Billing for your medical store in Delhi
The family here for two weeks of treatment and a blood-pressure monitor are billed in their own units, on one phone.
Tools for a counter near the hospital lane, where patients come from other states for a fortnight
Bills on your phone
The attendant's daily bill: a strip, a syrup bottle and, once, a thermometer, each in its own unit.
Credit book (khata)
An attendant's page for the fortnight: the same few medicines each day as dated lines, the stay added up at discharge.
Orders to suppliers
An order for each dealer of the wholesale drug lane, written from the low list, so the boy goes with a list and not from memory.
Low stock warnings
A warning on the fever strips when the count runs down as the season turns, early enough for the order to reach the wholesale lane.
Why a Delhi chemist counts strips, bottles and monitors four ways, and loses the visitor's fortnight
Four ways to count one counter: strips, bottles, tubes and a blood-pressure monitor
A chemist's counter sells a strip of tablets, a bottle of syrup, a tube of ointment, and, on the side, a blood-pressure monitor, a thermometer, a pair of crutches. Each is counted in its own way, and the notebook has one page for medicines and a corner for the rest. The big items, the ones that cost a week's wages, are the ones nobody counts, because they are not medicine.
The family here from another state for a fortnight of treatment, and gone after
Delhi's hospitals draw patients from far away, and the families stay in lodges nearby. For two weeks an attendant comes to your counter every day with a new slip, pays in cash, and takes the medicines upstairs. Then the patient is discharged and the family is gone, with no bill, no number, and no record that the same elderly father took the same four medicines every day.
Three dealers' parcels from the wholesale lane, and three paper bills in a bundle
You send a boy to the wholesale lane with a list, and he comes back with parcels from three dealers and three bills. One dealer is short of what you asked and says the rest will come with the next lot. The three bills go into a bundle under the counter, and the promise goes into nobody's book. A month on, you cannot say which dealer owes you what.
From a monitor counted like a strip to the fortnight's medicines on one page
A blood-pressure monitor is an item like any strip, with its own rate and its own count
Make the monitor, the thermometer and the crutches items in the same list as the medicines. Each has its own rate and its own count of pieces. The big things that were never counted are now counted, and you see the day the last monitor went.
The fortnight's medicines are on the attendant's page, and the bill reaches the son at home
The lodge's room number is of no use to you, and his phone number is enough. Make a page for the attendant, add each day's medicines to it with the date, and send each bill on WhatsApp to the number he gives, which can be the son's in the village. The whole stay is one list at the end.
The paper bundle under the counter becomes one list of days and dealers
Note each parcel against its order on the day it arrives. After a month the days and the dealers are in one list that you read from top to bottom, and the paper bundle can go into a cupboard. When a dealer says a parcel was sent and you say it never came, the list answers for you, with the day each of his parcels arrived. In the wholesale drug lane, where one boy may bring parcels from three dealers, the list also shows which dealer sent which parcel, and who owes whom is settled from it.
Questions Delhi chemists ask about the visitor's fortnight, the early discharge and the short parcel
The doctor adds a new medicine halfway through the stay. How does the attendant see what it added?
Put the new medicine as its own line on the bill of the day it began. When the attendant asks, open his page and read him the days, so the new line is seen on the day it started and nowhere before.
The patient is discharged early and the family leaves in a hurry. How do I make the final bill?
Open the attendant's page, which already holds every day's medicines, and make the last bill for what is left. Send it on WhatsApp before the family reaches the station.
An inspector asks which dealer a syrup came from. Can I show him?
Only for the parcels you noted. A parcel you never noted has no dealer on the page, and you tell him so. From today, every parcel gets its dealer the day it comes in.
Delhi's wholesale drug lane and the inspectors' visits
In December 2025 Delhi's Drugs Control Department inspected 27 wholesale drug dealers at Bhagirath Place and lifted 204 samples of syrups, medicines and surgical items for testing. A chemist who buys from a dealer there notes each parcel against his order, so the dealer's name and the day are on his own page.
A Drugs Control raid on a drug trader in Teliwara, Sadar Bazar, found fake branded topical medicines, no drug licence and no buy or sale records. A shop that keeps its own sales bill by bill, and a note of what came in, has a record to show whoever asks.