Systems + people for Ugandan manufacturers

Exercise books. WhatsApp orders. Friday stock counts. One system for your whole factory.

We build the software that runs your plant: production, stock, orders, dispatch, fleet, finance and payroll. Then we staff it, train on it and keep it running. It is already live at a water bottling plant in Kampala.

Book a factory walk-through See the Wavah Water build
1 plant live today 80+ working screens 9 role-based portals 20+ years of HR & payroll
ops · live07:42
Produced today1,284cases · per SKU
Line efficiency91.4%blow-mould
Orders open276 ready to go
Good bottles by shift, this week
Reconciled
Dispatch blockedOrder #00412 wants 120 × 500ml boxes. Only 96 in stock. Short by 24.
Invoice raised · Hotel Bauto
Trip T-118 · Mukono · fuel loggedclosed
Payroll · NSSF + PAYE computedready
Sound familiar?

Most Ugandan factories still run on exercise books and WhatsApp

That works until you grow. Then stock goes missing, orders slip, invoices lag and nobody can tell the owner what was actually produced yesterday. Here is what changes when each job moves onto a system.

Area
How it runs today
How it runs on the system
Orders
Today

Rep gets the order on WhatsApp, calls the office, someone types a proforma in Word.

On the system

Rep enters it on their phone. The client's price is applied automatically and a proforma PDF is ready before they leave the shop.

Production
Today

Supervisor writes totals in a book at the end of the shift. Defects are a guess.

On the system

Output logged per SKU, per run. Rejects are tracked by stage and defect type, so you can see where the waste is.

Stock
Today

Counted on Friday. Doesn't match. Nobody knows why.

On the system

Stock is calculated live: produced minus dispatched, plus signed adjustments. You can't dispatch stock you don't have.

Delivery
Today

Truck leaves, fuel money is handed over, the driver comes back "later".

On the system

Every trip has a driver, a vehicle, a fuel request and a closing record. Drivers use their own portal on their phone.

Money
Today

Invoices typed late. Mobile money payments matched by hand. Debtors in someone's head.

On the system

Invoices, payments, a general ledger, trial balance, P&L and debtor ageing, plus an EFRIS register for URA.

People
Today

Payroll in Excel. NSSF returns don't match the payslips. Leave tracked on paper.

On the system

Staff records, attendance, leave, payroll and payslips in one place, with NSSF, PAYE and LST worked out correctly.

One system, one record

From raw material to cash in the bank

Every station on your floor writes to the same record. Nothing is typed twice, and every entry carries the name of the person who made it.

01

Raw materials in

Purchase orders and supplier receipts for resin, preforms, caps, labels and film.

procurement
02

Stage 1: injection

Resin in (kg), preforms out. Rejects logged as neck, body, base or weight faults.

floor entry
03

Stage 2: blow & fill

Preforms to finished bottles. Efficiency is calculated for each stage and for the whole line.

OEE · waste pareto
04

Finished stock

Live balance per SKU. Adjustments need a reason and a name.

stock ledger
05

Order & price

Reps, the CRM and a client portal all place orders. Each client's price list is applied automatically.

orders · proforma
06

Dispatch gate

Loads are checked against stock before they leave. Short orders are blocked, line by line.

dispatch readiness
07

Trip & delivery

Vehicle, driver, fuel and route are recorded, and returns and incidents are logged.

fleet · driver app
08

Invoice to ledger

Invoice, payment, debtor ageing, general ledger and the monthly accounts.

finance · EFRIS
Case study · Wavah Water Ltd, Kampala

A bottling plant that moved from paper to a full operations platform

Wavah Water bottles mineral water in sizes from 300ml to 20L jumbos and supplies hotels, schools, supermarkets, offices and distributors. We mapped how the business really ran, wrote the requirements, and built and launched the platform in stages. Every stage went through a test server before going live.

83screens in daily use
9portals for different roles
116client accounts on their own price lists
11SKUs tracked from preform to delivery
Order-to-cash

Orders, stock & dispatch that can't be fiddled

The core of the platform. Orders get a reference number, lock in the price at the time of sale, move from pending to confirmed to dispatched to delivered, and produce client-ready PDFs. The client never sees internal pricing.

stock = produced − dispatched ± adjustments
dispatch 120 × WWL-500-ORD-BX → REJECTED: short by 24
The server enforces this rule itself, so it holds even if someone bypasses the screen.
Manufacturing OS

Two-stage production tracking

Injection moulding and blowing are tracked separately, with a live efficiency (OEE) gauge and a chart of the biggest sources of waste.

  • Resin allocated, used, damaged (kg)
  • Defects by type
  • Efficiency per stage and for the whole line
Finance portal

Books that close themselves

Chart of accounts, journals, general ledger, trial balance, P&L, balance sheet, bank accounts and payments.

  • Debtor ageing report
  • EFRIS register & TIN matching
  • Revenue trend by SKU × client
Fleet & driver app

Every trip on record

Vehicles, drivers, trips, fuel requests and fleet costs. Drivers log in to their own phone portal to run their trips.

  • Delivery incident reports
  • Returns logged against orders
HR & payroll

People records that match the returns

Employees, attendance, leave, payroll, payslips and salary arrears. This came out of a reconciliation of five years of NSSF returns against payslips.

  • NSSF / PAYE / LST
  • Leave dashboard
  • HR reports
Sales & field

CRM, contracts & territory maps

Client call logs and quick orders, supply contracts generated and signed online, and maps of distributor territories.

  • Merchandiser app spec: GPS check-in and before/after photos
  • Client self-order portal
For the owner & board

A view the shareholders can trust

A shareholder dashboard, sales pipeline, SKU × client profitability and forensic reporting. An activity log records who did what and when, for every order, dispatch, production entry and stock adjustment.

OperationsFinanceHRFleetDriverCRMContractsPartner / co-packerClient portal
People

Software fails without the people to run it. We supply both.

NFT Consult has handled recruitment, outsourcing and payroll in Uganda for 20 years. On a factory project, the people side and the system side are planned together.

Shift & line staffing

Machine operators, packers, loaders, drivers and stores clerks, outsourced or recruited and screened. Scale up for peak season without adding permanent headcount.

Payroll & statutory

Monthly payroll, payslips, NSSF, PAYE and LST done right, with returns that match the payslips. We also clean up and reconcile past years.

HR policy & relations

Contracts, policies, discipline, restructuring and exits handled properly under Ugandan employment law, with the paperwork to back it up.

Training on the floor

User booklets, step-by-step guides for each role and hands-on sessions. A supervisor who has only used an exercise book can log production on a phone by the end of the week.

Most IT vendors

Install the software, send a manual and leave. Six months later the staff are back on paper.

NFT Consult

We write the requirements, build it, train your people, supply staff where you're short and stay on to support it. When people and systems come from one partner, the system gets used.

How we work

Start with one problem. Grow into the full system.

You don't need to replace everything on day one. Wavah started with orders and stock, then added finance, fleet and HR once each part had proved itself.

01

Walk the floor

We spend time in your plant, stores and office and follow one order from start to finish.You get: a map of how the business really runs and where money leaks

02

Write it down

A plain-English requirements document built around your SKUs, roles and approval rules.You get: an SRD you sign off before we write any code

03

Build in stages

Each module goes onto a test server first, where your team tries it before it goes live.You get: working software every few weeks, plus deployment guides

04

Train & staff

We train each role and fill staffing gaps through NFT's outsourcing and payroll services.You get: training booklets, user guides and people in place

05

Run & improve

We fix issues and add reports as your team asks for them, and you get monthly operational and finance views.You get: a partner on call, not a vendor who has moved on

Straight answers

What factory owners ask us

My staff aren't computer people. Will they actually use it?

Yes. Screens are built for one role at a time: a dispatcher sees dispatch and a driver sees their trips. It all runs in a phone browser, so there's no laptop or app store to deal with. We train on your floor, with your products, until entries are routine.

We can't afford SAP or a big ERP.

You don't need one. We build what a Ugandan factory of your size needs, one module at a time. Start with the area that loses you the most money, usually stock, dispatch or debtors, and add the rest as each part pays for itself.

Our process is different from a water plant's.

The pattern is the same for any maker: raw material in, conversion, finished stock, order, dispatch, invoice. We have applied it to bottling. For bakeries, juice, plastics, soap, feeds or packaging, we set up your SKUs, production stages and pricing rules during the walk-through.

Does it handle URA and NSSF requirements?

The finance portal keeps an EFRIS register and matches it against client TINs. The HR side calculates NSSF, PAYE and LST, and we have reconciled several years of returns against payslips for a client. Our payroll team can also run it for you each month.

Who owns the data, and where does it live?

You own it. The system runs on a hosted server with separate test and live environments, and finance data can be backed up and exported. Access is controlled by role, and every action is logged with a name and time.

Next step

Show us your floor. We'll show you what it looks like on a system.

A free half-day walk-through of your plant. We follow one order from start to finish and send you a short written report on where time and money leak, and what to digitise first.

  • No obligation. You keep the report.
  • We cover systems and staffing in one conversation
  • Anywhere in Uganda, and across East Africa

Book a factory walk-through

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