Should a pharmacy give credit at all?

Most cannot avoid it. The clinic next door that sends patients, the company whose staff collect, the regular of nine years — refusing them is refusing the trade that comes with them. The question is not whether to give credit but whether you can say, today, exactly what each of them owes.

What makes a pharmacy debt uncollectable?

Not the customer refusing. It is the shop being unable to show what was taken and when. A debt you cannot itemise is a debt you can only argue about, and the argument is one you lose in front of somebody you still want as a customer.

How do you ask a customer for money without losing them?

Show, do not accuse. A printed statement of dates and amounts turns a confrontation into arithmetic — the customer is not being doubted, they are being shown a list. Most disputes are genuine memory failures on both sides.

Guide · Uganda

Selling on credit, and actually getting paid

Every pharmacy in Uganda gives credit and almost none of them decided to. It arrives one favour at a time — the clinic next door, the company whose staff collect, the neighbour who forgot her purse — and by the time it is a problem it is also a relationship.

Why "just stop giving credit" is not advice

It is the first thing anybody says and it is nearly useless, because the people who owe you the most are usually the reason you have a business at all. The clinic that sends you twenty patients a month is not a debtor you can afford to refuse. The company whose staff collect on account is a month's turnover in one relationship.

So the question is not whether to give credit. It is whether you can answer, today, without hunting, what each of them owes. Almost every shop that loses money to credit could have told you the total. Very few could show the lines.

The three who ask, and which of them pays

The institution — a clinic, a school, a company. Usually pays, but slowly and against paperwork, and will query anything it cannot match to its own records. The risk here is not default, it is a hundred small amounts nobody ever reconciles.
The regular — nine years, knows your mother, pays on Friday. Usually pays. The risk is that nobody writes it down because writing it down feels like an accusation, and after four months of that nobody knows the number.
The emergency — a stranger, a child who is unwell, no money today. Sometimes pays. This is the one everybody worries about and it is rarely where the money actually goes, because the amounts are small and the shop already knows it is a risk.

The money is lost in the first two, quietly, over months. Not in the third.

What makes a debt uncollectable

Not refusal. It is the shop being unable to show what was taken and when.

A customer who is shown eleven dated lines pays or disputes one of them. A customer who is told "you owe ninety thousand" has nothing to respond to except their own memory, which disagrees. That is not dishonesty on either side — it is two people remembering months of small transactions differently, and the one with no list loses.

By the time a debt is "bad", the failure usually happened much earlier, on an ordinary afternoon when a box went out and nothing was written down.

Four habits that do most of the work

Set the limit before you need it. A number agreed while everyone is comfortable is a conversation. The same number produced at the moment you refuse someone is an insult. Say it when the account opens.
Take the phone number at the time, not later. The single most common gap in a small shop's records, and the one that makes everything afterwards harder. It takes four seconds while they are standing there and is impossible three months on.
One balance, not a pile of chits. Whatever you keep it in, there should be one place that answers "what does this person owe" — not a book, a phone, and a memory that have to be added together.
Show a statement, do not send a total. Dates and amounts turn a confrontation into arithmetic. Nobody argues with a list they can check.

Asking for money without losing the customer

The mistake is treating it as a confrontation to be nerved up to and then done all at once, months late. By then it is large, awkward, and the customer has had time to build their own version of the number.

Earlier and smaller is easier for both sides. And it is far easier when you can put a printed line in front of somebody rather than a claim: this is what we have, does it match yours? That question is not an accusation, and it very often ends with the customer finding the discrepancy themselves.

The one thing worth being firm about is the limit — because a customer allowed past it once has learnt that it is not real, and the next conversation is harder than the one you avoided.

Where software earns its place

In CareBoon, a sale on account is recorded against a name, so the balance is worked out from what was actually sold and paid rather than a figure somebody typed and forgot to update. Each customer carries a limit, and a sale that would pass it stops and asks for a reason — recorded, so an owner reading the account later can see who allowed it and why. And the statement is a list of dates and amounts you can put in front of somebody.

It also keeps the two apart that most shops conflate: what you sold and what is in the drawer. A sale on account is a completed sale with no money in it, and counting it as takings leaves the drawer short by exactly what went out on credit — which is how a shop ends up looking for a thief who does not exist.

What it will not do: it cannot collect the money, chase anybody, or tell you whether a customer is good for it — that is your judgement about a person, and no system has it. It will not stop you giving credit past a limit, only make you say why. And it cannot record a sale nobody entered: a box handed over without being rung up is invisible to any software ever written.

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