DeynBook is built in Minneapolis for Somali halal markets and the small independent groceries like them. In those stores, credit is given on a handshake and written in a notebook. We kept the handshake. We replaced the notebook.
One of us grew up in a family grocery — a chest freezer of goat meat at the back, sacks of basmati stacked by the door, and a spiral notebook under the till. That notebook was the business. Who took what home on Thursday, who paid on payday, who was good for it. Nobody signed anything. Nobody needed to.
It was also the weakest thing in the store. One winter a window leaked and took half a page of names with it. Every Ramadan the credit column doubled — full houses to feed, everyone promising to settle after Eid — and by the middle of Shawwal there were three versions of the truth: what the notebook said, what the customer remembered, and what the family remembered.
None of those arguments were about honesty. They were about handwriting, torn corners, and a total nobody had ever actually added up. The quiet part was worse: balances that simply got dropped, because asking a neighbour twice felt like accusing him. A few hundred dollars here, a few hundred there, written off inside somebody’s head rather than on paper.
One of us writes software. Sitting at that counter one afternoon, the problem finally came into focus. The deyn was never the problem. Deyn is how these stores work; it is why a family having a hard month still eats, and it is the reason customers come back for twenty years. The record was the problem. So we went and built the record.
DeynBook is what we wish had been under that till: every macmiil with a real account, every balance current to the second, a friendly xasuusin that goes out in Somali on Friday morning, and a warbixin at the end of the month that says exactly where the money is. We started with one store on Cedar Avenue. Owners told their cousins.
Nothing about the trust changes. Only the paper.
Four beliefs sit underneath that sentence. They are not posters on a wall — each one settled an actual argument about what we would and would not build.
A shopkeeper who hands over sixty dollars of alaab on a promise has done something generous. The least the software can do is remember it exactly — the date, the items, the running balance, and which person at the counter entered it. Every change is logged. Nothing is ever quietly overwritten, by us or by anyone on your staff.
These are neighbours. Same masjid, same school pickup. So a DeynBook reminder opens with the store name and a thank-you, states the balance once, and stops. No red type, no threats, no third message in one day.
The whole app switches between Somali and English — not only the buttons, but the reminder templates, the printed receipts, and the person who answers when you call support.
The chain down the road runs on systems that cost millions of dollars. A three-aisle halal market gets a shoebox of receipts and a spreadsheet somebody’s nephew made. We do not think that gap is earned. Instant sync across phone and till, real aging reports, encrypted daily backups, audit trails — for less than fifty dollars a month.
A balance is sensitive information. In a community where everyone knows everyone, it is very sensitive. Here is exactly how it is handled — in plain language, not a policy PDF.
Every connection to DeynBook runs over TLS. Every balance, name and phone number is encrypted at rest with AES-256 — and so is each backup copy of it.
Who changed it, what it was before, what it is now, and the exact minute. When a number is questioned you can show the history in ten seconds instead of arguing over a page.
A cashier can record a credit sale and take a payment without ever seeing the whole ledger or another customer’s balance. You decide, per person and per store, who sees the totals.
Your store is backed up every day and kept in more than one place. A dropped phone, a dead computer at the till, or water in the stockroom does not cost you a single balance.
Export every customer, transaction and payment to CSV whenever you like — not only when you cancel. If you do cancel, we hand you the file. Nothing is held hostage.
A customer’s number is only ever used to send that store’s own reminders and receipts. We do not sell it, rent it, share it with another store, or use it for our own marketing.
We do not sell, rent or share customer data with anyone — not advertisers, not other stores, not data brokers. Your ledger is your ledger. If your accountant or your lawyer has a question, a person here will answer it.
Read the privacy policy
Most owners who call us have never moved a business onto software before. That is our job to carry, not yours.
Send photos of your pages or a spreadsheet. Our team types in every name and balance and sends it back for you to check line by line. Guided onboarding and data import come with Standard and Scale at no extra cost, and most stores are done inside two business days.
Phone support is included on Standard and Scale: call +1 (612) 555-0142 and the person who picks up speaks both. Mon–Sat 8:00 AM – 8:00 PM CT, Sunday 12:00 – 6:00 PM CT. No ticket number, no chatbot before you get to a human.
A 45-minute call where we build your store together: staff accounts, your first customers, and the reminder schedule that fits your week. You are not left alone with a login at 11pm.
Month to month on every plan. Cancel from your settings page in two clicks. Pay yearly and you save about 16% — cancel mid-year and we refund the months you did not use.
DeynBook was founded in 2022, a few blocks from the stores that gave us the idea, and that is still where most of us sit. Engineers, one designer, and support people who grew up shopping in bakhaar like yours.
We are deliberately small — about 120 stores, and we know most of them by name. It means the person who answers your call can walk over to the person who wrote the screen you are asking about, usually the same afternoon.
Deyn books kept here, from
Send a photo of your pages and we will tell you exactly what it takes to move them — how long, what it costs, what changes at the counter. Decide after that.