Bookkeeping for a Duka: The Records a Tanzanian Small Business Must Keep (2026)

Nobody opens a duka because they want to do bookkeeping. You open it to sell sugar, airtime, cooking oil and cold sodas, and the books feel like something for companies with an accountant on the payroll. But in Tanzania the arithmetic runs the other way round: a shop that keeps records usually pays less tax than the identical shop next door that keeps none, and it is the shop with no records that has no defence when the Tanzania Revenue Authority disagrees with it.

This guide covers what the law actually demands, the small number of books a duka genuinely needs, and how to read them so they tell you something you did not already know.

What the law actually requires of you

The duty sits in section 35 of the Tax Administration Act, Cap. 438, and it is shorter than most people expect. Every taxable or liable person must, within the United Republic, maintain documents in paper or electronic form which contain the information you have to give the Commissioner General under any tax law, and which enable an accurate determination of the tax you owe.

Four things in that sentence matter for a small trader.

"Within the United Republic." The records must be held in Tanzania. A phone in your pocket counts. A pile of exercise books in the back room counts.

"Paper or electronic form." The law does not require software. A ruled notebook filled in honestly every evening satisfies section 35. A shoebox of loose receipts with nothing written down does not.

"Records and accounts in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles." Subsection (2) adds this, and in practice it means the ordinary discipline of recording every sale and every purchase in the period it happened, not the period you got round to it.

Five years. Subsection (3) requires documents to be retained for five years from the relevant date. For income tax the relevant date is the end of the year of income the document relates to; for VAT it is the end of the accounting period. The TRA states the same rule on its own page for individuals: keep them for at least five years from the end of the year of income. So the receipts from a crate of sodas bought in June 2026 need to survive until the end of 2031.

Records cut your tax bill - they do not raise it

The single most damaging myth in Tanzanian small trade is that writing things down invites tax. The presumptive table says the opposite in black and white. It has two columns precisely because the law pays you to keep books.

Work it through. A shop turning over TSh 6,000,000 a year pays TSh 100,000 with no records. With records it pays 3% of the TSh 2,000,000 above the threshold - TSh 60,000. Keeping a notebook is worth TSh 40,000.

At TSh 9,500,000 the gap widens. No records: TSh 250,000. With records: TSh 90,000 plus 3% of TSh 2,500,000, which is TSh 75,000, for a total of TSh 165,000. The notebook is now worth TSh 85,000 a year - a few hours of writing for the price of a month of electricity.

Our full guide to presumptive tax explains the three conditions you must meet to sit in this regime at all, and why a salary or rental income alongside the shop quietly pushes you out of it.

The step at TSh 11,000,000, and why it is worth watching

Above TSh 11,000,000 the two columns collapse into one flat 4% of turnover, so records stop reducing that particular bill. They do not stop mattering. Record-keeping remains a legal duty in its own right, and advisory guides such as those published by RSM and Auditax treat TSh 11,000,000 as the practical line above which the TRA expects proper accounting records and financial statements rather than a notebook. Confirm your own position with the TRA rather than with a neighbour.

The arithmetic across that line is worth knowing before you plan a big year. At exactly TSh 11,000,000 with records, the table gives TSh 90,000 plus 3% of TSh 4,000,000, or TSh 210,000. One shilling higher and the rate becomes 4% of the whole turnover, which is about TSh 440,000. That is a step of roughly TSh 230,000 for one extra shilling of sales, and it means growth from TSh 10.9m to TSh 11.5m can leave you slightly worse off than standing still. It is not a reason to hide sales, which is both illegal and self-defeating. It is a reason to know where you are and to plan a growth year that clears the step properly rather than stalling on top of it.

The five books a duka actually needs

Forget ledgers and journals. In practice a shop needs five running records, and four of them fit in one hardcover exercise book.

1. The daily sales book. One line per day: the date and the total taken. Split it between cash and mobile money, because you will want to reconcile against your statement. This is the number the presumptive table runs on, so it is the one to be scrupulous about.

2. The purchases book. Every time stock comes in: date, supplier, what it was, what you paid. Staple or spike the fiscal receipt to match. Our guide to EFD receipts explains why you are legally entitled to demand one from your wholesaler and obliged to keep it. Your supplier's receipt is the evidence of your cost, and without it your margin is a guess.

3. The expenses book. Rent, electricity, water, transport, wages, licence fees, mobile-money charges, airtime, repairs. Small amounts, recorded daily, that otherwise vanish. Most duka owners underestimate this book by a wide margin, which is why so many shops feel busy and profitable and still have no cash at month end.

4. The debtors book, or madeni. Who owes you, how much, and since when. Credit to neighbours is often the difference between a shop that survives and one that quietly runs out of working capital, because the stock has gone but the money has not arrived. Write the date next to every entry so you can see how old a debt is, and review the oldest ones first.

5. The stock count. Not daily. Monthly is enough, done on the same day each month. Count what is on the shelves and value it at what you paid for it, not at what you hope to sell it for.

Separate the shop's money from your own

This is the discipline that makes everything else possible, and it costs nothing.

If shop takings and household money sit in the same wallet, no amount of writing will produce a true picture, because every withdrawal is ambiguous even to you. Two practical moves fix it. First, take a fixed, modest amount out of the business each month as your own pay and record it as such, instead of dipping in whenever you need bus fare or airtime. Second, run the shop's money through its own channel: a business bank account if the volumes justify the fees, which you can weigh up against the options on our bank account comparison, or at minimum a mobile-money line used only for the business, so the statement itself becomes a record you did not have to write by hand.

A worked month

Here is a real-shaped month for a mid-sized duka.

Opening stock on the first of the month was TSh 3,200,000 at cost. During the month you bought TSh 6,400,000 of stock. On the last day you counted the shelves and valued them at TSh 3,050,000.

Your cost of goods sold is opening stock plus purchases minus closing stock: 3,200,000 + 6,400,000 − 3,050,000 = TSh 6,550,000.

Your sales book totals TSh 8,100,000. So gross profit is 8,100,000 − 6,550,000 = TSh 1,550,000, a margin of about 19%.

Now the expenses book: rent 250,000, electricity 60,000, transport 90,000, wages 300,000, licence and levies spread over the year 25,000, mobile-money charges 35,000. That is TSh 760,000.

Net profit for the month: 1,550,000 − 760,000 = TSh 790,000.

Two things fall out of that immediately. At this rate annual turnover is about TSh 97,200,000, which puts the shop in the 4% band, so presumptive tax runs to roughly TSh 3,888,000 a year, or TSh 324,000 a month. That is about 41% of the monthly net profit, and it is a big enough number that it has to be set aside every month rather than found in one lump later. Second, a 19% margin on this expense base leaves very little room for a bad month. Our guide to pricing your product works through what to do about that, and none of it is visible without the books.

The stock count is the number that tells the truth

Here is why the monthly count earns its place.

You had TSh 9,600,000 of goods available during the month, being opening stock plus purchases. If your normal margin is 20%, the TSh 8,100,000 of recorded sales should have consumed about TSh 6,480,000 of stock, which would leave TSh 3,120,000 sitting on the shelves. You counted TSh 3,050,000.

The TSh 70,000 gap is not an accounting error. It is stock that left the shop without a sale being recorded: breakage, spoilage, an unrecorded sale, a family member helping themselves, or theft. One month's gap tells you nothing, because margins vary and counts are rough. Three months of gaps in the same direction tell you exactly where to look, and no other record in the business can produce that signal.

What happens if you keep nothing

Section 35 is a duty, not a suggestion, and there is a penalty for failing to maintain documents. It is expressed in currency points rather than shillings, and the Minister may change the value of a currency point by order in the Gazette, so confirm the current amount with the TRA rather than trusting a figure you read online.

The bigger risk is not the penalty. Under the Tax Administration Act the Commissioner may assess you on the basis of available information and best judgement where proper documents do not exist, and once an assessment is issued it is the taxpayer who has to show that it is wrong. Without a sales book, a purchases book and a stock count, you have nothing to show. You end up arguing about your own business from a weaker position than the officer sitting across the desk, using numbers that somebody else estimated for you.

Moving up from a notebook

There is a natural progression here, and it is worth knowing where you sit on it.

A notebook and a spike for receipts is genuinely enough at the bottom of the presumptive table. Once you are trading above TSh 11,000,000, expect to produce proper accounting records and financial statements. If your taxable turnover approaches TSh 200,000,000 in twelve months, or TSh 100,000,000 in six, VAT registration becomes compulsory within a short window, and VAT is unforgiving of poor records because every input claim depends on a valid fiscal receipt with a date inside the claim window. Our VAT calculator shows what 18% does to a price, and the general tax guide sets out how the pieces fit together.

If you are still setting up, the sequence in how to register a business and how to start and fund a business covers BRELA, your TIN and the local licence. And when you eventually want business finance, the first thing a lender or a SACCO asks for is a set of books. Traders who have kept them for two years walk into that conversation with something to show; traders who have not are asked to guess, and are priced for the uncertainty. Borrowing safely starts long before you fill in the form.

Frequently asked questions

Do I need accounting software? No. Section 35 accepts paper or electronic records. A well-kept exercise book is fully compliant. Software helps once you have staff, several product lines or VAT to account for, but it is a convenience, not a legal requirement, and buying it will not fix a habit of not writing things down.

How long must I keep the receipts? Five years from the relevant date. For income tax that means five years from the end of the year of income the document relates to. Keep them somewhere dry and keep them in Tanzania, because section 35 requires the records to be maintained within the United Republic.

My supplier will not give me a receipt. What should I do? The Electronic Fiscal Devices Regulations put a duty on the purchaser to demand a fiscal receipt, retain it, produce it on request, and report a refusal. Without it you have no proof of your cost, which hurts you twice over: in any assessment, and in your own margin arithmetic. Our EFD receipts guide sets out how to report one.

Does keeping records mean the TRA will notice me and tax me more? Under the presumptive table, records generally mean you pay less, not more, for turnover up to TSh 11,000,000. Above that the rate is the same either way. The trader who keeps nothing is not invisible; they are simply the one with no evidence when an assessment lands.

Can I keep the books in Kiswahili? Yes. Kiswahili and English are both used in Tanzanian tax administration, and the law is concerned with whether the documents enable an accurate determination of tax, not with which of the two languages they happen to be written in. Be consistent, and be legible.

Should I record sales I made on credit? Yes. A sale is a sale when the goods leave the shop, regardless of when you are paid. That is what generally accepted accounting principles require, and it is exactly why the debtors book matters. Recording only the cash you have received will understate your turnover and give you a false picture of the shop's health.

Reviewed 7 September 2026. Figures reflect the presumptive tax table as amended by the Finance Act, 2026, in force from 1 July 2026. Tax rules change with each Finance Act - confirm your own position, and any penalty amount, with the Tanzania Revenue Authority.

This article is general information, not financial or tax advice. Your circumstances may differ.