The second branch is where stock control usually breaks. With one shop, the owner can see the shelves. With two, stock starts to travel: a carton borrowed to cover a stock-out, a slow line pushed to the branch that sells it, a whole delivery dropped at the wrong address. Each movement is sensible on its own. Without a record, together they make both branches' stock figures fiction.
Why "just take it" fails
An informal transfer leaves the system believing the stock is still at the sending branch. At the next count the sending branch shows a shortfall, the receiving branch shows a surplus, and both get adjusted away as unexplained variances. Nobody learns anything, the real shrinkage is masked, and the reorder points at both branches are calculated from wrong figures.
The fix is not more paperwork for its own sake. It is one rule: stock moves between branches only through a transfer document that both ends sign off.
The two-step transfer
Step 1: send. The sending branch creates a transfer listing each product and quantity, and the stock is immediately taken out of that branch's available quantity. A manager approves it before the goods leave. The goods travel with a printed or electronic copy.
Step 2: receive. The receiving branch opens the same transfer and confirms, line by line, what actually arrived. If twelve were sent and eleven arrived, the receiving branch records eleven. The one-unit difference is now a specific, dated, named question for the two branch managers to answer that week, not a mystery at month end.
Between the two steps the stock is "in transit". It belongs to the business but to neither branch, and that is exactly how it should appear in the reports.
Read the in-transit list every week
The most useful report for a multi-branch business is the list of transfers sent but not yet received. On a healthy operation that list is short and every entry is less than a few days old. A transfer that has been in transit for two weeks is one of three things: goods that arrived and were shelved without confirmation, goods still sitting in a vehicle or a back room, or goods that are gone. All three deserve a phone call.
What EFRIS expects
If your business issues EFRIS receipts, stock is also tracked on URA's side. URA's EFRIS guidance explains that taxpayers who deal in products configure their products from the EFRIS product list, map them to their own product codes and stock in quantities as imports, manufactured goods or local purchases before they can issue e-receipts and e-invoices. URA's stock management page adds that the taxpayer can then adjust stock, transfer stock or inquire about real-time inventory, and the EFRIS FAQ refers to the option of transfer between branches.
The practical implication is that a branch transfer is not only an internal record. If stock is sold from a branch that EFRIS believes has none, the receipt will not reconcile. Keep your internal transfers and your EFRIS stock position aligned, and let your till software handle the EFRIS side where it integrates.
Pricing and cost on transfers
A transfer moves stock, not profit. The receiving branch should take the goods at the sending branch's cost price, so that margin is measured where the sale happens. Avoid "selling" stock between branches at a marked-up price: it creates fictitious revenue at one branch, fictitious cost at the other and a reconciliation headache in the accounts.
Where the external store fits
Many chains run a central store that feeds the shops. Treat it as a location in its own right, with its own stock figures, counts and transfers, rather than as an extension of the main shop. The Pharmaceutical Society of Uganda's retail standards, which cover pharmacies with an external store, require that medicines stored and distributed have their records maintained through stock cards or an equivalent system; the same principle of a separate, controlled record applies to any warehouse.
Rules worth writing on the wall
- No stock leaves a branch without a transfer document.
- The receiving branch records what arrived, not what was sent.
- The in-transit list is reviewed every Monday.
- Differences are resolved by name within the week.
- Transfers carry cost price, never a selling price.
Multi-branch stock control is less about software than about the habit of confirming receipt. The software simply makes the habit faster and gives the owner a single screen that shows every branch, every transfer and every unanswered question.
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