A pharmacy or medical store needs a few things a generic retail counter does not: billing off the printed MRP, a batch and expiry on every line, your drug licence on the bill, and a record of every Schedule H, H1 or X sale. This guide walks the whole path once, in the order you will meet it: switch the pharmacy setup on, approve it, record your licences, add a distributor and a medicine, receive stock, sell it at the till, and keep an eye on what is about to expire.
Switch on the pharmacy setup
Open Settings → Modules & features. Under Set up for your line of business, open Pick your line of business and type pharm. Choose Pharmacy or medical store. The About this setup panel shows what it includes before anything changes: the fields it adds, the screens and reports it uses, and the team roles it offers. When it reads right, tap Switch these on.
If the setup cannot be added yet (for example, it needs a module your workspace does not have on), the card says so in red and the button comes back as Try again. Nothing is half-applied. Only the owner, an admin or an assistant can switch a setup on; anyone else can still read every setup.
Approve the proposed setup
The pharmacy fields arrive as a suggestion for you to approve, not as a change made behind your back. Open Settings → Review proposed setup, check the fields it will add (MRP, drug schedule, batch and expiry on bill lines, and the drug licence box on the bill) and tap Apply setup. Only the business owner can approve. Until you do, nothing changes, and an applied setup can be undone later: its fields are archived, never deleted.
Your drug licence
Once the pharmacy setup is applied, go to Settings → Business details and fill in Drug licences: your Form 20 and Form 21 numbers and, if you like, the date each is valid to. Save them once and every bill whose Drug licence no. box you leave blank prints them; a number you type on a bill still wins for that bill. A licence whose date has passed is not printed. Nothing is checked with the drug controller.
Bring your stock and customers across
On Import your data, pick where your books live today. If you run Marg, its HSN/item master and Purchase Bill exports carry real batch, expiry, MRP and HSN columns that Finocket reads directly; a spreadsheet you have kept by hand, or a Tally XML export, both work too. Marg is offered first on the Pick screen once you have told onboarding you run a pharmacy.
Add your distributor
Your distributor is a supplier. On Suppliers, add them with their name and, if you have it, their GSTIN. You need them there before you receive stock: the purchase screen picks the distributor from this list, and their GSTIN decides whether the bill's GST is CGST + SGST or IGST.
Add a medicine
On Products → New item, add the medicine with its name, rate and GST, and turn on Track inventory so its batches are counted. With the pharmacy setup applied the form also asks for its MRP and its Drug schedule (H, H1 or X, or none). Save it, then open it again: the Salt composition card lists each active ingredient and its strength, and shows the other items with exactly the same composition: the substitutes the till can offer.
Receive a purchase with batch and expiry
When a delivery arrives, open Inventory and tap Receive purchase. Choose the distributor, type the bill number, and add a line for each medicine with its Batch no., Expiry, quantity, cost per unit and MRP. Tick Also record the distributor's bill to put what you owe under Payables in the same step. Stock already past its expiry asks you to confirm before it is received.
Batch, expiry & FEFO
From then on, when an unexpired batch with stock is on record, a sale of a batch-tracked item (at your till, on an invoice, from a recurring invoice or the API) draws from the batch that expires first and has not yet expired (FEFO, first-expiry-first-out), so older stock clears before newer stock. A batch whose expiry date has passed is never picked for you. At the till you can also sell part of a strip: for an item with a loose unit set, tap Sell loose on the line and type the count. Substitutes on a line shows the items with the same salt composition.
Schedule H, H1 & X
Selling an item marked H, H1 or X at the till or on an invoice asks for the patient's name and address and the prescriber's name and registration number. It never blocks the sale: a sale made without those details is still recorded, marked Not noted, so the register shows the gap rather than hiding it. Every scheduled sale, noted or not, lands on Reports → Prescription register, with the batch it drew from and a CSV export for your records. This is a record-keeping aid, not a filing. Whether your shop needs to file anything with it is your call.
Near-expiry stock
Reports → Near-expiry stock lists every batch on hand that has expired or expires inside the window you pick, soonest first, valued at what it cost you. Already-expired batches always lead the list. Only batches received with an expiry date appear, which is one more reason to type the expiry when you receive stock. To send a batch back to the distributor, go on to Inventory; the report itself changes nothing.
Invite your team
On Settings → Team Members, invite each person by email and pick their role. An Assistant can bill at the till, receive stock and edit items. A Member is read-only: they can look at sales, stock and reports, and cannot add, change or delete anything. Your CA gets Accountant / CA, also read-only.
Customer reminders (journeys)
If your workspace has journeys, the pharmacy ones (such as a refill reminder) stay off until you choose your business type on Settings → Customer journeys. Pick pharmacy-retail under Business type, choose a template and switch a journey on. Nothing is sent without the customer's consent, and a dry run sends nothing at all.