Industry · Agrovet
POS system for an agrovet in Kenya
An agrovet carries the hardest stock in Kenyan retail. Vaccines and animal-health products have batch numbers and expiry dates and are worthless the day after; feed and fertiliser move in sacks with seasonal demand; and a good share of the customer base pays after harvest rather than at the counter.
Any one of those a spreadsheet can survive. Together they compound. Expiry is discovered on the shelf rather than in a report, the long rains arrive before the stock does, and the farmer credit book grows through a season with no ageing on it — so the shop's working capital is tied up in debts it has not looked at since planting.
What solves it
Batch numbers and expiry dates
Stock is held per batch with its expiry, so the expiry report is a forward view rather than a discovery at the shelf.
Sell the nearest expiry first
Dispensing works down from the batch that expires soonest, which is what actually stops write-offs.
Farmer credit with ageing
Sales on account create receivables aged by days outstanding, so a debt taken at planting is visible before harvest, not after it.
Seasonal reorder levels
Reorder points on the lines that spike with the rains, so buying is prompted before demand rather than during it.
Sacks in, kilos out
Buy feed by the sack and sell by the kilo, with the conversion on the product so the stock figure holds.
A worked example: the expiry you can still sell
You hold 60 doses of a vaccine that cost KES 320 each — KES 19,200 of stock. Forty doses are from a batch expiring in five weeks; twenty are from a newer batch expiring in eight months. Without batch tracking the system sees sixty doses and the shelf gets picked from the front.
Five weeks later the older batch is worthless, and the loss is KES 12,800 on one product. Multiply across the fifty-odd short-dated lines an agrovet carries and the annual write-off is a serious number — one that never appears as a decision, only as stock that quietly stopped being stock.
With batches on the record, two things change. The expiry report shows the 40 doses at five weeks while there is still time to move them, so they can be pushed to the vets and larger farms who will use them immediately. And dispensing works down from the nearest expiry by default, so the newer batch is not sold ahead of the older one by accident. The write-off does not disappear, but it stops being a surprise, and most of it stops happening.
- →60 doses at KES 320 = KES 19,200 of stock
- →40 doses expiring in five weeks — visible while still sellable
- →Nearest expiry dispensed first, so batches do not overtake each other
- →A KES 12,800 write-off becomes a KES 12,800 decision
The features this trade leans on
Each one goes deeper than this page does — start with the first.
Stock you can trust
Batch and expiry, serial numbers, reorder levels, stock takes and the formulas behind them.
Customers and loyalty
Credit accounts that do not go missing, loyalty that returns, and a debtor list you can actually chase.
Buying, suppliers and approvals
Purchase orders, goods-received notes, supplier bills and the cost figure every margin depends on.
Reports and real accounting
Double-entry books — trial balance, P&L, balance sheet — not a CSV export to somebody else's software.
Questions from this trade
Can it track batch numbers and expiry dates?
Yes. Stock is held per batch with its own expiry date, so the expiry report gives you a forward view of what is about to become worthless while there is still time to sell it. Dispensing works down from the nearest expiry.
Can farmers buy on credit and pay after harvest?
Yes. Sales on account create a receivable against the farmer rather than requiring payment at the counter, and the debtor list ages by days outstanding. A season-long debt is a visible position rather than a page in a book.
Can I buy feed in sacks and sell it by the kilo?
Yes. The conversion factor is held on the product, so receiving 40 sacks of 70kg adds 2,800 sellable kilos and the cost per kilo derives from the sack price.
Will it help me buy ahead of the season?
Reorder levels on seasonal lines fire before demand rather than during it, and purchase history shows what the same weeks did last year. Buying for the long rains a fortnight late is one of the more expensive mistakes in this trade.
Is this the same as a pharmacy system?
The batch-and-expiry machinery is the same, which is why the pharmacy page is worth reading too. The differences are the seasonality, the sacks-to-kilos conversions on feed, and the fact that a large share of agrovet customers pay after harvest.
Do I need internet?
Not to keep selling. Offline mode lets the till take sales, print receipts and reserve stock while the connection is down, then syncs everything when it returns. You do need connectivity for the parts that are inherently online: an M-Pesa STK push, an eTIMS submission and the online shop all need a live link.
How long does setup take?
A single-counter duka is usually selling the same day. The work is the product list, not the software: import a CSV or let Amina create products from a supplier invoice or a photo of your price list. A multi-branch business with thousands of SKUs, opening stock counts and an eTIMS enrolment should plan a week and run the old system in parallel for a fortnight.
Will it show me my profit?
Yes, and from a real ledger rather than a sales total. Every sale posts to a double-entry chart of accounts, so you get a trial balance, profit and loss, balance sheet and cash flow — not a CSV to hand your accountant. Margin is visible per product, per branch and per channel, because cost is tracked on the way in through purchase orders and goods-received notes.
Try it in your agrovet
Fourteen days, no card, no hardware to buy. Import your product list or let Amina build it from a photo of your price list.