One of the struggles of every entrepreneur is understanding the difference between profits and cash. Articles on this subject are within every entrepreneur and business blog and pharmacy is no different.
Good news is, within pharmacy cash drain is typically in two areas, payroll and inventory. Yes, we know, we know DIR Fees, lowered reimbursement etc. That is what we hear but unfortunately there is little you can do to control these. So what can we control? We find 98% of the time payroll and/or inventory has inflated. The reason for this, inventory and payroll make up 85-90% of a pharmacies expenditures. Let’s look at each a little closer.
Inventory
We see two primary cash drains within inventory. First, having too much on your shelf. To simplify this let’s say in a month you make a profit of $20,000 but order $30,000 in excess inventory. In this scenario you did not make $20,000 you were $10,000 cash flow negative. Second, is purchasing incorrectly, we see so many owners not using secondary’s, allowing their perpetual inventory to auto order without reviewing if a cheaper alternative exists and over purchasing from secondary’s impacting rebates and brand pricing. In our opinion every owner should make inventory one of his or her priorities daily.
Payroll
Labor makes up at least 10% of your expenses. No other expense is over 1% in most pharmacies and as such can be a primary source of cash deficits. In a traditional pharmacy the target payroll is 10% of sales. For a pharmacy with sales of $3 million a 1% excess is a $30,000 cash drain, 2% is $60,000 and were not even including taxes or other benefits like 401k match. It is easy to overlook excess labor costs as on a 2 week payroll basis it is only a small amount but over the course of a year it will take your cash!
