Sell across the counter, not just to patients
Pharmacy Counter turns your stockroom into a shop. Someone walks in for a box of paracetamol, you ring it up, take the money and hand it over — and they never have to become a patient for you to do it.
What it does
- Takes an order for anyone: a walk-in who gives no name at all, a customer who gives one, or a registered patient.
- Gives every order a tracking number the customer can quote —
PH-2608-00042— so an order set aside is easy to find again. - Takes the payment at the counter, works out the change, and prints a receipt.
- Sends the order to the cashier instead, where the pharmacist is not the one who handles money.
- Puts a patient's purchase on their account, landing on the right visit's bill when you quote the encounter reference.
- Deducts the stock only once the sale is settled, taking it from the batch that expires soonest and splitting across batches when one is not enough.
- Refuses to sell a prescription-only medicine until a current prescription is attached.
- Signs staff in with a short PIN on counter machines you have enrolled, so each sale is still attributed to the person who made it.
- Lets an administrator set that PIN for a pharmacist or cashier who cannot set their own, behind a password check, and records who set it.
- Sets up a counter over the phone: name it from the office, read six digits to whoever is standing at the machine, and that browser becomes the counter.
- Locks the counter again after each completed sale, so the next person signs in as themselves rather than inheriting the last one's name.
- Answers "how much is this, and have you got any?" from the counter screen, with the price, the stock and the other brands you hold — and one click to start selling it.
- Runs from the keyboard: F6 to F10 drive search, payment, dispensing and the receipt, so a whole sale can be rung up without touching the mouse.
Check a price before starting a sale
Open Pharmacy Counter › Counter and search under Check price & stock. Type at least two letters from the medicine or brand name. Each result shows the selling price, available units, regulatory class and other brands your clinic holds.
The results include out-of-stock medicines, so you can tell a customer that you carry an item but have none left. Start sale stays disabled for those rows. For an item in stock, Start sale opens an anonymous order with one unit already in the cart. Use the registered-patient search instead when the sale belongs on a patient account or visit.
Why it helps
For the clinic
Over-the-counter sales stop being invisible. They land in the same books as everything else, broken out so you can see what the counter itself brought in, and stock stays honest because it comes off the shelf as part of the sale rather than as a separate chore someone remembers later.
For the pharmacist
The fast path is the common one: a walk-in sale needs nothing typed but the item and the quantity. No patient record to create, no name to insist on. A PIN gets you signed in between customers without a password, and the keyboard shortcuts mean a counter worked standing up does not need a hand on the mouse between every step.
When somebody cannot set their own PIN
Staff normally set their own, confirming with their password. For the ones who cannot — someone new on their first shift, or somebody locked out with a queue building — an administrator can set one from Settings › Counter PINs, after confirming their own password. The page lists only active pharmacists and cashiers, and shows who set each PIN and when, because a PIN set for somebody else puts that person's name on every sale it rings up. Changing or clearing a PIN signs that person out straight away, so the old one cannot still be in use at a counter.
For the cashier
Counter orders waiting to be paid appear in their own queue, oldest first, with the amount due already worked out.
For the customer
They get a number they can quote, a printed receipt, and — if they are a patient of yours — the option to put it on their account instead of paying now.
Nothing can be dispensed until it has been paid for or charged to an account. That one rule is what stops stock leaving with the paperwork to be sorted out later.
Pharmacy Counter is an optional feature and needs Pharmacy & Inventory switched on alongside it: that module is your stockroom, this one is your shop.