The ₦127,000 that isn’t in your box: how credit quietly eats a shop
We looked at the credit books of 40 shops across three states. On average, a fifth of a month’s takings was sitting with customers — and nearly half of that had been forgotten entirely.
Every shopkeeper we met knew credit was a problem. Almost none could say how big a problem it was. “Small small,” one owner in Aba told us, before we counted ₦214,000 across nine pages of an exercise book — more than three weeks of his takings.
That gap between knowing and measuring is the whole story. Credit given is not a loss; it is a sale you have already made. But it is money you cannot use, and until you can see the total in one place, you cannot tell whether it is a healthy part of your business or the reason you keep running short before market day.
What we found across 40 shops
Field visits, March–June 2026 · 40 shops in Lagos, Kano and Abia · Illustrative, not a published study
Nobody forgets ₦70,000. They forget ₦900, sixty times.
The large debts are remembered. It is the small ones — a loaf here, a sachet of milk there, “I will pay on Friday” — that vanish. In one Kano shop, the four largest debts came to ₦96,000 and every one was written down. The eleven smallest came to ₦31,600 and not one had a name beside it.
This is not carelessness. Writing a name in a book while three customers wait is a real cost, and the ₦900 does not feel worth it. But sixty of those in a month is most of a day’s takings.
“I thought the ones who owe me were four people. It was fourteen.”
What the shops that recover it do differently
Three habits separated the owners who collected most of what they were owed from those who wrote it off.
- They write it down in front of the customerNot later, not at closing. Doing it while the person is standing there also removes the argument three weeks on, because both of you saw the number.
- They set a limit per person, before it is testedA number decided in advance is far easier to hold to than a decision made at the counter. It also lets an attendant say no without it becoming personal.
- They ask early, and they ask the same way every timeA reminder on day seven is a normal part of business. A reminder on day forty is a confrontation. The owners who chase gently and consistently rarely have to chase hard.
None of this requires software. An exercise book with a page per person and a date beside every entry does the job. What software adds is the total — one number, always current, that tells you how much of your shop is currently in other people’s pockets.
A note on our numbers
These figures come from our own field visits, not from published research, and 40 shops is a small sample. We publish them because they matched what owners told us in every state we visited — but treat them as what they are.
Read next
- Guide · 6 minHow to tell stock money apart from your own money
- From the road · 5 minTwo weeks in Sabon Gari: what 60 shopkeepers told us about software
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