Billing for your medical store in Arunachal Pradesh
Strips, bottles, loose tablets and a family's monthly medicines, each counted in its own way.
Tools for shelves of strips, bottles and a fridge of cold stock
Bills on your phone
A month's tablets for a mother, a grandmother and two children, each person's on its own line, sent to the father's phone.
Credit book (khata)
A page for the village health post, with each box dated and the two part payments written on it a month apart.
Low stock warnings
A level for the cold medicines and the common fever tablets, so the warning comes before the vehicle has gone back down the hill.
Many shops, one owner
The camp's table, counted as a second shop for the day, so the medicines carried up the hill are counted off the shelf and onto the table.
From the single tablet to the family's monthly page
The camp's table counted as a second shop for the day
Make the camp a second shop under your account. Medicines moved from the shelf to the camp's box come off the shop's count and go on the camp's. When the camp closes you read what sold, what is left in the box and what must be carried back, and the shelf is right on the same evening.
The health post's boxes on a page that is read when its money comes
Open a page for the health post and write each box you send with its date. When the money arrives, write it on the same page, and the last line shows which boxes it covered. The post reads the same page, and nobody searches for a slip.
A hurried bill at the camp still matches the shop's list
At the camp table bills are made in a hurry, one after another. The same list of items serves the shelf and the camp table, so every bill made there names a medicine the shop already knows, and the camp's bills need no rewriting when the box comes down.
Why a hill pharmacy counts tablets by the strip and by the one
The cabinet carried to a health camp in a village for one day
When a doctor holds a camp in a village, you carry a box of common medicines there and sell from a table for the day. The box goes up the hill with a hundred strips and comes down with some. Nobody can say what was sold at the camp and what was carried home, and the shop's shelf is wrong for a week.
Pig and poultry medicine on the same shelf as the family's
Families around Changlang keep cattle, pigs, goats and poultry, and they ask for the animals' medicine at the same counter as their own. A bottle for the pigs sits next to a strip for a child, and a helper takes one for the other. Counted apart, each kind has its own count and its own bill.
A village health post that wants a few boxes on credit
The small health post in a village asks you for boxes of common medicines and says it will pay when its own funds arrive. You send them with the driver on a slip. The payment comes in two parts, a month apart, and the slip is the only record of which boxes it covered.
Strips, loose tablets and a visiting inspector: what pharmacists here ask
Can I count the fridge medicines as a store of their own?
Yes. The fridge is counted by itself, apart from the shelf. After a power cut you can read what was in it and decide what to write off.
A health camp ends and I carry unsold medicines back down. How do I put them back on the shelf?
Move them from the camp's stock to the shop's stock. The camp's count falls to zero and the shop's count rises by what came back, so the shelf is right on the evening you return and nothing is counted twice.
Can I see what the village health post took from me in a quarter?
Yes. Open the post's page and read the boxes with their dates, and the payments beside them. The quarter's total and what it has paid are on the same page.
A farmer wants a measure of pig medicine from a bottle, not the whole bottle. How do I bill it?
Add the medicine as an item sold by the millilitre, and put the whole bottle's millilitres into the count when you open it. Each measure sold takes its millilitres off, so the bottle's count is what is left in it, and the farmer pays for the measure he took and no more. A bottle of pig medicine is never counted as a bottle for the family, and the bill names the animal it was bought for.
Statewide pharmacy checks in 2026 and the orchard towns of West Kameng
In 2026 the state Drugs Control Administration began a statewide inspection of retail pharmacies, checking licences, pharmacist presence, cold-chain storage, stock records and supplier bills. Every item on that list is something a shop can be asked to show on the day, so the records you keep at the counter are the answer you give to the inspector. That list also tells a pharmacist what to keep ready for any day: a licence on the wall, a record of the cold shelf and a count that matches the shelf at the moment it is asked for.
West Kameng has apple and kiwi orchards around Dirang, Bomdila, Rupa and Shergaon. A medical store in one of these towns serves families whose year follows the orchard, with busy weeks of work and quiet weeks after them, and whose medicine money may follow the same rhythm.