Welcome to AfriBMS: invoicing built for Uganda and Zambia

AfriBMS started as our own problem. Africa One Group is based in Kampala and Lusaka, and for years its back office ran on a familiar mix: an Excel template for invoices, a shared drive with four versions of it, a WhatsApp group where someone eventually asked "has this client paid?", and a folder of printed copies for the accountant in January.

None of that is unusual. It is how most businesses we know still work. It is also expensive in ways that never appear on a report: the invoice sent twice with different numbers, the payment received in March and matched in June, the customer who quietly stopped paying because nobody was watching the list.

So we built our own invoicing first, because that is the document that brings money in, and we run our own books on it. When it worked for us, we made it something other businesses could sign up for. That is AfriBMS.

Why not one of the systems that already exist

We tried them. The international invoicing tools are good software, and they are built for a business that gets paid by card or by bank transfer, files tax in a country whose rules are already in the product, and prices in one currency. Change any one of those and you start fighting the tool.

Here, a single customer might pay half by MTN mobile money on Tuesday, bring cash on Friday and send the rest by bank transfer the following month. You bill in shillings for local clients and in dollars for the ones abroad. Your invoice has to carry a TIN or a TPIN, and the tax lines have to be set out the way URA or ZRA expects to see them. And the person who owes you money reads their email once a week but replies on WhatsApp in four minutes.

We wanted a system that treats all of that as normal, because it is.

What works today

Invoicing is live at app.afribms.com. Today you can:

• Create a company with your logo, your tax number and your VAT rate, and bill in Ugandan shillings, Zambian kwacha or US dollars.
• Build an invoice from lines with quantities, unit prices and tax, and send it by email or as a link you can paste into WhatsApp. Your customer opens it in any browser, with no account and nothing to install, and saves or prints the PDF from there.
• Record payments as they actually arrive: MTN or Airtel money with the transaction ID, a bank transfer with its reference, or cash over the counter. An invoice can carry several part payments until the balance reaches zero.
• Keep a customer list with the history attached, so you can answer "what is still outstanding on our account?" while the client is still on the phone.
• See on one dashboard what is outstanding, what is overdue, what was paid in the last 30 days and the invoices you raised most recently.

It runs in a browser on a laptop or a phone. There is nothing to install and nothing to back up.

What is coming, and in what order

We would rather tell you the order than promise dates we will miss.

First, invoicing gets finished: a saved items catalogue, credit notes, automatic reminders for overdue invoices, a "Pay now" button that collects through your own Flutterwave account, receivables and VAT reports, and staff invitations with proper roles.

After that, the other four modules, each on the same login and the same data: sales and CRM (leads, quotes that turn into invoices), products and inventory (stock levels, suppliers, purchase orders), accounting (expenses, bank accounts, the reports your accountant asks for) and finally HR and payroll, with PAYE, NSSF and NAPSA built in.

Modules that are not ready yet are marked "coming soon" on the pricing page, and they switch on in your account when they ship, on the plan you already pay for. You will not be asked for more money for something we said was included.

What it costs and how the trial works

The trial is fourteen days on the Business plan, with every module we have switched on. We do not ask for a card to start it, which means nothing is charged automatically at the end. You choose a plan and pay, or you stop and nothing happens.

Prices are published in shillings, kwacha and dollars on the pricing page, per company rather than per person, so adding your colleague to the account does not change the bill. A year paid up front costs two months less than twelve monthly payments.

The honest caveat: we are early. Africa One Group built the invoicing module for its own invoicing first and runs its own books on it, which is why we felt able to sell it, but the rest of the product is a roadmap, not a shipped feature. If your business needs stock control this quarter, we are not the right answer yet. If you need to get invoices out and money in, we are.

Start with one invoice

The useful first step is small. Create your company, add one real customer, and send them one real invoice. It takes about ten minutes, and by the end of it you will know whether this fits the way your business actually works, which is a better test than any feature list.

If something is missing or wrong, tell us. We are a small team in Kampala and Lusaka, we read everything that comes in through the contact page, and at this stage the things customers ask for tend to get built.