A Faster, More Accurate Pharmacy Stocktake

Few jobs in a pharmacy are dreaded quite like the stocktake. It usually means a lost weekend, a clipboard, and a nagging sense that the numbers are not quite right anyway. It does not have to be that way. A good method makes the count faster, more accurate, and far less painful.

This guide walks through how to run a better pharmacy stocktake, step by step, and how to stop the annual count from being the only time your records are true.

Why the stocktake matters more than it feels

An inaccurate stock record costs you twice. You over-order things you already have, and you run out of things the system thinks are on the shelf. Since carrying inventory costs 20 to 30 percent of its value a year, every unit you hold because the count was wrong is real money. And with medicine shortages common, out-of-stock errors are worse than ever: the average European pharmacy already spends almost 7 hours a week on supply problems, and bad internal counts make it worse.

The stocktake is how you reset that record to reality. Done well, it is also how you catch stock quietly heading for expiry.

Before you start

A little preparation saves hours. Freeze or clearly mark stock movement during the count so nothing is sold or received mid-tally. Plan the route through the pharmacy so no shelf is missed or double-counted. And decide your tools up front, because the biggest time saving is in how you record, not how you count.

A faster, more accurate method

Scan, do not write

Handwritten counts are the single largest source of stocktake error: misread boxes, transposed numbers, illegible notes. Scanning a barcode captures the product exactly, every time, and removes the re-keying step entirely.

Capture batch and expiry, not just quantity

Record the batch number and expiry as you count, not only the total on hand. This is what turns a stocktake from a number into useful information: you finish the count knowing not just how much you have, but what is about to expire.

Split the floor and count in parallel

A single person counting the whole pharmacy is slow and error-prone by the end. Divide the space into sections and have several staff count at once, each on their own device, feeding into the same live count. The job finishes in a fraction of the time.

Resolve discrepancies as you go

Where the count disagrees with the record, investigate then, not later. Most gaps are simple: a missed delivery, a sale not processed, a mis-scan. Fixing them in the moment is far easier than reconstructing them afterwards.

Reconcile with your dispensing system

Finally, line the count up against your dispense records so the two agree. A stocktake that does not reconcile with what you have dispensed leaves you back where you started.

Common mistakes to avoid

The usual culprits are counting while stock is still moving, recording quantity without batch or expiry, one person doing everything, and never reconciling the result. Each one quietly reintroduces the errors the stocktake was meant to remove.

From annual pain to continuous accuracy

The deeper fix is to stop relying on one big count a year. Rolling or cycle counting, where you count a slice of the range on a regular schedule, keeps records accurate all year instead of for a few weeks after the annual event. It also spreads the work into manageable pieces rather than one dreaded weekend.

Where Krepko fits

This is exactly the problem Krepko is now building for. The team behind Emily, our AI voice agent, is building an inventory system for pharmacies with a stocktake tool designed around this method: scan barcodes, batch numbers, and expiry dates; count by batch; and let several staff scan at once into the same stocktake, with the ability to save, resume, and correct as you go.

It is in development rather than available today, but if the annual stocktake is a pain point, it is being built to remove it. You can join the waitlist to hear when it lands. For the bigger picture on stock cost, see our guide to reducing pharmacy inventory holding costs.