Most pharmacies do not have a stock problem. They have a visibility problem that turns into a stock problem twice a year, usually at the end of a month when the cash does not stretch as far as it used to.
Stock control in a small shop is not a discipline you install. It is four numbers you look at on an ordinary day, and the routine that makes each of them true.
One: what is below its reorder level
Pick a reorder level for the lines you actually depend on, not for everything. In most shops that is a few hundred items out of a few thousand, and it is the list that produces the question "do you have…?" and the answer "not today".
The level is not a science. Take what you sell in a week, double it, and adjust once you have watched it for a month. A level that is slightly wrong and gets reviewed is worth more than a perfect one calculated once and never touched again.
Two: what is not moving
The opposite list, and the one nobody looks at. Anything that has not sold in ninety days is cash sitting on a shelf, and in a small shop that cash is the reason the next order has to be trimmed.
Work it in order of value, not in order of count. Twenty boxes of something cheap is a nuisance; three boxes of something expensive is a week of margin. Return it if the supplier will take it, discount it while it still has life, or move it to the branch that sells it — in that order.
Three: what dies inside ninety days
Expiry is the number that punishes waiting. At ninety days you have options — a supplier claim, a discount, a transfer. At thirty you have one. After the date you have a bin and a loss you cannot recover from anybody.
Read it weekly, act on the top of it, and let the rest wait. A list nobody acts on grows until it is ignored on principle.
Four: what the count says against what the record says
Do not close the shop for a full stocktake. Count a slice — one shelf, one supplier, one category — on a fixed day each week and compare it with what the system thinks. Over a couple of months you will have counted everything without ever closing, and you will have found each difference while it was still small enough to explain.
Differences are information. A line that is always short is a theft problem, a damage problem or an entry problem, and those three look quite different across four weeks of small counts. A line that is always over is usually a delivery entered twice.
The routine that makes the numbers true
- Everything in through goods receipt. A box that reaches the shelf without being received is a number that stays wrong for as long as it sits there. This single habit decides whether any of the four lists above mean anything.
- Everything out through a sale, a return or a written-off entry. Including the strip given to a neighbour and the bottle that broke. Especially those, because they are the differences you would otherwise spend a Saturday hunting for.
- Nothing edited after the fact. Correct with a new entry that says what it corrects. A stock record anybody can quietly adjust stops being evidence of anything.
Where a small shop should start
If you do one of these, do the ninety-day expiry list. It pays for itself fastest and it needs no counting. If you do two, add the weekly slice count, because it is what tells you whether the other numbers deserve to be believed.
The reorder list is third, not first. It feels the most urgent and it is the one customers notice, but it is also the one your suppliers will remind you about. Nobody reminds you about the boxes quietly going out of date.
See your own four numbers
Farmasale keeps all four on one screen and refreshes them as you sell. The trial runs seven days, needs no card, and we bring your product and supplier lists across before you start.