Industries
Pharmacies
Chemists who cannot afford an expired batch reaching the counter, and who buy, store and sell in different units.
What gets in the way
- Expired stock reaches the counter because the person selling has no way to know.
- Batches carry their expiry, issue is first-expiry-first-out, and the sale of an expired batch is blocked outright rather than warned about.
- Near-expiry stock is discovered during a stock take, when it is too late to return it.
- Expiry is tracked per batch on the ledger, so what is approaching its date is visible while it can still be acted on.
- Strips, packs and boxes are all “one item” to the software.
- Cartons, packs and pieces convert between each other, so receiving in boxes and selling in strips does not require arithmetic at the counter.
- Tax treatment differs between medicines and general goods.
- Sales tax is applied per item, with exempt and zero-rated goods treated correctly rather than averaged across the basket.
In practice
Who it is for, and what setup involves
Why a pharmacy is not a shop with different stock
Two differences change the software requirement entirely. Everything you sell has an expiry date that matters legally as well as commercially, and you buy, store and sell in different units. A box becomes strips becomes single tablets, and the arithmetic is done at the counter by someone serving a customer.
Batch tracking with automatic first-expiry-first-out issue and unit conversion handles both. Neither is a nice-to-have here in the way it might be for a general store.
The scenario this is built to prevent
An expired strip reaching a customer. Not through negligence, but because the person selling had no way to know: the batch date is on the box in the drawer, not on the screen. Blocking the sale of an expired batch removes that failure mode rather than warning about it, which matters because a warning during a queue is a warning that gets dismissed.
The second scenario is discovering short-dated stock during a stock take, when the window to return it to the supplier has closed. Expiry visible per batch on the ledger turns that from a write-off into a return.
Traceability, when you need it most
Because the sale records the batch, a recall or a complaint can be traced to the specific stock involved and to the customers who received it. That is a conversation you want to have with records rather than with recollection.
Mixed tax treatment
Medicines and general goods are not taxed alike, and a pharmacy sells both across the same counter. Sales tax applied per item keeps exempt and zero-rated lines correct instead of averaging a mixed basket into one rate.
What it costs
PKR 1,000 a month per register, batch and expiry handling included.
Terms
Terms used on this page
Plain definitions of the words a buyer here actually searches for.
- Expiry blocking
- Preventing the sale of an expired batch outright rather than displaying a warning, so it does not depend on a cashier reading a prompt during a queue.
- Batch traceability
- Recording which batch was sold on which invoice, so a recall or a complaint can be traced to the specific stock involved.
- Strip and pack
- Smaller selling units within a box, handled by unit conversion so receiving in boxes and selling in strips needs no manual calculation.
- Short-dated stock
- Stock approaching its expiry date, visible per batch on the ledger while returning it to a supplier is still possible.
- Exempt supply
- Goods on which no sales tax is charged, which must keep that treatment per item rather than being averaged into a mixed basket.
Questions people ask before they buy
Twenty minutes, your own data, no slides.
Bring a month of your own sales, a payslip you argue about, or last term’s fee sheet. We will show you what it looks like in MjFour.