Batches, expiry and claims

This is the biggest difference between a medicine shop and any other. Here, "we have 100 strips of Napa" is not enough information. Which batch, and expiring when — you have to know.

Entering batches on a consignment

When goods come in, put the batch number and expiry date on each line. Both are printed on the box.

For the first few days this feels like extra work. But without those two fields nothing else functions: the expiry board stays empty, claims cannot be tracked, and nobody can say when a given strip came in.

The same medicine in two batches is two lines, not one. That is correct — they are different things that happen to share a name.

At the counter

When medicine goes onto a sale, the system takes from the batch that expires soonest. That is the ordinary rule in a pharmacy, and it happens by itself.

So arrange the shelf the same way — soonest expiry at the front. When the shelf and the system follow the same rule, nothing goes wrong.

The expiry board

This screen shows the coming months, with how many batches expire in each. A month with something expiring in it is red.

Look at it once a week. It is the single habit that saves a pharmacy the most money.

Then do one of three things:

1. Three or four months left — sell it. Tell whoever is on the counter to move that batch first.
2. The company takes returns — put it on the claims list. Most companies only accept returns up to a fixed window before expiry, so leaving it late loses the window entirely.
3. Already expired — write it off. Do not leave it on the shelf.

Claims

The claims screen holds the batches you are sending back to the company: which supplier, how much it is worth, and how much you have not been credited for yet.

Without it, what happens is what happens in most shops — the goods go back, and then nobody remembers whether the credit ever arrived. A serious amount of money disappears quietly that way every year.

Writing off expired stock

A write-off takes it out of stock and records the loss as an expense. Do not leave it on the books because the number looks bad. Expired medicine sitting in stock can genuinely be sold by mistake, and that is a far worse problem than the money.