Billing for your medical store in Punjab
The doctor's fee with the medicines, the tournament's first-aid order and the protein tub, all on your phone.
From the doctor in the corner to the box for the final
The doctor's share worked out from his fee lines at the month's end
The doctor's fee lines are on the bills with their days. At the month's end you open the days, add his fee lines, and the share that goes to him is settled from that list. In the week he is away the corner shows no fee lines at all, and the medicines are still the shop's own.
The box leaves the shelf on the first day, and the shelf shows it to the next customer
When the tournament's box is made up, the bandages, the spray, the cotton and the ice packs come off your shelf count that day. A walk-in customer who asks for the same ice pack is told yes or no from the count and not from the box. The second day's top-up leaves the shelf the same way.
The tub and the single sachet as two items, each with its own count
Make the whole tub an item and the sachet another. A tub that is opened to fill sachets is no longer a tub, so add the sachets you filled as stock, and the screen counts sachets, not the tub's weight. Over a few tubs you see how many sachets one tub gives you, and which of the two the gym's young men prefer.
Tools that fit a chemist's counter in Punjab
Bills on your phone
One bill for the young man from the gym: a tub, a sachet and a vitamin strip, each in its own unit, each off its own count.
Credit book (khata)
A page for the organiser showing what the first-aid box took and what he has paid so far, so what is owed is one plain figure.
Daily reports
What the corner earned and what the shelf sold, shown separately each day, so the doctor and the chemist can read their own lines.
Sports goods and workshops behind a Punjab medical store
A chemist in Punjab serves a state that makes sports goods and works in factories.
- Jalandhar is where India's sports goods industry is based; most of the exports go to the UK, USA, Germany, France and Australia.
- Ludhiana's biggest industries are hosiery and textile, followed by cycles, cycle parts, machine tools and auto parts.
Why a Punjab chemist sells a consultation, a kabaddi first-aid box and a protein tub from one counter
The doctor in the corner, and a fee that rides beside the medicines
In many town and village medical shops a doctor sits in a corner for a few hours. The patient pays him a fee, takes his slip across to the counter, and pays you for the medicines. At night the doctor's fees and your sales are in the same cash box, and the doctor asks what he made, and you give him a number from a notebook of ticks. If the doctor is away for a week, the counter's sales and the fees do not split cleanly.
A village kabaddi tournament that wants a first-aid box and pays after the final
When a village holds a kabaddi tournament, the organisers come to the medical shop for bandages, pain spray, cotton, tape and ice packs for the whole weekend. They take it on trust and settle after the final, when the prize money has been counted. In the rush before the first match you pack in a hurry and the list of what you gave is a scrap of paper.
Protein tubs and vitamins for the young men from the gym next door
A few young men from the gym come in each evening for protein powder, vitamins and a tub of something new. Some take a whole tub and some take a single sachet. The tub is a high rate and the sachet is a small one, and a tub opened for sachets goes down by weight and not by count. You cannot say how many sachets a tub gave.
Questions a Punjab chemist asks
A patient pays the doctor's fee and buys nothing from the shelf. Can the fee still have a bill?
Yes. Make a bill with the fee line alone. The day's report keeps it apart from the medicines, so the doctor reads his line at night and your medicine sales stay your own.
After the final, part of the first-aid box comes back unopened. How do I show only what was used?
Put the second day's top-up on the same page as it goes out. When the box comes back, put the unopened items back on your count and note them on the organiser's page. The page then shows what the tournament really used.
The young men take scoops from my open tub, not sachets. Can I bill by the scoop?
Yes. Make the scoop an item with its own rate. Each scoop sold is a line, and the report shows how many scoops went each day. When the open tub is finished, you see from the report how many scoops it gave.
Chemists and their wholesalers in Amritsar and Ludhiana
Amritsar's wholesale medicine market is Katra Sher Singh Market; the Punjab Chemist Association said it had given authorities a list of at least 375 drug wholesalers. A shop that buys from several of them can keep what it bought from each on a page of its own.
On 20 May 2026 around 4,000 medicine shops in Ludhiana stayed shut in a one-day bandh backed by the Punjab Chemists Association, hitting patients on daily diabetes and blood pressure medicine. The day after, a chemist can look at the customers who buy those medicines every month and see which of them came back, and for which tablets.