Our first set of customers are the typical "mom-and-pop" shops that dot most streets in Latin America and the rest of the developing world. Despite selling well over 500 different types of products, most of these micro-retailers do not track their sales or expenses because they cannot afford an electronic cash register or similar technology tool and recording transactions with pen and paper is time-consuming. The most organized shopkeepers may record some transactions in a notebook and them laboriously transfer this information to a spreadsheet each day but they generally still do not have a clear idea about what to do with this information.

The end result is that most of these businesses do not know their breakeven sales, cannot analyze an investment opportunity properly, or optimize their purchasing decisions. All these limitations combine to keep micro-retailers operating in a sub-optimal manner, reducing their profits and limiting growth.