The shop is busy. Customers come in all day; the shelves empty and get refilled, and the sales book looks healthy. Then you sit down at the end of the month, and the money doesn't match the goods that left. Not by a frightening amount. Just enough that you start watching people.
In August 2025, police in Niger State arrested a sales attendant from a phone shop in Minna. The owner put the missing phones and cash at ₦29 million. According to the police account reported by Premium Times, she told them she had worked there since 2023 and couldn't say whether what she had taken added up to that much.
That last detail is the one worth sitting with. Goods and cash can leave a shop for so long that even the person taking them loses count.
Most owners try to solve this by catching a thief. They buy a camera, they sit in the shop, they change staff every few months. What actually works is duller and cheaper: set the shop up so that a loss shows itself within days, while it is still small enough to talk about.
How stock and money actually leave a shop
It helps to be specific, because each route has a different fix.
The sale nobody wrote down. The customer pays cash, the item leaves, nothing goes in the book. The cash goes in a pocket and, on paper, the item is still on your shelf.
The transfer to the wrong account. The customer asks to pay by transfer and gets a personal account number, or a POS terminal that isn't yours.
The top-up. Your price is ₦12,000. You told the customer ₦13,500, and they paid it. Your book says ₦12,000. Your stock and cash both balance, which is why many owners never find this. Your customers are being overcharged in your name.
Goods through the back. Items passed to a friend, "sold" on a credit that never gets paid, or carried home in a bag.
The short delivery. The supplier's invoice says ten cartons. Nine reach the store room.
Borrowing from the till. Usually with a sincere plan to put it back on Friday.
Then there are the losses that are nobody's crime. A delivery that was miscounted on arrival. Wrong change on a rushed afternoon. A bottle that broke and got swept up quietly. Goods given on credit to a regular customer and forgotten. A size 42 sold and recorded as a size 44.
A shortage tells you something is wrong with your records or with your people. On its own, it doesn't tell you which. Keep that in mind before you look at anyone differently.
Find the gap before you look for the person
Everything depends on knowing one number: what should be on the shelf.
What you had, plus what came in, minus what was recorded as sold, is what should be there. Then you count what is there.
Here is an example with made-up figures. You sell a body cream at ₦4,500. On Monday morning there are 48 on the shelf. On Wednesday your supplier delivers 24. By Saturday night the sales book shows 31 sold. 48 plus 24 is 72, less 31 is 41. You count the shelf and find 38.
Three are missing. That's ₦13,500 in one week, on one product, in a shop that felt like it was running fine.
You don't need to count the whole shop to do this. Pick the ten to twenty items most worth taking: small, expensive and fast-moving. In a phone shop that's handsets, power banks and earbuds. In a provision store it's tinned milk, spirits and the better creams. Count those every week and leave the full stock-take for once a month or once a quarter.
Three habits make the count worth trusting. Do it yourself, or give it to someone who doesn't sell. Don't count on the same day every week. And write the result down with the date, because this week's count is next week's opening figure.
One gap is a question. The same gap on the same items three weeks running, especially if it follows one person's shifts, is close to an answer.
Close the easy routes
Most of the routes above stay open for one reason: a single person sells the item, collects the money and writes the record. Nobody else ever sees the whole transaction. You close them by putting a second pair of eyes somewhere in that chain.
Split the jobs. With two staff, one attends to the customer and the other collects payment and writes the receipt. With one, keep two jobs for yourself: receiving deliveries and doing the count.
Use one account for transfers. Print the business account name and number and put it where customers can read it, with a line saying that payment to any other account is not payment to the shop. Have the alerts come to your phone. The same goes for the POS terminal: one machine, settling to the business.
Give a receipt for every sale. Use a numbered duplicate booklet. A missing number is something you ask about that evening. Put up a small sign telling customers to ask for their receipt, with your own phone number on it. That quietly turns every customer into a checker.
It also gives people a way to reach you. The ACFE's 2026 Report to the Nations, a study of 2,402 fraud cases inside organisations in 143 countries, found that 43% came to light through a tip, far more than through any audit or review, and that the typical scheme had been running for about 12 months by then. That study covers organisations of every size around the world, not Nigerian shops. The lesson travels anyway: the people standing nearest the problem usually know first, and they need somewhere to say it.
Put a name on every sale. Initials beside each line in the sales book are enough. When each person signs for what they sold, a shortage has somewhere to start. It also protects your honest staff, who otherwise share the suspicion equally with whoever is responsible.
Close every day. Cash in the drawer plus the day's transfer alerts should equal the day's recorded sales. It takes ten minutes, and whoever closes signs the page.
Display your prices. A price tag on the shelf or a printed list on the wall ends the top-up, because the customer can see what you charge.
About the two things owners reach for first. A camera is worth having. It discourages the casual attempt, and once your count has pointed at a particular afternoon, the footage can show you what happened. But a camera can't tell you that a carton is missing, and nobody watches twelve hours of video a day. Sitting in the shop yourself works very well, right up to the week you fall ill or open a second branch.
What a guarantor form does, and what it doesn't
Almost every owner asks new staff for a guarantor, and it is worth doing. It shows you whether anyone is prepared to vouch for this person, and it gives you a route to recover money if things go badly.
It only does those things if you verify it. Meet the guarantor. Go to the address. Keep a copy of their ID, and make sure they understand what they signed. A form signed by someone you can't find is just paper.
And remember when a guarantor becomes useful: after the loss. The form is not a control. It doesn't replace the weekly count, and owners who treat it as protection tend to stop counting.
A short written agreement helps for a different reason. It sets out what the job includes: which records the person keeps, how the day is closed, and what happens when a count comes up short. Staff who were told the rules on the first day take the count far less personally than staff who meet it for the first time in an argument.
Pay on time, as well. That isn't a comment on anyone's character. A person who is owed two months' salary and handles your cash every day is a risk you created yourself.
When the numbers point at someone
Don't accuse anyone on the strength of one count. Count again. Check the delivery notes and the credit book. Then sit down privately and ask the person to walk you through the records for those days. A good number of these conversations end with a mistake found and corrected, and you'll be glad you asked instead of announcing.
If it isn't a mistake, be careful with the usual response, which is "I will remove it from your salary." Section 5 of the Labour Act doesn't leave that decision to the employer. You can't fine a worker. A reasonable deduction for loss caused by a worker's wilful misconduct or neglect is allowed, but only with the prior written consent of an authorised labour officer, and total deductions in any month can't exceed one-third of that month's wages.
Theft itself is a matter for the police, and this is where your records pay for themselves a second time. Dated counts, numbered receipts and a signed sales book are evidence. "I just know" is not.
Whatever you find, don't lock anyone in, don't lay hands on them, and don't parade them or post them online. Apart from being wrong, it can turn you into the one answering questions at the station. This is general information and not legal advice. For a large loss, talk to a lawyer before you act.
All of this runs on a notebook, a receipt booklet and an hour a week, and plenty of shops run it exactly that way. It gets heavier as the shop grows: more products to count, more staff to initial, a second branch you can't visit daily. That's the point where software earns its place, because it does the arithmetic as each sale happens. That's what we are building Tabs to do: stock that moves when a sale is recorded, and a name and time on everything staff do. It hasn't launched yet, so for now the notebook version is the one to use.
Start this week with the smallest version. Twenty items, one count, one account for transfers and initials on every sale. If the numbers agree, you've bought peace of mind cheaply. If they don't, you've found out while the number is still small.
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