Ordering

The evening order decides a pharmacy's margin — and it is usually placed in a hurry, against a wholesaler's cut-off, by someone holding four things in their head at once: what is running low, who has it cheapest, what the NHS will pay, and how much to buy.

VeriPath Pharmacy puts all three on one screen: the stock position, the suppliers' own price files, and the NHS reimbursement for every pack. The decision left to make is which basket to buy — not which tabs to open.

This is where the money is made

Ordering is where a pharmacy's buying price and its NHS reimbursement meet before the money is committed. Every item at or below its alert level is listed once, with the suppliers' latest prices, the NHS figure it will earn, and the margin on the row. Buy well and the month's margin is made; buy blind and it leaks away a pack at a time.

The cheapest offer, and the runner-up

Each row carries the best four offers from the pharmacy's own supplier accounts — the price, the supplier, and the date of the file behind it. A stale price is struck through and cannot be ordered on, so a figure that is no longer current never looks like a bargain. Six or seven supplier accounts is normal; the four best are shown, and the rest stay on the line.

Nothing is invented: VeriPath holds no wholesaler stock feed, so the app never claims an availability it was not given. The price files are the pharmacy's own, held on the pharmacy's own server.

The figure you can defend

Each pack carries what the NHS will pay and the rule behind it — the deduction applied, an exemption, the concession in force that month. Beside it sits an advisory gross margin, deliberately modest: per pack only, with the Single Activity Fee excluded, because that is paid per item. Where a line would sell at a loss, the loss is shown. A red figure is worth more than a comfortable one that is not true.

The whole basket, against each wholesaler's minimum

Each supplier's lines are totalled separately, against that wholesaler's own minimum order value, with any shortfall shown. It informs the judgement rather than making it: a minimum never blocks a draft, and suppliers are never added into a total that does not exist.

An order their systems accept

The order is built as a draft and edited for as long as the manager wants. It then exports as the one CSV the wholesalers accept — no header row, because that is what their systems read. Exporting locks the lines, so the file that left the building is the file on the record, and the delivery that follows is booked against the order it arrived against.

What this means for the pharmacy

• Margin decided with the numbers in front of you. Buying price, reimbursement and margin on one row, in one pass.
• Nothing out of date looks like a bargain. Stale prices are struck through; every figure is dated.
• Figures you can explain. Every reimbursement carries the rule that produced it.
• One order, one record. The exported file and the delivery against it both stay on the system.

Part of the VeriPath Pharmacy set

Ordering sits inside the Stock capability area — see the Pharmacy App web content overview for the full set.

• Stock — the positions, batches and reports this view reads.
• Data feeds — where the NHS reimbursement figure and its rule come from.
• Supplier portals — how a wholesaler's own price file reaches the app.