Built for small businesses: works offline, fast at the counter, trustworthy with money, and affordable for any shop.