How to Track Medicine Expiry Dates in Your Pharmacy — Stop Losing Money

Every pharmacy has a drawer of "dead" stock — strips expiring quietly while new stock of the same medicine sells first. Individually trivial, annually brutal: most single-outlet chemists write off ₹80,000–₹2,00,000 a year. Here is how to cut that by 60–80% without hiring anyone.

What Expiry Losses Really Cost

The loss is not just the purchase price of dead stock. It is the cash frozen in it, the discount panic when you discover it at month end, and the return-to-supplier window that closed three months ago. Expiry is a cash-flow problem disguised as a housekeeping problem.

FEFO: the One Habit That Changes Everything

First-Expiry-First-Out means the batch expiring soonest sells first — not the batch purchased first. The distinction matters because your distributor rotates stock by purchase date, but the law and your losses care about expiry date. In practice:

• At billing, the cashier must pick the earliest-expiring batch with stock.
• Humans forget under rush-hour pressure — software must do it automatically.
• PharmaBill's FEFO auto-selection makes the compliant choice the default choice.

The 30/60/90 Alert System

• 90 days: plan scheme offers ("buy 2 get 1") or transfer stock to a faster-moving branch.
• 60 days: push distributor returns — most allow 3–6 month return windows before expiry.
• 30 days (critical): final return attempts, heavy discounting, or one-click write-off with an audit note.

Colour-coded dashboards (red <30d, amber 30–90d, green >90d) make this a 30-second daily glance. The key metric to watch: stock value at risk, in rupees.

What To Do With Dying Stock

1. Return to supplier — the highest-value action; do it before the return window closes.
2. Inter-branch transfer — if one outlet turns stock faster.
3. Scheme-based clearance — bundle with fast movers (with your doctor's/ethics' comfort).
4. Controlled discounting — margin-negative but cash-positive.
5. Write-off — last resort, with a mandatory audit note.

Measuring the Improvement

Track one number monthly: expired stock value ÷ total stock purchased. Chemists running the system above typically move from 3–5% to under 1% within two quarters — on ₹40 lakh of annual purchases, that is over a lakh recovered.

A 10-Minute Weekly Expiry Routine

1. Open the expiry report for the next 90 days and sort by value.
2. For the top 10 batches, decide one action each: return, transfer, offer or write-off.
3. Put returnable stock in a separate tray with the supplier name on it.
4. Call or message distributors for returns before their window closes.
5. Write off truly expired stock with a reason, so stock and accounts stay correct.

Ten minutes on a fixed day each week — say Monday morning — is enough for a single-counter shop. Larger shops can split the list by rack or supplier.

FAQ

• Can I sell medicine close to expiry? You can sell stock within its labelled expiry, but transparency with patients matters — and the FEFO discipline keeps old stock from getting close unnoticed.
• What about free/scheme stock? Track free quantities separately in GRN so margin math stays true when discounting.
• Does FEFO slow down billing? No — automatic selection is faster than manual batch picking.

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