Billing for your medical store in Tamil Nadu
Strips, single tablets and the regular patient's monthly refill, billed and remembered on your phone.
The evening clinic hour, a monthly refill from memory and a box pushed behind the new stock
The evening hour when two clinics empty at once
Between the clinics on either side the patients come out together with their slips, each slip carrying four or five medicines. One pharmacist reads the doctor's writing, finds each box, adds the price in his head and calls out a total, with the queue growing behind the first patient.
The monthly patient whose refill lives in your memory
A man with sugar and a woman with blood pressure come on the same date every month for the same strips. The doctor next door changes a dose, and the next month you must know which strength you handed over last time, because the strips look alike. A wrong box handed over from memory is not a small mistake in this trade.
The box that slipped behind the new stock
A new delivery goes at the front of the shelf and the older box slides to the back. Months later its date is close, and nobody has sold it because nobody could see it. This is the quiet loss of a medical store, found only when the shelf is turned over.
Medical counter tools for strips, tablets and monthly patients
Bills on your phone
One clinic on each side writes the tablet as 500 mg, the other as 650 mg. Each is its own line on the evening bill, matching the slip in the customer's hand.
Credit book (khata)
A page for the family that takes medicines on credit through the Pongal holiday, each day dated, one total after.
Low stock warnings
A warning on the strips the two clinics on either side write at the same hour in the evening, fever tablets, antacids and glucose, so they are not gone when both queues arrive.
Orders to suppliers
What arrived from the distributor noted against the order on the morning the van comes, with the sugar and pressure strips checked first.
Daily reports
Sales of each medicine day by day through the mango season and the cane-crushing weeks, when a district shop's demand moves.
What changes between the doctor's slip and the pharmacist's shutter
The long Pongal holiday when the distributors are shut
The distributors close for several days at Pongal, and the patients with sugar and pressure still need their strips. Before the holiday you open the low list and the last weeks' sales, and order what the shop will need till the distributor opens again.
The distributor's visit with the list already written
The company representative comes on his usual day. Instead of walking the shelves with him, you open the low list on your phone, and the order is made while he drinks his tea. He leaves with a clear order and a date, and you do not stand in the shop counting boxes after he has gone.
Slow medicines seen before they go bad
Open the daily report after a few weeks and look for the medicines that have not moved. You can bring them to the front of the shelf, offer them to the clinic next door or send them back to the distributor, while their dates are still far enough away. The shelf stops being a place where money sits quietly and goes out of date.
Factory towns and weaving homes that a Tamil Nadu medical store serves
A medical store serves whoever lives and works around it. Three Tamil Nadu districts and the work of their people.
- Vaniyambadi and Ambur, in the old Vellore district, are leather centres making finished leather, shoes and garments for export, so a store near them serves the workers of those units.
- Coimbatore has many textile mills and more than 700 wet grinder makers, and a medical store there sees the people from those workplaces.
- In Kanchipuram about 5,000 families made silk sarees in 2008, and weavers sit long hours at the loom, which is when a medical store near them is asked for pain relief.
Questions Tamil Nadu medical store owners ask about strips and refills
A nurse buys cotton, syringes and strips for her ward each week. Do they go on one line?
No. Make three items, each with its own line and quantity, so the ward sees what each cost. The month's total sits at the foot of her page for the ward's accounts.
Glucose strips and sugar-test strips look alike on the shelf. How do I keep them apart?
Make them two items with different names, so a bill for one never takes the count of the other. The shelf count of each stays true.
A box slid behind the new stock and its date may be near. How do I find it?
The bills show which medicines have not sold lately, so you look behind the new stock for those names and read the date printed on the box yourself. The date stays on the box; the phone tells you which boxes to look at.
The company's man brings a different strength from my order. How do I note it?
Make the strength he brought an item of its own, and note its arrival against the order. The line for the strength you asked for stays short, and you ask for exactly that.
Mango, tapioca and cane: two Tamil Nadu districts that live by their seasons
Malgoa mango is the pride of Salem, and tapioca, grown widely and used mainly to make starch, is another major crop. A store in a district that works in seasons sees its demand rise and fall with them, which is why last year's months are worth keeping.
Viluppuram is called the sugar bowl of Tamil Nadu: its sugarcane supplies all the cane for 7 sugar mills in the district. A shop serving a cane and mill district sells in the weeks of the crushing season as in no other, and its stock plan follows the calendar.