The short answer
Inventory management software in Uganda is a system that tells you what stock you hold, where it is, what it cost you and what is about to run out or expire. We build it as a web system your team opens on a laptop at the counter and on a phone in the store, with each branch seeing its own stock and the owner seeing everything. Live balances, goods received notes, stock issues, branch transfers, stock counts, supplier purchase orders, low-stock and expiry alerts, and reports on stock value, dead stock and shrinkage. Mobile money is built in where you also collect payment, so MTN MoMo and Airtel confirmations post against the sale rather than being typed later.
Pricing is fixed and quoted upfront. A single-branch build starts at UGX 3,500,000, multi-branch with transfers and expiry tracking sits around UGX 6,500,000, and larger builds with accounting and payroll links run higher. Payment is our standard 50/25/25 plan and go-live is usually four to eight weeks for one branch. If you also need a till that prints receipts and takes payment, look at pos-inventory-system-uganda, which is the same stock engine with a sales counter on top.
Why loose stock control quietly eats Ugandan businesses
Nearly every business we have built for came to us with the same three problems and did not know they were connected.
You do not know your real stock. The book says 40 cartons, the store has 31, and nobody can say when the nine went. Without a system that records every movement against a person and a time, shrinkage never has a name attached to it. Once movements are logged, the same losses become traceable within a week and usually stop on their own.
You buy blind. Ordering happens when someone notices an empty shelf, which means you are either out of stock on your best sellers or sitting on capital in slow movers. Ugandan importers feel this hardest, because a wrong order is money locked up for two months in shipping.
Expiry is a silent write-off. Pharmacies, supermarkets, agro-input shops and drinks distributors all lose stock to dates nobody was watching. An expiry alert at 90, 60 and 30 days turns a write-off into a promotion.
The honest test: can you tell me the shilling value of your stock right now, this minute, without going to count? If not, that number is being decided by somebody other than you.
What we build into the system
Not a feature list from a brochure. This is what actually gets used day to day in the builds we have shipped.
- Live stock per branch and per store. One product, separate balances for the Kampala shop, the Mbarara branch and the main warehouse, with a group total for the owner.
- Goods received notes against purchase orders. Raise a PO to a supplier, receive against it, and the system flags short deliveries and price changes instead of quietly accepting them.
- Branch transfers with confirmation. Stock leaves as in transit and only lands when the receiving branch confirms, so nothing disappears in the boda ride.
- Low-stock and reorder alerts. Set a reorder level per product per branch. Alerts land in the dashboard and on WhatsApp or email in the morning.
- Batch and expiry tracking. Receive by batch with an expiry date, sell oldest first, and get warnings before dates hit.
- Stock counts and variance. Count on a phone in the aisle, compare with system quantity, and get a signed variance report rather than an argument.
- Supplier ledgers. What you owe each supplier, what you have paid, and what a product actually costs you landed.
- Reports that matter. Stock value, fast and slow movers, gross margin per product, dead stock over 90 days, and shrinkage by branch and by user.
- Roles and audit trail. A storekeeper cannot edit cost prices or delete a movement. Every change carries a name and a timestamp.
If you need this stitched together with sales, HR and finance rather than run as a standalone stock system, that is business-management-software-uganda territory.
Honest UGX pricing
We quote a fixed price before we start. No hourly billing, no surprise invoice at the end. Payment follows our 50/25/25 plan: half to begin, a quarter when you sign off the demo, a quarter at go-live.
| Build | Once-off price (UGX) | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| Single branch stock control | from 3,500,000 | One shop or store: products, receiving, issuing, low-stock alerts, core reports |
| Multi-branch with transfers | from 6,500,000 | 2 to 5 branches: per-branch stock, transfers, batch and expiry, supplier ledgers |
| Stock plus POS counter | from 8,000,000 | Retail and pharmacy: everything above plus tills, receipts, MTN MoMo and Airtel |
| Warehouse and distribution | from 12,000,000 | Distributors: bins, pick lists, van sales, route reps, delivery confirmation |
| Hosting, backups and support | 150,000 to 400,000 / month | Every build. Daily backups, updates, WhatsApp support in business hours |
Two honest notes. First, cheap is expensive here: a system that loses a week of movements costs more than it saved. We wrote about that trade-off in cheapest-vs-best-website-uganda and the same logic applies to software. Second, if an off-the-shelf package genuinely fits your workflow we will say so instead of building. Read custom-vs-off-the-shelf-software before you decide.
What changes by sector
Stock control software is not one thing. A hardware store and a pharmacy need genuinely different builds, and we adjust rather than force everyone into one shape.
Pharmacies and drug shops. Batch numbers, expiry, and NDA-relevant record keeping matter more than anything else. Selling nearest-expiry first has to be automatic, not a habit. See pharmacy-pos-system-uganda.
Hardware, building and agro shops. Units are the headache. You buy cement by the tonne and sell by the bag, buy cable by the roll and sell by the metre. We build unit conversion in so margins stay honest.
Supermarkets and minimarts. Volume and barcodes. Fast receiving, quick counts by aisle, and shrinkage reports per shift.
Distributors and wholesalers. Van stock and route reps. Load a vehicle in the morning, reconcile in the evening, and see what each rep sold versus what he carried.
Restaurants and bars. Recipe-level consumption, so a crate of sodas maps to sales and theoretical usage is compared with actual. That usually sits inside restaurant-management-software-uganda.
Manufacturers and processors. Raw materials, work in progress and finished goods as three separate stock states. That is normally an erp-software-uganda conversation.
How we work
We have shipped 25+ live builds and manage over $100k of client ad spend, so we are not learning on your project. The process is boring on purpose.
Week one, we walk your store. Not a Zoom call. We come and watch how stock actually arrives, who signs for it, where the book is kept and who has keys. Software that ignores how your team really works gets abandoned in month two.
Then a fixed quote and a written scope. You know the price, the features and the date before any money moves.
We build in stages you can see. Products and receiving first, so you can start capturing real data while we build the rest. You are never waiting three months to see anything.
Data migration is done together. We clean your product list with you, run an opening stock count, and go live on a day when the shop is quiet.
Training is for the counter staff, not the owner. We train the people who will touch it daily, on their own devices, and leave a short WhatsApp-friendly guide in plain language.
After go-live you are on WhatsApp support at +256 702946946. Most questions get answered the same day. For a fuller picture of how we scope and price software, see custom-software-cost-uganda.
How to choose a supplier
Before you pay anybody in Kampala for inventory software, ask these five things.
- Can I see a live system running in a real business? Not a demo video. A working shop with a real product list. If they cannot show one, you are the pilot.
- Who owns the data and can I export it? You should be able to pull your full product and movement history to CSV any day, without asking permission. If the answer is vague, walk.
- What happens when the internet dies? Get a straight answer on which screens work offline and which do not, in writing.
- Is the price fixed? A quote that moves every time you ask a question is not a quote.
- Who answers at 8pm on a Saturday when stock will not save? Retail does not run on office hours. Neither should support.
Those questions apply to any software supplier, not just us. If you want the longer version, how-to-choose-web-software-company covers it properly, and freelancer-vs-agency covers the risk of a one-person build disappearing mid-project.
Frequently asked questions
How much does inventory management software cost in Uganda?
A single-branch build starts at UGX 3,500,000 once off, covering products, stock in and out, suppliers, low-stock alerts and core reports. Two to five branches with transfers and expiry tracking sits around UGX 6,500,000. Bigger builds with accounting, payroll links or a customer app are quoted individually and usually land between UGX 9,000,000 and UGX 18,000,000. Hosting and support after go-live runs UGX 150,000 to UGX 400,000 a month depending on data volume and how many users you have. Payment is our normal 50/25/25 plan: half to start, a quarter at the demo, a quarter at go-live.
How long does it take to go live?
Four to eight weeks for a single branch, six to twelve weeks for multi-branch with transfers. The slowest part is almost never the software. It is getting a clean product list out of your head and your books. If you can give us a tidy CSV of products, units and current quantities in week one, we move fast.
Can it work when the internet goes down?
Yes, if we build it that way. We can make the till and stock-issue screens work offline on the device and sync once the connection returns, which matters for shops in areas with unstable MTN or Airtel data. Purely browser-based back-office screens such as reports need connection. Tell us upfront which counters must never stop, because offline support affects the quote.
We already use QuickBooks or Excel. Do we throw it away?
No. Most clients keep their accountant on QuickBooks and use our system for the physical stock reality: receiving, issuing, transfers, counts and alerts. We export in the format your accountant wants, or push summaries across so nobody re-types anything. Where it makes sense to bring the whole thing together we would point you to erp-software-uganda instead.
Do you handle barcodes and scanners?
Yes. We generate barcodes for items that arrive without one, print labels on a normal thermal printer, and support cheap USB or Bluetooth scanners you can buy in Kampala. For fast-moving retail this alone cuts receiving time massively, because a delivery of 200 lines gets scanned in rather than typed.