# A Three-Branch Pharmacy Group and the PPB Register > Three branches, three stock books, three hand-written controlled drug registers and an owner who could not see any of them without driving. Source: https://www.afyaconnect.africa/case-studies/pharmacy-group-ppb-register Publisher: AfyaConnect HMS (Neurobyte Technologies), Nairobi, Kenya --- *Retail pharmacy group, 3 branches · Nairobi metro* > **Disclosure:** This is an anonymised, composite account drawn from deployments of this type. The facility is not named because we do not have permission to name it, and no performance percentages are quoted because we have not measured them. What is described here is the change in how the work is done, which is the part we can stand behind. ## Where they started Three branches. Each with its own till, its own stock book and its own hand-written controlled substances register. The owner visited each branch to understand its stock position, which meant the group's true position was never known at any single moment. Two specific pains drove the project. **The register.** The PPB controlled substances register was written up at the end of each day from the day's prescriptions. Sometimes it was written up at the end of the week. Once, before an inspection, it was written up from memory and till rolls — which is exactly the failure a register exists to prevent, and everyone involved knew it. **Expiry write-offs.** Stock expired at one branch while the same item was selling at another. Nobody could see it, so nobody moved it. ## What changed **The register writes itself.** A scheduled-drug dispense at the till writes the register entry as part of the sale: date, drug, batch, quantity, patient, prescriber, dispenser, running balance. There is no end-of-day writing up, because there is nothing left to write up. Entries are not retrospectively editable; a correction is a new visible entry, which is what a register is for. Inspection day is now a date-range export rather than a week of anxiety. **One stock position.** All three branches report into one view. Slow-moving stock at one branch that is selling at another is visible, and a transfer is recorded on both sides so nothing leaves without arriving. **Expiry with usable lead time.** Alerts fire far enough ahead that stock can still be moved to the branch that will sell it. That converts a write-off into a transfer, which is the whole game in retail pharmacy margin. **eTIMS at the till.** Invoices are eTIMS-compliant at the point of sale rather than being re-entered later. ## What was hard Opening stock. Same lesson as every other deployment: three simultaneous physical counts, on a Sunday, with the branches closed. It is a genuinely unpleasant day and there is no way around it. Every group that tries to shortcut it by trusting the existing stock book spends the following month arguing with the system instead of using it. The second difficulty was social rather than technical. One branch had a long-serving counter assistant who had kept that branch's register by hand for years, accurately and with real pride. A system that does it automatically reads as a judgement on that work, and it needs handling as such. We made the point plainly: the system is not there because they were doing it badly, it is there because the group is now too big for it to depend on any one person's diligence. ## Where they are now The register is produced on demand. The group's stock position is one screen. The owner has not driven to a branch to count stock in over a year. ## Questions this raises ### Will software make our pharmacy PPB compliant? It removes the most common way pharmacies fall short — a register written up late, from memory, or not at all — by writing each entry as part of the dispense itself. But compliance is a property of your practice, not of the software: the system produces the register an inspector asks for, and it is still on you to dispense correctly and keep your licences current. ### How do we handle opening stock across several branches? Physical count, all branches, same day, branches closed. Do not take opening balances from your existing stock book. If the book were accurate you would not be replacing your system, and a system that starts wrong will be blamed for every discrepancy it later reports correctly. ### Can head office see all branches without visiting? Yes. Sales, margin, stock position and expiry exposure roll up across every branch in one view, with per-branch detail underneath. Transfers between branches are recorded on both sides, so stock cannot leave one branch without arriving at another. --- **Author:** The AfyaConnect Clinical & Product Team — Health systems and product engineering, Neurobyte Technologies The team that builds and supports AfyaConnect writes these guides. Everything here is written against software we actually ship and support in live Kenyan facilities — the SHA claims flow, the PPB controlled substances register and the eTIMS invoicing described in these guides are modules we maintain, not features we read about. Where regulation is still moving, we say so rather than guessing. - Supports 40+ healthcare facilities across Kenya and East Africa - Builds and maintains the SHA/NHIF claims, PPB register and KRA eTIMS modules described in these guides - Works to the Kenya Data Protection Act 2019 and Digital Health Act 2023 requirements for patient data