The challenge
Headquartered in Ghana, Zutron also supplies laboratory consumables and equipment to its healthcare customers. Pharmaceutical wholesale and supply is demanding for any business system:
Traceability
Batch and expiry from receipt to sale; short-dated stock sold or returned in time; quick recall answers.
Pricing and customers
Hospitals, pharmacies, clinics and distributors on different price lists and credit terms.
Imports and landed cost
Much of the range is imported: real stock cost includes freight, duties and clearing.
A second country
Nigerian currency, taxes and books, consistent with the operation in Ghana.
In disconnected tools, stock values, margins and expiry exposure are hard to see.
What we implemented
Prometheus, our ERP on the open-source ERPNext platform, brings accounting, sales, purchasing, inventory, CRM, administration and human resource management into one system. For distribution and healthcare:
- Batch-managed items with expiry dates
- Returns and credit notes
- Inventory across warehouses and stores
- Landed cost vouchers, taxes and charges
- Multi-currency accounting
- Automated replenishment, reorder levels, material requests
This summary records the deployment at the level we can confirm publicly. It does not list every module configured or every process changed.
Results
Completed as a Prometheus deployment for Zutron Pharmaceuticals in Nigeria; Promatics also deployed Prometheus for Zutron in Ghana. We have not published measured outcomes for this project, and we do not add figures after the fact.
What this means for your organisation
Nigerian pharmaceutical, health product and medical supply distributors work under their own licensing and quality rules, including those overseen by NAFDAC, but stock, traceability, pricing and finance must still agree. This home-market project's lessons apply directly:
Batch from day one
Lot and expiry tracking configured before go-live.
Prices in the ERP
Customer-specific pricing and terms, not sales spreadsheets.
True landed cost
Duties and clearing on shipments through the Nigeria Customs Service.
VAT and withholding tax
VAT (7.5 %) and withholding tax set per customer and supplier.
More detail
- Adding batch tracking to existing stock later is slow and error-prone.
- Pricing and terms live in the ERP rather than in individual sales spreadsheets.
- US dollar purchasing is handled against naira books.
Read about Prometheus ERP, ERP implementation and healthcare, or contact us.