Protect the book and the cash.
You carry the credit book and you wear the loss when a van comes back light or an account goes bad. The risk lives in the field, where you cannot watch it.
Darikoda checks credit before the stock leaves, reconciles every close-out at the door, and keeps the agent variance as a history so the pattern reaches you without a confrontation. Captured at source.
You carry the credit book and the cash risk. Darikoda checks credit before stock is released, reconciles every consignment close-out against cash, MoMo and cheque at the van, and keeps each agent's variance as a history so a pattern surfaces without an accusation. Captured at source.
Where the money leaks
Six places the credit book and the cash leak, out on the routes you never see.
Credit exposure you cannot see order by order.
Every order released on credit is your money out on the street. Without a gate at release, an account drifts past its limit one order at a time, and you learn about it when the debt is already too big to walk back.
The gap between stock out and cash in.
The month lives between what left the depot and what came back as cash, MoMo and cheque. Reconcile that from memory at a desk hours later, and a short just disappears into the total.
The agent variance you cannot see from the office.
You trust people to bring the right numbers back from places you never get to. The safety net is a running history of each agent's close-outs. A pattern surfaces on your screen, over time. The same record that flags a short clears the honest agent.
Bad debt building quietly.
The slow payer and the account that will not settle again look identical until the credit history sits in one place. The gate and the history are how you tell them apart before the write-off.
Cash that arrives light.
Cash, MoMo and cheque collected at the roadside, each matched to an invoice, each flagged over or short at the counter. The reconciliation belongs where the money changes hands, not at a desk hours later.
No read you trust at close of day.
A GREEN or RED status on the day, and an end-of-day summary of loaded against sold against collected. One number you did not have to re-count yourself before you can leave.
The platform, in your vocabulary
Three engines, from the owner's chair.
Credit gate on order release
Every order is checked against the account limit before the stock is released. Over-limit orders hold for a decision, so the exposure is settled at the depot instead of chased on the road.
A close-out you can read
Loaded, sold, returned, damaged, counted, reconciled at the door and signed, with the cash panel matched to the count. The variance is named while the van is still in front of you.
The day in one honest number
A GREEN or RED read and an end-of-day summary of loaded against sold against collected, ready before you go home. No re-counting the field by hand.
The exposure is decided at the load bay.
An over-limit order holds for a decision before the van is loaded. Your money does not ride out onto the road ahead of the call.
What changes between paper and a signed record
Three moments where paper loses the money and the record keeps it.
You see the exposure when the monthly ledger is reconciled, by which point the account has taken several more orders on credit and the debt is real. The gate to stop it was a phone call no one made.
The over-limit order holds at release and routes for a decision. The exposure is capped at the depot, before the next case is loaded, and the person who can release it does so with the account history in front of them.
Held before load-out
the credit decision is made at release, not discovered in a month-end reconciliation.
Reconciled from a sheet and a cash bag an hour later at a desk. Loaded, sold, returned and collected were never made to meet, so the short hides inside the total and the day is filed away.
Reconciled at the van in under a minute and signed by the agent, with cash, MoMo and cheque matched to the count. The variance is on the record before the agent leaves the depot.
Signed at the door
the count and the cash meet while the agent and the stock are still there.
A quiet, recurring short on one route is invisible when each day is reconciled alone and then filed. Nobody is holding the history that would make it obvious.
The variance history holds each close-out over time, so a pattern surfaces for you on your screen. You raise it with a record, not a hunch, and the honest agent is cleared by the same record.
A pattern, not a hunch
a history over time, surfaced for the owner. A safety net, never a live tracker on a person.
Different scenarios. Same underlying gap. Same closing move.
The pattern reaches you, without an accusation.
The agent variance history is a record over time, surfaced for the owner. It clears the honest agent by the same evidence that flags the short.
Built so the record survives the route.
Your operating record faces the credit book, the cash bag and the roadside you will never get to. It is built to hold under all three.
- Every load-out, sale and collection is saved on the device first and syncs when the signal returns. Your field force does not wait for a network to record the day.
- You can always see whether a van's close-out has reached the office yet. No wondering whether the numbers went through.
- Every action is attributed to a person, a role, a device and a time. No silent edits to a close-out after it is signed.
- Shared devices use PIN-level attribution, so every count carries its owner and no agent is logged in as another.
- The agent variance history is a record over time, surfaced for you. It is a safety net for the owner, not a tracker following a person through the day.
- The account and the ledger stay where they are. Darikoda gives you the reconciled field record they were never built to capture.
Inside the first month
What a Darikoda month looks like from the owner's chair.
From load-out and close-out in week one to a month-end that reconciles from a record instead of a reconstruction.
Week 1
Load-out and close-out go live.
Every van loaded against a credit check, every return reconciled at the door and signed. The operating record starts building from the first route out.
Week 2
The variance surfaces on your screen.
The short route is named. The over-limit account is named. The agent pattern begins to show over time, on your screen, without a confrontation.
Week 3
Credit decisions move to the depot.
Over-limit orders hold for a decision before the van is loaded. The exposure is capped at release instead of chased at month-end.
Close of day
One read before you leave.
A GREEN or RED status and an end-of-day summary of loaded against sold against collected. You act on one number you did not re-count by hand.
Month-end
The book reconciles from a record.
Credit exposure, collections and variance all sit in one operating record. The month-end reconciliation meets evidence instead of a reconstruction from paper.
A note from Theo
“It does not stop a short from happening. It makes one impossible to bury.”
I have sat with distributor owners across Ghana who carry a risk few people see from the outside. The stock leaves on credit and on trust, into the hands of agents working roadsides and markets the owner will never stand at. It comes back as cash, MoMo, cheque, returns, damages and a sales sheet, and all of it has to be made to meet. When that happens from memory at a desk hours later, a short slips into the total and stays there. The operating record closes the gap at the door. Credit checked before the stock leaves. The close-out signed while the van is still there. The agent variance kept as a history, so a pattern reaches the owner without a confrontation and the same record clears the honest agent. It does not stop a short from happening. It makes one impossible to bury. That is the honest version. It is the one I would want if the money on the street were mine.
Theo Ilori
Founder, Darikoda. UCL MSc Mechanical Engineering. Formerly GE precision turbines, Caterpillar/Unatrac Ghana & Nigeria.
Distributor owner FAQ.
The questions other distributor owners ask in the first call.
How do I set credit limits per account?
Each account carries its own credit limit inside the operating record. When an order would take an account past that limit, it holds for a decision at release rather than loading automatically. You keep the control over who can release an over-limit order and on what basis.
Can I see one agent's history over time?
Yes. Each agent's close-outs are kept as a running history, so you can see a route or a person's pattern across days and weeks, not just a single day reconciled and filed. A repeating short surfaces for you before it becomes a large loss.
Is the agent variance history surveillance?
No. It is a record of close-outs over time, surfaced for the owner as a safety net. It is not a live tracker following a person through their day. The GPS on a delivery proves the drop happened at the customer, and the signed close-out protects the honest agent as much as it protects you.
What do I actually see at close of day?
A GREEN or RED status on the day and an end-of-day summary of loaded against sold against collected, with the variance flagged for you to look at. It is one reconciled read you can act on without re-counting the field yourself.
Does it replace my accounting?
No. Darikoda is the operating record underneath the field force, not your ledger. The account and the accounting stay where they are. What you get is the reconciled field record, credit, cash, collections and variance, that your books were never built to capture on their own.
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Patterns described here are drawn from extensive field audits and industry research across Ghana's distribution, mining, construction, and roadworks sectors. No specific operator is named or identifiable.