The Six Income Types in Gazeloft General Business Explained

The pain: one big "income" bucket tells you nothing

Picture a typical hustle in Abuja. You sell phone accessories, you repair phones, you rent out a canopy and chairs on weekends, and sometimes you connect a buyer to a land agent and collect a commission. At the end of the month your notebook says income: ₦840,000. Fine. But which leg of the hustle actually carried the month? Which one is dying quietly? A single income column cannot answer, and free-text categories are worse, because "sales", "Sales", "sold goods" and "market money" end up as four different labels for the same thing, and your reports become soup.

What named income types are

The General Business space in Gazeloft replaces free-text categories with named entry types. Instead of one generic income button, you pick the type that matches how the money actually arrived. There are six first-class income types:

• Sales income: money from selling goods, stock or products. The wholesale carton, the retail sachet, the bag of rice.
• Service income: money from work done. Repairs, tailoring, barbing, consulting, design work, deliveries.
• Rent income: money from property or space you let out. A shop, a flat, a room, a stall.
• Hire income: money from letting people use your equipment or vehicles for a period. Canopies, chairs, generators, a car hired for a wedding.
• Commission income: money earned for connecting or facilitating. Agent fees, referral cuts, introduction fees.
• Other income: the honest miscellaneous drawer for genuine income that fits none of the above.

Alongside these sit Invest capital for money you put in, and Expense with a full category dropdown for money going out. Because the types are fixed and named, every entry lands in the right bucket the first time, on every device, whether it was typed by you, your worker, or entered offline in a market with no signal.

Step-by-step: recording income in the app

1. Open your General Business space and tap the new entry button.
2. The entry tiles show the named types. Pick the one that matches the money, for example Service income for a repair job.
3. Enter the amount, for example ₦15,000.
4. Optionally attach a customer, so debtors and repeat business are tracked, and a note like "screen replacement, Tecno".
5. If the money came in on an earlier day, set the date field to backdate it honestly.
6. Save. If you are offline, the entry waits in the outbox and syncs itself later, with no risk of a double entry.

For money that arrives the same way every time, set up a quick preset, or use repeat last entry, so a daily driver remittance takes two taps instead of ten.

Step-by-step: on the web dashboard

On gazeloft.com, open the space and use the same typed entry buttons. The web dashboard is ideal for the evening session: enter the day's remaining items, fix any wrong dates, and glance at the income breakdown, which shows each of the six types as its own share of the total. History can be filtered so you can read only your Rent income rows or only Commission income rows for any period.

Worked example: Emeka's mixed hustle, sorted

Emeka records one month across his mixed hustle in Enugu:

• Sales income: ₦410,000 from accessory sales.
• Service income: ₦265,000 from phone repairs.
• Hire income: ₦120,000 from canopy and chairs, four weekends.
• Commission income: ₦45,000 from one land introduction.
• Rent income: ₦0 this month, his tenant paid last month.
• Other income: ₦8,000, an old debt a friend finally repaid for goods long written off.

Total income: ₦848,000. The old notebook would have stopped there. Gazeloft's breakdown goes further. Repairs brought 31 percent of income from a corner of the shop with almost no stock cost, while accessory sales brought 48 percent but consumed most of his restocking expenses. The canopy business earned ₦120,000 against tiny costs. Reading this, Emeka decides to push repairs harder with a signboard, and to buy more chairs before December weddings. That decision was invisible when income was one number.

A simple daily rhythm that keeps the types honest

The six types only pay off if entries happen while memory is fresh. A rhythm that works for busy traders: record money the moment it lands when you can, and sweep the rest each evening in one two-minute session. Quick presets carry the regulars, like the ₦40,000 weekly canopy hire, and repeat last entry handles a run of similar sales. If a day escapes you completely, the date field lets you backdate tomorrow morning with a clear conscience, and Gazeloft's daily record reminder taps you on the shoulder before the details fade. Offline days at the market change nothing; entries queue in the outbox and sync when the network returns. Ten focused minutes a week is genuinely all the bookkeeping this system demands, and the reward is breakdowns you can trust without double-checking anything.

Tips and pitfalls

• Pick the type by how the money arrived, not by who paid. If your tenant also buys goods from your shop, the rent is Rent income and the goods are Sales income, two entries.
• Do not dump everything into Other income. If Other income grows above a small share of your total, you are hiding your own story from yourself.
• Hire is not Rent. Rent is property and space over time. Hire is equipment and vehicles for a job or a day. Keeping them separate shows you which asset class actually earns.
• Money you put in is never income. Use Invest capital, never Sales income, when topping up the business. Otherwise your break-even bar lies to you.
• Teach your workers the six types once. Because the types are named and fixed, a worker with entry permission cannot invent a new category and scatter your reports.

Give every naira its right name

When income has a name, decisions have a direction. Open your General Business space, record today's money under its true type, and watch your business separate into parts you can actually manage. Stop guessing. Start seeing, at gazeloft.com.