On this page
If you run a shop in Nigeria and you have ever Googled “best inventory app,” you already know the problem. Half the results are American tools that price in dollars. The other half are Nigerian apps that track sales but can’t tell you whether you actually made money last month.
I tested all seven of these over the past few months — signed up, added products, tried the daily workflow a shop owner would use. None of them is perfect. But each one does something well, and the right pick depends on what is actually broken in your business right now.
Before we get into it
When you are comparing these apps, four things matter more than everything else.
Does the app actually track inventory, or does it just count what you have? There is a real difference. Counting stock means you see a number on a screen. Tracking inventory means the app knows which batch you bought, what you paid, when it expires, and which units you sold from. If you buy shea butter in 25kg drums and sell in 100g jars, can the app handle that math?
Can it tell you your real profit? Not revenue. Profit. After what the goods cost you, after expenses, after what customers still owe you. Most apps show you sales totals and call it a day.
Can your staff actually use it? If they need a training session before they can record a single sale, they won’t use it. The best app is the one that gets opened every morning.
And does it work here? Naira support. WhatsApp invoices. Fast enough on a phone with MTN data. These things sound minor until you are the one waiting for a page to load while a customer is standing there.
1. Mayloo
Full disclosure — we built this one. So you should expect bias here. But let me explain what it does and why, and you can judge.
The idea behind Mayloo is that your inventory and your accounting should be one system. When you sell something, the app knows which batch it came from, what that batch cost you, and what your profit was on that specific sale. Not an average across all batches. The actual cost of the actual batch you sold.
It tracks expiry dates and sells oldest stock first. When something expires, it gets written off and your accounts reflect the loss the same day. If you have staff, every action they take is logged — who adjusted stock, who voided a sale, who gave a discount. No more wondering where 3 cartons disappeared to.
Multi-branch works the way it should. Each location has its own stock, its own P&L. You can sit at home and compare branch performance side by side.
What it does not do: no online store, no website builder, no Instagram selling. If online is your main sales channel, Mayloo is not the tool for that.
Free right now during early access. All features included.
2. Bumpa
Bumpa has the biggest community of Nigerian small business users, and there is a reason for that. Setting up an online store, selling on social media, managing customers — Bumpa does all of it from one app. The POS is smooth. Invoices are clean. The whole thing feels well put together.
Inventory is where it gets thin. Stock tracking exists but it is basic. No batch numbers, no expiry dates, no automatic write-offs. The app will tell you how many units you have left. It will not tell you what those units cost you or which ones are going to expire next Tuesday. No P&L, no balance sheet, no cost-of-goods calculation. And if your staff member quietly adjusts a stock number, there is no audit trail to catch it.
If your business is mostly online and you don’t deal with expiring products or complicated unit conversions, Bumpa is solid. 14-day free trial, subscription after.
3. QuickBooks Online
This is the app your accountant probably already knows. Invoicing, expense tracking, bank reconciliation, financial reports — QuickBooks handles that stuff properly. If you need to hand clean books to someone at tax time, it makes their job easy.
The problem is that it is an accounting tool wearing inventory as an afterthought. Stock tracking is bare minimum. No batches, no expiry, no multi-unit anything. The pricing is in USD — even the cheapest plan runs about $17/month, which hurts at current exchange rates. And the interface was designed for people who already know what a “chart of accounts” is.
No WhatsApp integration. No Naira-first experience. It was built for a different market.
Good if you already work with an accountant who wants QuickBooks-formatted reports. Not the answer if inventory is your main problem.
4. Wave Accounting
Wave is basically free QuickBooks. Invoicing, expenses, reports, bank reconciliation — all free. They make their money on payment processing and payroll add-ons you can ignore if you don’t need them. Over 2 million businesses use it worldwide.
Same limitation though: this is accounting software, full stop. There is zero stock tracking. No POS. No batch management. Nothing for physical inventory. If you need to know what is on your shelf, Wave has no opinion on that.
Not designed for Nigeria either. No Naira defaults, no WhatsApp anything, and pages load slowly on patchy data.
If you run a service business or freelance and you just need free invoicing and expense tracking, Wave is genuinely hard to beat. If you carry physical products, it is the wrong category of tool entirely.
5. Zoho Inventory
Zoho Inventory makes the most sense if you already use other Zoho products — Zoho Books, Zoho CRM, that ecosystem. On its own, it is a solid multi-channel order management system. If you sell on Jumia and your own website and maybe one other marketplace, Zoho can keep stock and orders synced across all of them. Barcode scanning works. There is a free tier.
The downsides are real though. Setup is not simple — there is a learning curve. Paid plans start at $79/month, which is a lot. It was not designed with Nigerian workflows in mind, so no Naira-first pricing, no WhatsApp invoicing. And costing is not batch-aware.
If you sell across multiple online channels and need that orchestration, Zoho handles it. For a single shop with 50 products, it is way more tool than you need.
6. Vendloop
Vendloop is a POS. That is its strength and its ceiling. Your cashier can ring up sales quickly, print receipts, and see basic stock counts. It is Nigerian-built, so Naira and local payment methods work from day one.
Inventory beyond basic counts? Not there. No batches, no expiry, no accounting, no profit reports. If the question you need answered is “how much did I actually make this month,” Vendloop won’t tell you.
Free tier available. Decent starting point if a reliable POS is the only gap in your setup right now.
7. Loystar
Loystar’s thing is customer loyalty. It is a POS with a built-in reward programme. Customers earn points, you see their purchase history, you can run targeted promotions. If you run a salon, restaurant, or boutique where the same 200 people account for most of your revenue, the loyalty piece is worth paying attention to.
Stock tracking is the same story as Vendloop — basic counts, nothing deeper. No batch management, no expiry, no accounting. Multi-branch support is limited.
Free tier available. Makes sense if keeping customers coming back is a bigger priority for you than inventory precision.
So which one?
Depends what is actually costing you money.
Stock keeps going missing, you don’t know your real profit, products expire before you sell them, staff make changes you can’t trace — Mayloo. That is what we built it for, especially for businesses dealing with expiry dates and unit conversions.
Selling mostly online, need a storefront and marketing in one place — Bumpa.
Need proper accounting books for your accountant — QuickBooks if you can stomach the dollar pricing, Wave if you want it free and don’t need inventory.
Selling across Jumia and other marketplaces — Zoho.
Just need a POS that works — Vendloop. Same thing but with customer loyalty rewards — Loystar.
No app does everything. Pick the one that fixes whatever is losing you the most money right now, and worry about the rest later.
We built Mayloo because shop owners kept telling us the same thing: “I don’t know if I’m actually making money.” If that sounds like you, try it free at getmayloo.com.