You supply medicines or health products to pharmacies and warehouses, and you want two things: your full range in front of the people who buy it, and an early view of what they are about to need. Today that probably runs on a WhatsApp price list, phone calls and a sales rep's memory. This article sets out how a digital catalogue and an order system change that: what the catalogue must hold, how to keep prices and availability honest, how orders should flow, which demand signals to watch and which mistakes to avoid. It is general business information, not legal advice; confirm licensing and record rules with the Egyptian Drug Authority (EDA).
What a WhatsApp price list cannot do
A price list sent as a picture or a PDF has three weaknesses. It is out of date the moment something changes, so the pharmacy phones to ask "is it really available?". It records nothing about what the pharmacy wanted and you did not have. And the order arrives as a message that someone must retype. Each of these costs you either a sale or hours of staff time, and the second one costs you the most, because you never see it.
Step 1: Decide what each catalogue line must say
A catalogue line is not a name and a price. For a pharmacy to order from it without calling you, each line needs:
| Field | Why the buyer needs it |
|---|---|
| Trade name, active ingredient, strength, dosage form | To find the right product and tell it from a near-match |
| Pack size and unit of sale (box, strip) | So the quantity ordered means the same to both sides |
| Manufacturer or marketing company | Pharmacies buy by company as well as by name |
| Price and the date it applies from | So nobody orders on an old price |
| Availability state | See Step 2 |
| Minimum order and any offer terms | To avoid a back-and-forth |
| Expiry policy | The shortest remaining shelf life you will deliver |
| Image of the pack | To avoid look-alike mistakes |
Keep one master record per product and let each customer group see it, rather than keeping a separate price list per rep.
Step 2: Keep price and availability fresh
Freshness is the whole value of a catalogue. A stale catalogue is worse than a phone call, because it looks authoritative.
- Use states, not just numbers. Available, limited quantity, out of stock, expected on a date. "Limited" tells the buyer to order now.
- Stamp every price and every availability with "as of" time, so a pharmacy can see how recent it is.
- Give each product an owner who is responsible for updating it, and a rule for how quickly a change must show: for example, a stock-out is shown within the hour (illustrative).
- Reserve on order. If two pharmacies order the last 10 boxes, the second should be told immediately, not by phone the next day.
- Never show an item as available when you cannot supply it. The cost is a customer who stops trusting the whole list.
Measure it. A simple test: each Monday take 20 products at random and check shown availability against the warehouse. If more than one or two are wrong (illustrative threshold), the update process is the problem, not the screen.
Step 3: Design the order flow around the rules
The EDA's good storage and distribution guide, which applies to storage and distribution facilities, sets out expectations that shape a distributor's order flow. As we read it, products must be distributed only to persons or entities licensed to obtain them; there must be a file for each customer holding the store licence and a copy of the approved stamps; dispatch must follow a documented order; and the sales invoice must include, among other things, the date, the facility's full name and address, a description of the products with quantity, a unique number for the delivery order, the batch number and expiry date, and a box for the person who receives the goods and the stamp, which must match the approved stamp or the delivery is rejected. It also says products must not be supplied after their expiry date.
A flow that respects this:
- Customer onboarding. Licence and stamp copies are uploaded and checked once; the account stays inactive until then.
- Order placed in the catalogue. Quantities against the unit of sale, with the price shown at that moment.
- Confirmation. The distributor confirms, partly confirms or declines each line, with a reason (out of stock, restricted item, credit limit).
- Picking by batch. The warehouse picks by earliest expiry that still meets the promised minimum shelf life, and records the batch.
- Invoice and delivery note with the fields above, generated from the pick, not retyped.
- Receipt. The pharmacy signs and stamps; the system stores the proof.
- Claims and returns. Short delivery, damage and short-dated stock are raised against the invoice line.
Items that the EDA treats as having misuse potential carry extra rules. Its 30 June 2026 guideline limits who may supply them (licensed warehouses with a valid storage-practice certificate), requires a batch-level movement record kept for at least five years, and, for those items, a weekly detailed sales statement sent to the EDA. It says they may be supplied to public and private pharmacies only, not to other warehouses. If you handle such items, the system should enforce that at the order stage, not rely on a clerk remembering. Check the guideline and its annex for exactly which products it covers.
Step 4: Make demand visible early
A catalogue gives you something a phone call never does: you can see what buyers wanted, not only what they bought. Capture these signals:
- Searches with no match or no stock. A pharmacy typed an item you do not list or cannot supply. That is demand you are currently invisible to.
- Items added to a basket but not ordered. Often a price or availability issue.
- Lines you could not fill. Short delivery, by item and by week.
- Order frequency by pharmacy and item. A pharmacy that orders an item every ten days and is now at day fifteen is probably about to run out, or has moved to a competitor.
- Orders by area and week. A rise across one district points to a local cause such as a seasonal illness or a nearby clinic opening.
Illustrative example: in one week, 12 pharmacies in one district search for an item you hold 40 boxes of, and 5 add it to a basket. You were about to run out. With a catalogue you see it on Tuesday; with a phone list you see it when the sixth call comes and the stock is gone. Demand visibility is only worth having if someone acts on it, so assign a weekly 30-minute review of the unmet-demand list to a named person.
Step 5: Track a small set of numbers
| Measure | How to calculate | What it tells you |
|---|---|---|
| Fill rate | Lines delivered in full / lines ordered | Whether the catalogue promises more than the warehouse delivers |
| Unmet demand | Searches and ordered lines with no stock, by item | What to buy more of, or add to the range |
| Price age | Share of lines whose price is older than your target | How stale the catalogue is |
| Order-to-delivery time | Hours from confirmation to signed receipt | Service, and where it slips |
| Short-dated returns | Value returned or exchanged because of expiry, by supplier and customer | Where you buy or sell too much too late |
| Repeat rate | Pharmacies that ordered again within 30 days | Whether customers trust the list |
| Dormant customers | Active accounts with no order in 60 days (illustrative) | Who to call before they are gone |
Start with fill rate and unmet demand. They cost nothing to calculate once orders are captured digitally, and they change purchasing decisions straight away.
Step 6: Keep the records you will be asked for
Digital orders make compliance easier because the record is a by-product of the work. The EDA's guide asks for comprehensive records of purchase invoices, sales invoices and transfers, with batch and expiry on the sales invoice. The Egyptian Tax Authority states that all taxpayers have been obligated to issue electronic tax invoices for services and goods since 15 December 2022, so a distributor's order system should hand its data to the accounting system that issues those invoices; the article E-invoicing in Egypt: what your accounting system actually has to do explains the accounting side. The EDA's track-and-trace guide, issued in December 2025, describes a national electronic system built on a unique code on each pack, so ask your platform vendor how batch and serial data will flow in and out as that system widens.
Common mistakes
- Launching a catalogue nobody owns. Prices go stale in a month.
- Showing availability you cannot honour. One failed order costs more trust than ten honest "out of stock" labels.
- Building a separate price list per rep. Master data in one place, with customer groups.
- Treating the catalogue as a brochure. If a pharmacy cannot order from it, they will phone anyway.
- Ignoring searches that returned nothing. That list is your cheapest market research.
- Hand-retyping orders into the accounting system. It reintroduces the errors you were removing.
- Forgetting restricted items. The system must stop an order that should not be fulfilled.
- Measuring orders but not misses. Fill rate and unmet demand are where the money is.
What to ask of a platform
Show me a stock-out appearing in the catalogue within minutes. Show me an order partly confirmed. Show me the invoice with batch and expiry. Show me the unmet-demand report for last week. Show me my data exported to Excel. A pharmacist's side of the same question is in Choosing pharmacy software in Egypt, and the buyer's expiry view is in Pharmacy stock and expiry management; both are worth reading to understand how your customers will use what you publish.
The next step
Pick your 50 fastest-selling products. For each, write down who updates its price and availability, how soon a change must appear, and what you will do when a pharmacy asks for it and you are out. Then ask any platform to show you those 50 lines. Softwiro builds MyClinic (Sehaty), which gives a supplier a digital catalogue, with prices and available quantities, that reaches pharmacies and warehouses, and shows demand as it accumulates rather than after the fact. If you want to see how that would work for your range, contact us.
Sources
- Regulatory Guide for Good Storage and Distribution Practices (GSDP), 2025 — Egyptian Drug Authority. Distribution to licensed entities, customer files, documented orders, required sales invoice contents, no supply after expiry, and records of invoices and transfers (written for storage and distribution facilities).
- Regulatory Guideline for the Import, Distribution, Monitoring and Dispensing of Products and Substances with Misuse Potential, 30 June 2026 — Egyptian Drug Authority (Arabic). Who may supply such items, to whom, the five-year batch-level record and the weekly sales statement.
- Regulatory Guideline for the Unified National Electronic Track-and-Trace System, 2025 — Egyptian Drug Authority (Arabic). The national electronic system built on a unique code on each pack.
- Egyptian Tax Authority home page — Egyptian Tax Authority. The notice that all taxpayers are obligated to issue electronic tax invoices from 15 December 2022.