Sorora How-To Guide

1. Getting Started

Creating your account

Sign up at app.sorora.co.za with your business email. You'll get a 14-day free trial with no card required — enough time to load your products, invite your team, and run real sales before you decide on a plan.

We'll send a verification email when you sign up. Click the link to confirm your address — you'll see a reminder banner on your dashboard until you do.

Setting up your business

During setup, you'll choose:

• Your business name and details — this appears on every invoice, quote, and receipt you send
• Your industry — Retail, Services, Food & Beverage, Gas & LPG, or Other. This unlocks features built for your type of business (see Industry Features)
• Your branches — if you operate from more than one location, add each one now. You can always add more later

Branches

If your business has more than one location — shops, depots, or outlets — set each one up as a branch. Branches let you:

• Track stock, sales, and cash-up separately per location
• Control which products each branch can sell
• Assign staff to a specific branch so their till and stock stay locked to that location
• Move stock between branches with stock transfers

To add a branch, go to Settings → Branches and click Add Branch.

Inviting your team & understanding roles

Go to Manage → Users to invite your team. Each person gets a role that decides what they can see and do:

When you invite someone, you'll set their role and (if you use branches) their default branch. Staff-role users are automatically taken to the POS screen when they log in, and their branch is locked so they can't accidentally sell from the wrong location.

You can fine-tune exactly what each role can see under Settings → Feature Access — more on that in Settings & Admin.

2. Point of Sale & Cash-Up

Making a sale

The POS screen is built for speed at the till:

• Tap products to add them to the cart, or search by name
• Adjust quantities directly in the cart
• For products sold by weight or length (like bulk goods or cable), enter the exact amount and the price calculates automatically
• Choose a payment method — cash, card, EFT, or Account (which creates an unpaid invoice against a customer's account for them to pay later)
• Print or send a receipt when you're done

Till sessions

Before taking sales, a cashier opens a till session by declaring their starting cash float. Every sale during that session is tracked against it. At the end of a shift, the cashier closes the session and declares the counted cash — Sorora compares it to what the system expected and flags any variance.

Till sessions are tracked per cashier and per branch, so multiple tills can run at the same time across different branches (or multiple cashiers at one branch) without their totals mixing together.

Cash-up and Z-reports

At close of business, run a cash-up to see:

• Total sales by payment method
• Expected vs. counted cash
• Any variances that need explaining

A Z-report summarises the full day. On paid plans it is emailed to you automatically at the end of each day.

Receipt printing

Sorora supports browser-based printing for USB thermal receipt printers — no special software needed beyond your printer's driver. Set your paper width (58mm or 80mm) once in your browser and every receipt prints correctly from then on.

3. Documents

Sorora handles every stage of the paper trail — quotes, invoices, credit notes, and statements — all from one place.

Quotes

Build a quote, send it to your customer by email or WhatsApp, and they can approve or reject it with one click from the email itself — no login required. Approved quotes convert straight into an invoice.

Invoices

Create invoices manually or convert them from an approved quote or a POS sale on account. Every invoice includes your business branding, your customer's account number, and VAT worked out automatically based on how your products are configured (VAT-inclusive or VAT added on top).

Send an invoice by email (with the PDF attached) or WhatsApp, and resend at any time if a customer says they didn't get it.

Credit notes

Issue a credit note against an invoice when you need to refund or adjust a sale. It links back to the original invoice for a clean paper trail.

Statements

Generate a statement for any customer showing their full transaction history and current balance — useful for account customers who receive goods regularly and settle up monthly.

Recurring documents

For customers you invoice on a regular schedule (weekly, monthly, etc.), set up a recurring document once and Sorora generates and sends it automatically going forward — no need to rebuild the same invoice every month.

Payment reminders

Turn on automatic reminders in Settings → Invoice Reminders and Sorora will nudge customers about overdue invoices for you, without you having to chase every one manually.

4. Products & Stock

Adding products

Every product has a name, price, and VAT setting. You can also mark a product as tracked stock (so Sorora keeps a running count) or as a deposit item (like a returnable cylinder or crate).

Selling by weight or length

Some products — bulk goods, cable, rope — aren't sold as whole units. Mark a product as sold by measure and choose the unit (kg or m). At the till, the cashier enters the exact amount sold and the price calculates automatically from your price-per-unit.

Stock transfers

Moving stock between branches (say, from your depot to a retail branch) is tracked as a formal transfer:

1. Create the transfer and choose what's being sent
2. Mark it as sent — this deducts stock from the source branch
3. The receiving branch marks it as received — this adds stock at the destination

This two-step process means stock in transit is accounted for properly, and nothing gets lost between locations. A sent transfer can't be cancelled — if something's wrong, receive it first and then reverse it.

Stocktakes

Run a stocktake to compare your recorded stock levels against a physical count and adjust for any differences — damages, shrinkage, or counting errors.

Suppliers & purchase orders

Keep a list of your suppliers and raise purchase orders when you need to restock. Receiving a purchase order updates your stock levels automatically.

Bulk actions

On the Products page, select multiple products at once and archive them together — handy when discontinuing a range or doing seasonal cleanup.

5. Customers

Customer records & account numbers

Every customer gets a unique account number (format: ACC-000001) automatically when you add them. Share this with customers so their payments reference the right account — it appears on every invoice and statement you send them.

Statements & loyalty

Pull a statement for any customer at any time to see their balance and history. If you run a loyalty programme, customers earn points on purchases which can be redeemed for a rand-value discount on future sales — configure the points-per-rand rate and redemption value under Settings → Loyalty Programme.

Switching from another system

Moving from another system or from spreadsheets? We can migrate your customers and historical invoices for you, so your customer balances are accurate from day one on Sorora. This is a guided service rather than a self-serve import. Contact us at hello@sorora.co.za for a quote.

Customer self-service portal

Customers can access a self-service portal to view their own invoices and statements, reducing the “can you send that again?” requests to your team.

6. Payroll

Sorora's payroll module is built around South African tax rules, so PAYE, UIF, and SDL are calculated correctly without you needing to be a payroll expert.

Setting up an employee

Under People → Staff, add each employee's salary details, tax number, UIF number, and banking information. These fields are only visible to managers and above, in line with POPIA data protection requirements.

Running payroll

1. Create a payroll run for the pay period
2. Calculate — Sorora works out PAYE (using current SARS tax brackets), UIF (1% employee + 1% employer, capped monthly), and SDL where it applies
3. Review each employee's line and adjust manually if needed (bonuses, once-off deductions, corrections)
4. Complete the run to finalise it

Both draft and calculated runs can still be cancelled if you need to start over, and a calculated run can be recalculated rather than restarted from scratch.

Payslips

Every completed run generates a branded PDF payslip per employee, ready to download or share.

Leave and deductions

Track annual, sick, family responsibility, and unpaid leave requests, with approve/reject workflows. Set up recurring deductions — loan repayments, garnishees, medical aid, pension — once, and they apply automatically to every future run.

EMP201 summary

Each payroll run includes an EMP201 summary — your total PAYE, UIF, and SDL liability for the period, ready to enter into SARS eFiling, with the submission due date calculated for you.

7. Reports & Analytics

Reports

Accountant and manager-level users can pull reports covering sales, stock movement, and financial position — the numbers you need for decision-making or handing to your accountant at year-end.

Analytics dashboard

A visual dashboard of how your business is trending — sales over time, top products, and branch performance where relevant.

Bank import

Import your bank statement to reconcile transactions against what's recorded in Sorora, helping you catch discrepancies without manually cross-checking every line.

Data export

Export your data at any time — useful for backups, sharing with your accountant, or migrating information elsewhere.

8. Settings & Admin

Feature access controls

Beyond the standard roles, admins can fine-tune exactly which features each role can access — for example, restricting Financial Reports or Analytics to specific people even within a role that would normally see them. Go to Settings → Feature Access to toggle these on or off, or reset to the defaults for your plan.

Branch configuration

Manage your branches, assign a default branch to each staff member, and control which products are visible at which branch — useful if certain branches only stock a subset of your full range.

Document templates

Choose how your invoices and quotes look. Sorora offers a Classic layout and several modern styles — pick the one that matches your brand.

Team & permissions

Manage who's invited, their role, their branch, and remove access for anyone who leaves.

Billing & your Sorora plan

Under Billing & Plan, see your current plan, usage against your limits (users, documents, customers, products), and manage your subscription — upgrade, change your billing cycle, or update payment details.

9. Industry Features

Sorora adapts to your type of business. Set your industry in Settings → Business Details to unlock the relevant tools.

Gas & LPG Distribution

Built for cylinder gas and LPG distributors:

• Cylinder filling — record filling runs where kilograms are drawn from your bulk tank and converted into sellable cylinder stock, with the source tank's level automatically deducted
• Cylinder deposits — track outstanding deposits per customer for cylinders out on loan, and process returns or write-offs
• Branch tanks — branches that fill smaller cylinders from their own 48kg supply can track that stock the same way the depot does, with automatic deduction as cylinders are filled and sold

Food & Beverage

Built for restaurants, cafés, and tuckshop-style operations:

• Online ordering — a public ordering page for your business where customers place orders directly, with pickup, delivery, or dine-in options
• Automatic order confirmation to the customer's WhatsApp, with a one-tap link for them to reach you back
• Kitchen slip printing — a formatted order slip prints automatically at the till the moment a sale goes through
• Tables — manage dine-in orders by table

Retail & Services

The core Sorora toolkit — POS, documents, stock, and customers — covers most retail and services businesses without any extra setup.

10. Time Tracking & Activity Log

Time tracking

Staff can clock in and out, giving you a record of hours worked per employee — useful on its own, or alongside Payroll for wage calculations.

Activity log

Every significant action in your account — who created what, who changed a setting, who processed a payment — is recorded in the activity log. If something looks off, this is the first place to check to see exactly what happened and who did it.