The merchant app explained

Most merchants end up running their store mostly from their phone, and that is not a compromise. The merchant app does nearly everything the web dashboard does, and a few jobs it does better, since photographing a product and publishing it takes about a minute when the camera and the dashboard are the same device. This guide covers what is where, what the app is genuinely best at, and the short list of things you still need a computer for.

Getting the app

Download Sohoj Dokan from Google Play on Android or the App Store on iPhone, then sign in with the same phone number and password you use on the web. Everything is the same account and the same store.

You can also create a new store from the app, including phone verification and the setup wizard, so a merchant who has never touched a computer can open a shop entirely from a phone.

The five tabs

Tab	What you do there
Dashboard	Today’s numbers and recent activity
Orders	Confirm, update, call customers, dispatch
Products	Add, edit and photograph your catalog
Analytics	Views, orders, revenue, conversion, top products
More	Everything else

Dashboard

Your home screen, with a Basic and an Advanced view. Basic keeps today’s essentials in front of you, and Advanced adds deeper metrics. The choice is remembered per store, so if you run more than one shop from the same phone, each keeps its own preference.

Orders

Where most of your phone time goes, and rightly so. The full list with search and filters, the complete order detail, status and payment updates, order editing, the customer risk score, and courier dispatch.

Two things make this better on a phone than on a computer. The Call button dials the customer directly, and checking a bKash payment means switching to your bKash app, which is right there. Confirming the morning’s orders while having tea is a perfectly good way to work.

Products

The full product form, including the variant editor and image manager. Photograph a product, write two lines, set a price, save. For a new store this is usually the fastest way to build a catalog, because there is no step where you move photos onto a computer first.

Analytics

The same period selector and the same four cards as the web: Views, Orders, Revenue and Conversion, plus the page views chart, revenue, top products and top pages. Traffic Sources and the live now visitor pill are currently web only.

What is inside More

More is organised into five groups:

Group	What is in it
Selling	Payment verification, Delivery settings, Integrations
Catalog	Categories, Tags, Bulk import
Storefront	Pages, Landing pages, Theme builder
Advanced	Coupons, Domains
Account	Subscription and billing, Store settings, Notifications, Account access

Plus Contact support and Sign out at the bottom.

A few of these are more capable than people expect:

Theme builder is a full native designer with a live preview of your storefront, not a cut-down version. Change a colour, rearrange sections, edit your announcement bar, and watch the result immediately.

Domains lets you buy a domain, connect one you already own, and fill in your WHOIS contact and identity documents. The DNS records are shown with copy buttons, so a domain can be set up entirely from a phone.

Bulk import accepts a CSV or Excel file from your phone’s storage, which is genuinely useful when a supplier sends you a price list on WhatsApp.

Payment verification carries a badge showing how many payments are waiting, so you can see at a glance whether anything needs checking.

Some items only appear once you enable the matching feature for your store, so if Coupons or Landing pages is missing, switch it on under Advanced in the web dashboard first.

Push notifications

The app sends a real push notification when a new order arrives, and this is the single best reason to install it.

Under More, then Notifications, there is an Order notifications switch. It is per device, so you can have alerts on your own phone and not on the shared shop phone, or the other way around.

The gap between an order arriving and you calling the customer matters more in Bangladesh than almost anywhere, because cash-on-delivery orders get cancelled while they wait. A notification that reaches you in ten seconds instead of two hours is worth real money.

Running more than one store

If your account has more than one store, Switch store at the top of More moves between them. Everything reloads for the store you picked, including the dashboard preference, so there is no risk of editing the wrong catalog by accident.

What the app is genuinely best at

Not everything is equally good on a small screen. These are the jobs where the phone beats the computer:

• Adding products. Camera and catalog on one device, no file transfers.
• Confirming orders. Notification, open, call, confirm, all in under a minute.
• Verifying payments. Your bKash app is one switch away.
• Checking numbers between other things. Standing in a queue, waiting for a rickshaw.

And the ones where a computer still wins:

• Writing long product descriptions. Typing a lot is typing a lot.
• Designing your storefront in detail. The native builder is good, but a big screen shows more at once.
• Working through a hundred orders. Bulk actions and wide tables suit a desktop.

Still web only

Being straightforward about the gaps saves you hunting for a button that is not there. These features are in the web dashboard but not yet in the app:

• Point of Sale
• Incomplete orders and checkout recovery
• SMS settings and credits
• Customer accounts and Staff management
• Traffic Sources and the live now counter in Analytics
• The Advanced page for switching optional features on and off

Everything else you use day to day is in both.

Everything stays in sync

There is one store and one set of data. A product you add on your phone is on the web dashboard immediately, and an order you confirm on the web shows as confirmed in the app. Nothing needs exporting, importing or refreshing between the two, and there is no separate mobile version of your store to maintain.

Common questions

What you notice	Why
No notification when an order arrived	Order notifications are off for that device, or the phone blocked notifications for the app
A More item is missing	That optional feature is not enabled. Turn it on under Advanced on the web
Traffic Sources is not in Analytics	It is web only for now, along with the live visitor count
You cannot find Point of Sale	POS is web only at the moment
The wrong store’s data is showing	Use Switch store at the top of More
The app looks different from a colleague’s	One of you is on an older version. Update from the store

The other app

There is a second Sohoj Dokan app in the stores, the marketplace app, and it is for shoppers rather than merchants. It lets customers browse products across every participating store, and checkout hands off to the merchant’s own storefront.

If you have opted into the marketplace, your products appear there too, which is free extra visibility. It is not the app you manage your store with, so make sure you have downloaded the merchant one.

Tips

• Turn on order notifications on the phone you actually carry. It is the whole point of having the app.
• Build your catalog from the phone, then fine-tune descriptions on a computer later if you want.
• Keep the app updated. Features arrive there regularly, and an old version simply will not have them.
• On a shared shop phone, decide deliberately whether order notifications should be on, since it may be quieter to leave them on one device only.
• If you run several stores, check which one is selected before you start editing.

What’s next

See using the mobile app for a quick start, then orders page explanations and products page explanations, which describe the same features you are using in the app.