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SMS

The SMS screen is where you manage text messaging for your cooperative — see your unit balance, track every message sent, and send messages to members. CherryLedger sends through the ShuleOne SMS gateway, and each cooperative has its own gateway account and unit balance.

Permissions: SMS_READ (dashboard, balance, history), SMS_SEND (send), SMS_MANAGE (provision the account, top up units). Typical roles: Cooperative Admin (all), Finance Officer (read + send).

The SMS dashboard

The dashboard

At a glance:

  • SMS balance — remaining units on this cooperative's gateway account, and its sender ID.
  • Total sent / Delivered / Pending / Failed — all-time counts, and a delivery rate.
  • Today — sent, delivered, and failed today, plus units used.

History & delivery status

Every message is listed newest-first with its recipient, text, sender ID, and a status tag:

Status Meaning
Pending Accepted by the gateway, awaiting a delivery report.
Delivered Confirmed delivered to the handset.
Failed The network rejected or couldn't deliver it.

Statuses update automatically every few minutes. Click Refresh delivery to pull the latest reports on demand.

Sending a message

Click Send SMS (needs SMS_SEND):

  1. Pick recipients — choose members, tick All members, and/or type extra phone numbers.
  2. Write the message (the counter shows length).
  3. Send. Each recipient becomes a row in the history, and units are drawn from the balance.

Delivery receipts (weighing) are sent automatically and also appear here, tagged DELIVERY.

Managing the account (admins)

With SMS_MANAGE:

  • Provision account — creates this cooperative's own gateway account (needed before it can send on its own balance). Until then it uses the shared account and the default WALGOTECHSC sender.
  • Top up — pick an SMS package (or a custom amount), confirm the M-Pesa phone number (your own number is pre-filled), and a payment prompt appears on that phone. Enter the M-Pesa PIN and the units are credited automatically the moment the payment is confirmed. The crediting is done by the SMS gateway on payment confirmation only — no CherryLedger role, including super administrators, can add balance directly.

Sender ID

A cooperative sends as WALGOTECHSC until it sets its own approved sender ID on the Cooperatives (or Factories) edit form.

Delivery SMS on weighing

Every recorded delivery sends the farmer a confirmation SMS immediately — weight, receipt number and season total — tagged DELIVERY in the history. Nothing needs switching on per factory; the message goes out as part of saving the delivery, and an SMS failure never blocks the record (the receipt still prints; the message is marked failed in the history).

Platform prerequisite

Sends are live only when the platform operator has enabled the gateway on the server (SMS_ENABLED=true plus the gateway API keys in the backend environment) and the cooperative has units — either its own provisioned account or the shared fallback account. Until then messages are stubbed to the server log.