Counter checkout
The counter takes money all day: retail sales at standard VAT, NHS prescription charges at zero, cards and cash, the odd refund. By six o'clock somebody has to reconcile a till, a card total and a VAT split. VeriPath Pharmacy splits it as the sale happens, on the pharmacy's own ledger — so the day ends as a count, not a reconstruction.
Sell in seconds
Search or type the item, or scan its barcode with an ordinary keyboard-wedge scanner, and the line appears. A sale is a basket, and a finished basket is a sale. The price on the screen is the price the customer pays — the VAT is already inside it, so a £2.50 shelf price is a £2.50 sale and not £3.00 at the till. A completed sale takes the stock out of the counter's own pool, with the batch recorded, through the ledger goods-in uses — one stock record, not two that disagree.
VAT
Standard-rated retail goods and the zero-rated NHS dispensation are separated line by line, from each item's own configuration in the ledger, and the split lands on the sales document and the day's totals. The counter never makes a VAT decision: the tax on the sale is the ledger's own. When the VAT return comes round, it follows the ledger rather than a spreadsheet somebody rebuilt in January.
The prescription charge is collected here too
Where a dispensed prescription is chargeable, the money is taken at the counter in the same sale — so the charge declared at the dispense and the money actually taken line up, instead of being matched up at the end of the month. The sale records the token reference and nothing about the patient.
Tender, change, and a receipt the customer keeps
The payment is recorded with its method, the amount and the change given, against the member of staff who took it. The receipt — printed or emailed — stands as a VAT document: the pharmacy's identity, the time of supply and a total for each rate, with the NHS charge shown zero-rated, never exempt.
Refunds and voids leave a trace
Refunds and voids carry a reason and the name of the person who did it. A sale is not quietly edited after the event, which is what an inspection or stock-discrepancy question turns on.
End of day, without the spreadsheet
The till belongs to the person signed in, and a hand-over passes it on with the cash counted as the next operator's float. The takings come out with the VAT split already in them, and the cash count is checked against the tenders actually recorded. The close records what was banked and what was carried forward as the float, and the variance is reported, never smoothed.
Part of the VeriPath Pharmacy set
- Responsible Pharmacist Log — the duty day it runs under.
- Accounting — where the takings and the VAT land.
- Dispensing — where that charge is declared.
- Stock — the stock behind every sale.