DravyaOSBlog
Guides for the pharmacy counter
Straight, practical writing on GST billing, batch & expiry, and choosing the right software — for Indian chemist shops.
Buying guides
Choosing pharmacy billing software — the practical checklist, not the marketing spin.
How to Move Your Pharmacy's Stock into New Software
Switching without re-typing your inventory: export, clean, and import your item list — and let sale and purchase rates fill in on their own.
Top 5 Marg ERP Alternatives for Indian Pharmacies (2026)
Thinking of moving off Marg's licence-plus-AMC desktop ERP? Five genuine alternatives for the counter, each with a clear 'best for' — and where each one falls short.
Top 7 Free Pharmacy Billing Software in India (2026)
Seven tools that turn up when you search 'free pharmacy software' — ranked, with the honest truth on which are actually free and which just say so.
Top 4 Offline Pharmacy Billing Apps (No Internet Needed)
When the broadband dies at 6pm rush, does your counter keep billing? The apps that work offline, the difference between offline-desktop and offline-first, and the cloud tools that stop dead.
Best Free Pharmacy Billing Software in India (2026)
How to tell genuinely free software from a trial in disguise — the five-point checklist every chemist should apply before installing.
How-to guides
Step-by-step guides for the everyday tasks at the counter — billing, invoices, and compliance.
Drug License & Record-Keeping Rules for an Indian Retail Pharmacy
Which licence you need, the registered-pharmacist requirement, and the registers a chemist shop must keep — in plain English.
Schedule H1 & the Prescription Register
What Schedule H, H1 and X mean, the exact fields an H1 register must carry, the three-year retention rule, and how to record it at billing time.
How to Make a GST-Compliant Medical Bill
Mandatory fields, HSN codes, CGST/SGST vs IGST, GST rates on medicines, and a worked example you can copy.
What Is GSTR? GST Returns for Pharmacies, Made Simple
GSTR-1 vs GSTR-3B, the monthly filing cycle, why chemist shops find it fiddly, and how to build both from your own sales.
Running the shop
Practical operations for a busy pharmacy — stock, batch & expiry, and protecting your margins.
What to Reorder, What's Dead Stock, Who's Due a Refill
Your billing data already knows what's about to run out, what's stuck on the shelf, and which regulars stopped coming. Six questions worth asking it every morning.
MRP, PTR, PTS & Pharmacy Margins, Explained
What the three prices mean, how to work out your real margin after GST and schemes, and why a mis-keyed price quietly eats your profit.
Accepting UPI & Digital Payments at the Counter
Why a taped-up static QR costs you time, and how a pay-by-scan QR tied to the exact bill total speeds the queue and kills wrong-amount errors.
Manufacturer Discounts, Free Goods & Safe Deletes
What's new: per-customer manufacturer discounts, 10+1 free goods that keep your margin honest, a Net-rate column, layout-honoring printouts, and safe whole-bill deletion.
Spot Stock & Dues Problems at a Glance
At a busy counter you scan, you don't read. How pack photos, expiry-first inventory, and dues-first ledgers surface what needs attention first.
Managing Medicine Batch Numbers & Expiry Dates
Why FEFO beats FIFO, a simple monthly expiry routine, and how to stop paying the distributor for stock you'll only bin.
Managing Customer Credit (Udhaar / Khata)
Why the paper khata stops working, how to track udhaar as sales and receipts, and a simple routine to recover what you're owed.
An Online Store for Your Pharmacy, Without an App
A shareable storefront customers can order from with no login, orders that land straight in your app, and a link the customer can track — no app to build, no marketplace cut.
Under the hood
How DravyaOS is built — offline-first sync, cross-device data, and speed at the counter.
Should Your Pharmacy Software Speak Your Language?
The counter UI in Hindi, Bengali, Tamil or yours — while medicine names, MRP and GST stay English. Why that split is the right one, now in 7 Indian languages, offline.
Offline-First Sync, and Why the Counter Should Never Wait for the Internet
Local-first writes, background sync, and clean cross-device merges — why instant, works-offline, multi-device data is the baseline a pharmacy app should meet in 2026.