There's no app that can answer "Kumita ba ako this week?" — and I think I know why
I've been interviewing small store owners — hindi yung mga may cash registers and barcode scanners. Yung sari-sari stores, carinderias, tindahan sa bahay where one person does everything: handles customers, nag-oorder ng stocks, and nagbibilang ng pera at the end of the day.
Three interviews done so far. One of them was my own mom.
Here's what I kept hearing: alam nila na may kita sila. Alam nila na may gastos. Pero wala silang paraan to find out if they actually made money that week. It's all estimates lang. "Mga ganito siguro."
So why aren't they using the apps that already exist? Hindi kasi sila tech-averse — lahat sila aktibong gumagamit ng GCash and Messenger every day.
Three problems I found:
- Everything is in English — Loyverse, most POS apps. Hindi sila nag-iisip sa English.
- Wrong input moment — Existing apps expect you to log every transaction in real time, habang hawak mo pera, habang may customer. Not realistic.
- Wrong output — Charts and dashboards ang ibinabalik. Pero yung tanong nila every night is one lang: "Kumita ba ako?"
My hypothesis: if you remove all three friction points at the same time, you make something possible na hindi pa nila nagagawa.
The MVP I want to test: two inputs lang at the end of each day — Gastos (magkano ang ginastos) and Kita (magkano ang nakolekta). One output: Kumita ka or Lugi ka, with the peso amount. Sa Filipino. Wala nang iba.
Hindi pa ako nagbubuilt ng app. Testing ko muna ito manually with my mom using a Google Sheet — just to find out if gagamitin ba niya talaga nang consistent. That's the real unknown.
Tanong ko sa inyo: do you know any tindero/tindera in this situation? Or based on your experience, may mali ba sa reasoning ko?