Skip to main content
Takings are not profit. Expenses is where you record what running the pharmacy actually costs, so the net position figure everyone quotes is worth quoting.

​
What you’re looking at

The header reads Expenses — “Net position and running costs” — with a date-range picker and two buttons, Export and Add Expense. Pick any window. Click a single day to see just that day, or click a start day and an end day for a custom range spanning as many days as you like. The picker opens on the last thirty days, the same window the sales dashboard opens on, so the two screens can be read side by side. Everything on the page obeys it. The tiles, the category bars and the list all cover the period named in their headings — which is why each card says the period out loud rather than leaving you to remember it. A pharmacy that has recorded nothing sees “No expenses recorded yet.”, no category bars at all, and a Net position card whose Expenses tile reads zero while the other four are populated from your sales and stock. That is the state this page exists to get you out of.

​
The arithmetic, plainly

Four lines make one number:
Three of those four fill themselves in from work you are already doing. Expenses is the only line that exists because someone typed it. A pharmacy that records no expenses sees a net position that is really a gross margin, and reads it as profit.

​
Record an expense

1

Select Add Expense

The Add expense sheet opens — “A running cost — fuel, rent, salaries. It reduces the net position for its date.”
2

Pick a Category

Fuel, Transport, Rent, Salaries, Utilities, Supplies, Capital or Other. It opens on Fuel. The list is fixed, which is what makes the category breakdown comparable month to month — so pick the nearest one rather than defaulting everything to Other.
3

Enter the Amount

A positive number. Zero, blank or text gives “Enter an amount greater than zero.”
4

Set the Date

Defaults to today. Change it to the date the cost actually falls on — an expense reduces the net position for its own date, so back-dating a delivery charge to last week moves it into last week’s figures.
5

Add a Description

Description (optional) — “e.g. Generator diesel for the week”. Optional, and worth filling every time: in three months the amount alone will not tell you what it was. Left blank, the row shows a dash.
6

Select Add expense to save

The sheet closes and the toast reads “Expense recorded”.

​
Delete an expense

Use the delete control on the row. You get “Expense deleted” and the net position recovers by that amount. There is no undo, so re-add it if you deleted the wrong one.

​
Who can do this

Role decides whether Expenses opens at all. A Cashier / Till Operator reaches only POS and Sales, and a pharmacy technician’s sidebar deliberately stops short of the money screens — so for both of them the entry is simply absent. Permission decides whether the net figures inside it are shown to you. On top of the role bundle each person carries an access tier — Own till, Whole branch or All branches — which decides how much of the business their figures cover. Without View the net position the tiles do not appear at all. In their place the card reads:
Net position is hidden — needs authorisation from your clinic owner.
That is deliberate. A card showing 0 would be read as a bad month rather than as a permission boundary, so the figure is withheld rather than fabricated. Everything else on the page still works: the category bars, the list, Add Expense and delete are all unaffected. Two behaviours surprise people:
  • Enforcement is opt-in, per person. A colleague never saved in the permissions sheet is unrestricted, and the sheet warns “Saving starts enforcing”.
  • A denied action is recorded; an allowed one is not. Being shown fewer figures is not a denied action and is not logged — only a refused act is.
See Staff permissions.

​
Check it worked

  • The expense heads the Expenses list with its category badge, description and date — provided its Date falls inside the period you are looking at.
  • The Expenses tile rises by the amount, and Net falls by the same.
  • Expenses by category picks it up.

​
Take the figures away

Export offers three files, each covering exactly the period on screen. Each workbook opens on an Overview sheet, and every sheet carries the pharmacy’s name, the period and the currency at the top — so a tab forwarded to a bookkeeper still says what it is. The filename carries the period too, which is what stops two exports taken the same afternoon from colliding in your downloads folder. The two Excel files are built from the same figures as the Expenses report in Reports, so the two can never disagree.

​
Where expenses show up elsewhere

  • The sales dashboard carries the same net position figures, so takings and costs are read side by side.
  • Analytics has an Expenses report — operating spend by day and by category, with an export. That report exists only in the Pharmacy edition, because this is the only edition with a screen that feeds it. See Reports.

​
Common issues

The amount is blank, zero or not a number. Expenses are always entered as positive figures — the subtraction is done for you.
You do not hold View the net position. The rest of the screen still works; the five tiles reappear as soon as an owner or manager grants it.
Almost always missing expenses. Check that rent, salaries, fuel and utilities are recorded for the range you are looking at. Stock thrown away also has to be written off in Inventory before it reaches the Stock loss tile — see Batches and expiry.
Cost of goods only counts stock whose cost you recorded when you received it. Items received with no cost contribute nothing, so the figure understates rather than guesses. Record costs at receiving — see Purchase orders.
It uses the Date on the sheet, not the day you typed it. Delete it and re-add it with the right date.
Check its Date against the period in the card heading. The list shows the period you picked, so an expense dated outside it is recorded correctly and simply not in view — widen the range, or pick the day it is dated.
Your role does not reach the money screens — a cashier gets POS and Sales, and a technician stops at the counter and the stockroom. Ask an owner or manager to change your role, not your permissions: this one is decided by the role.

​
FAQ

Because you do not hold View the net position. It is withheld rather than shown as zero on purpose — a zero would read as a terrible month rather than as a boundary. The same rule applies wherever the figure appears, so it is missing on the sales dashboard too.
No. The eight are fixed, and that is what lets you compare Expenses by category from one month to the next. Put the specifics in Description (optional) — “Generator diesel”, “Landlord Q3” — and the category stays useful as a grouping.
No, and recording it here would count it twice. Stock you buy reaches the figures through Cost of goods when it sells, and through Stock loss if it expires. This page is for costs that are not stock: fuel, rent, salaries, utilities, transport.
No. Nothing else depends on them. The only consequence of skipping them is that your net position overstates what you actually made, which matters the moment anyone quotes it.
No. A cashier’s sidebar is POS and Sales only, so this screen is not reachable for them at all — and the net position figure is separately gated on top of that.