MunshiA pharmacy khata is a money book: who has not paid, what they paid later, and whether the drawer matches. Munshi, from DIGIT, can hold that book for a medical store in English or Urdu. It cannot hold a patient history. The screen has a name, a phone number, an amount and a note. Treat the note as something you would hand back to the customer on a statement. The everyday udhaar habit, for any shop, is in how to keep an udhaar ledger. This page is the extra care a counter of medicines needs.
What belongs on the account
Sana runs a small medical store beside a clinic. A regular customer takes a month’s supplies and pays on the first. Sana adds him once: Add account, Customer, the name he uses, and the mobile number. When he leaves without paying, she taps You gave and enters the figure on the slip. The balance goes up by that figure alone. She does not retype the old balance.
The note is where medical stores get into trouble, so the rule here is narrow. Write “1st of the month” or “counter, evening”. If the customer himself wants the packet named so he can remember the bill, one ordinary product word is enough. Do not write a diagnosis, a dose, a doctor’s name, a batch number or an expiry date. Those facts are not required to collect the money, and a statement or a WhatsApp draft will repeat whatever you typed. Munshi will not warn you that a note is too private. You decide before you save.
Do not photograph a prescription into the khata and call that the entry. A photo is not an amount. If you attach a picture, remember it may sit in a backup. The number you can defend is the number you typed as You gave or You got.
What the app will not do
Munshi does not manage stock, invoices or barcodes. It will not tell Sana which strip expires next month, how many bottles are in the cupboard, or whether a substitute is safe. It does not give medical advice, and this article does not either. Batch and expiry stay on the shelf or in a stock method she already trusts. If a salesman offers a “pharmacy module” inside a khata app, she should test it on her own terms. In Munshi those claims are simply absent, which is safer than a half-built stock list.
Staff do not get separate logins. If more than one person uses the phone, the PIN lock in the app matters, because the book is the business. Do not leave the account open on a counter phone that customers can reach.
Cash at the medical store is still just cash
A strip paid for at once is Cash in. It is not a customer called “counter”. Credit is not Cash in. When the regular pays Rs 2,500 in notes, Sana taps You got for 2,500 on his account and Cash in for 2,500, note “his payment”. Munshi does not link those two taps. Miss the Cash in and the drawer will not match even though his balance is right. Miss the You got and she will ask him for money he already handed over, which is worse at a medical counter than at a kiryana, because people are often unwell and in a hurry.
The morning check is the same as any shop, and it is written as a routine in the daily cash book. She reads the Cash Book balance, counts the notes she needs for change, and records only money that newly entered or left. She does not enter yesterday’s closing cash again. The difference between the three books is in cash book, khata and bank book.
A distributor who leaves stock unpaid is a Supplier. Unpaid goods are You got on that supplier so the page says she owes them. A later payment is You gave, and if the notes came out of the drawer she also taps Cash out. She still does not type batch numbers on that supplier line. “Company name, amount, due Monday” is the whole note.
Wards, clinics and the person who actually pays
A clinic sometimes sends a helper who says “add it to the clinic”. Sana’s account is the clinic, or the owner who pays, not a list of patients. Each unpaid slip is one You gave for the amount. The note can carry the slip number the clinic uses. Patient names do not go in the khata. When a lump sum arrives at month end, You got is that lump sum, not a guessed split across people she never invoiced. If the cash or the bank transfer is real money in, it also belongs in the Cash Book or on the bank account. Mixing the clinic’s balance with a walk-in customer’s balance is how a medical store “loses” a payment that was made to the wrong name.
Reminders and statements stay about money
From the bell, Reminders lists people with a balance. Sana opens a reminder and WhatsApp shows a message that already contains the name, the shop and the amount. She reads it. If her note was careful, nothing medical is in that draft. She presses Send herself. Nothing goes out until she does. The tone of the words, and examples that stay polite, are in polite payment reminders. The numbered taps are in how to send the WhatsApp reminder in Munshi.
If a customer says the figure is wrong, she sends a statement rather than a longer argument in the shop. PDF and Excel statements are the tool for that, including Urdu when the app is in Urdu. The steps are in customer statements for WhatsApp. She reads the PDF before she sends it, because the note she typed will be on the page.
Closing, backups, and a fair comparison
At night she counts the drawer once. A gap gets a real reason: a delivery paid in cash, a personal note taken home, a card slip she treated as cash by mistake. Card machines and bank transfers are not drawer cash. A transfer that hit the bank is a Deposit on that bank account, not Cash in. Putting bank money into the Cash Book makes the drawer look rich. Bank and expenses together are in expenses and bank entries.
She turns on a phone backup and, if she wants a second copy, Google Drive from Settings, Backup & restore. The medical store’s book is a poor thing to keep only in one handset. Munshi is free to download and ad-supported. Ads are marked Ad and are kept off entry, sign-in, unlock and the reminder itself. Customer names, numbers and amounts are not shared with advertisers.
Other apps describe themselves differently. She can read Munshi and Khatabook and Munshi and OkCredit, then try five real balances in Munshi for a week beside the register. The test is whether the evening drawer matches, and whether a statement contains only what she is willing to show. That is the whole pharmacy use of this khata.