An online order for the last one on the shelf
The website shows five in stock. The shelf has none, because two were sold at the counter this morning and three were damaged last week. The online order comes in overnight. In the morning someone has to email the customer, refund the order and apologise.
Meanwhile, orders for items that need a pharmacist's review arrive mixed with everyday toiletry orders, in the same inbox. Someone prints them all out and sorts them by hand.
Two stock figures, one shelf
Most pharmacy online shops were set up separately from the till. Stock on the website is updated by hand, or by a spreadsheet import once in a while. The till has its own stock, which may itself be unreliable. So the website is always selling from a figure that is out of date.
Order handling is also separate from the shop floor. Orders arrive as emails, get printed, and are picked from the same shelves the counter uses, with no reservation between the two.
The pharmacy side adds a layer an ordinary retailer does not have. Some lines you sell online need a pharmacist's review before they can go out, some have quantity limits you have set, and some cannot be sold online at all under your own policy. When those rules live in people's heads and the orders arrive in a general inbox, the rules depend on who happens to open the email.
The cost of a disconnected shop
| Problem | What follows |
|---|---|
| Selling stock you do not have | Refunds, apologies and poor reviews |
| Manual stock updates | Hours a week keeping the website roughly right |
| Mixed order queue | Orders needing a pharmacist's review are handled the same as shampoo |
| Slow picking | Printed orders and no packing checklist |
Selling medicines online is subject to regulatory requirements. We do not advise on those. We build the technical side to support the process your superintendent sets.
Linking the website to the till
- A stock link between your online shop, such as Shopify or WooCommerce, and your EPOS, through each system's API or import tools. Sales in either place reduce one shared figure.
- A safety buffer per line, so the website shows out of stock a little before the shelf is actually empty, which covers the lag between systems and damaged items.
- Order routing. Orders containing lines you have flagged as needing a pharmacist's check go to a separate queue, and are not released for picking until someone approves them under your procedures.
- A picking list showing today's orders grouped by shelf location, with a packing checklist.
- Customer updates by email when an order is approved, picked and sent.
- A reconciliation report each week listing any lines where the website and till disagree, so drift is caught.
If your EPOS has no usable connection, we will tell you that before building anything. Sometimes the right answer is to move the online stock figure onto the website and let the till follow, or to change till.
Orders that match the shelf
When something sells at the counter, the website knows. Orders for items you do not have stop arriving. Items that need a pharmacist's review sit in their own queue with a clear status, rather than being picked with everything else.
The morning routine becomes: check the review queue, print the picking list, pack. The weekly report catches the odd line that has drifted.
You also get a clear record of each order that needed review: who approved it, when, and any note they made. That is useful if a customer asks questions later, and it keeps the online side of the business running to the same standard as the counter.
Is your online shop out of step?
- Online stock is updated by hand or by occasional import
- You regularly refund orders for items already sold in store
- Orders that need a pharmacist's review arrive mixed with everything else
- Orders are printed from email and picked without a list
- The till and the website show different stock for the same product