Online ordering for pharma distributors

The problem with WhatsApp and phone orders

Orders from medical shops arrive as WhatsApp messages, photos of handwritten lists, voice notes and phone calls. Someone at the counter reads each one and types it into Marg or whatever billing software you use.

So every order is written twice, once by the retailer and once by your staff. Quantities get misread, a strip becomes a box, and the wrong pack size or batch goes on the bill. The shop finds out when the parcel arrives, and then there is a return and a credit note to sort out.

Orders sent after the office closes sit in a phone until the next morning. On a busy day some are missed completely, and the shop orders from another distributor.

What an ordering app changes

With an ordering app, the retailer places the order themselves. They search your product list, see what is in stock right now, and see their own rates and schemes instead of a general price list.

The order opens as a GST bill in the ordering app. Your staff check it, pack it and dispatch it. Nobody retypes anything, so the mistakes that come from reading messages and notes go away.

Retailers can order late at night or on a Sunday. The order waits for you in the morning, complete and in the right format.

What to look for

If you are comparing ordering apps, check these before you sign up:

• It works on the basic Android phones your retailers already carry, and on a web link for shops that will not install an app.
• It carries your name. Retailers are ordering from you.
• It shows live stock and applies your rates and schemes for each retailer.
• It makes the GST bill from the order itself, so nobody types the order again.
• Support answers during your working hours, on Indian time.

Ask about collections too. Seeing what each shop owes, and following up without printed ledgers, matters as much as taking the order.

How Pharmulo does it

Pharmulo is the ordering app we built and run at Adiviath for pharma wholesalers and distributors. Retailers order from their phone under your name, and each order opens as a GST bill in Pharmulo, with no retyping. Stock, collections and supplier payments run in the same place.

Read more on the Pharmulo page or go straight to pharmulo.com. If your business needs something Pharmulo does not do, we can build it: see custom software for distributors.

See Pharmulo