How to Manage Pharmacy Stock and Expiry Dates: FEFO and Par Levels

How do you manage pharmacy stock and expiry dates, step by step?

The job is one loop that repeats daily, weekly and monthly. It applies to a community pharmacy, a clinic dispensary, a practice treatment room or a care agency's store of gloves and dressings. Here are the steps in the order they pay off. This article is educational, not medical, pharmaceutical or clinical advice: decisions about medicines stay with your pharmacist, the prescriber and your local rules.

• 1. Map your stock: one row per line with code, item, strength, pack size, location, supplier, cost, lead time and usage.
• 2. Classify: ABC by the value of what you use, and VED (Vital, Essential, Desirable) set by your pharmacist or clinical lead.
• 3. Set safety stock, a reorder point and a par level for every line you reorder.
• 4. Order on a fixed rhythm (daily and weekly), with a pharmacist approving every order.
• 5. Receive properly: fridge lines first, every line checked against the invoice, discrepancies claimed the same day.
• 6. Store and rotate first expiry, first out.
• 7. Check every area once a month against expiry windows you choose, and act on what you find.
• 8. Quarantine, return or dispose of unusable stock through approved routes, and chase credits.
• 9. Read, record and reset fridge thermometers at the times your local guidance sets.
• 10. Count a few lines often, blind, with a recount, and review the numbers weekly.

What does a worked example look like?

Take one line in a composite community pharmacy: metformin 500 mg tablets in packs of 84. The pharmacy used 152 packs in the last 28 days, so average daily usage is 5.43 packs. The second wholesaler delivers in two days and the line is reviewed daily. The pharmacist has classed it as Vital, and the pharmacy holds three safety days for Vital lines.

On order day the shelf holds 25 packs and none are on order. That is below the reorder point of 28, so the line is due for an order of 9 packs to bring it back to the par level of 34. The pharmacist approved 10, because a large repeat prescription was due on Friday. The arithmetic was the formula's job; the extra pack was the pharmacist's knowledge.

How do you set par levels and reorder points?

Three numbers do the work. Safety stock is extra stock held for the days when usage runs high or a delivery is late. The reorder point is the level at which you order: the usage you expect during the lead time, plus safety stock. The par level, or order-up-to level, is where stock should be after the order arrives: usage over the lead time and the review period, plus safety stock.

The simplest way to set safety stock is a number of days of usage, with more days for lines your pharmacist marks as Vital. For high-value and Vital lines, the statistical version is worth the effort: it multiplies a service-level factor by the combined spread of daily usage and lead time. Raising the service level from 90% to 99% on a single line can double its safety stock, so choose higher levels only where a gap would really hurt.

Seasonal lines such as flu vaccine break the formula, because last month's usage says little about next month. Order those to a plan, such as the clinic booking list or a national programme's allocation, and note it beside the line.

What is FEFO, and how is it different from FIFO?

First in, first out (FIFO) uses the oldest delivery first. First expiry, first out (FEFO) uses the pack that expires first. For medicines and clinical consumables FEFO is the rule that matters, because a newer delivery can carry a shorter date than stock already on the shelf.

On the shelf, FEFO means checking the dates already there when you put stock away, placing the shortest-dated packs at the front and the longest at the back, never putting a new pack in front of an old one, and always picking from the front. Where a pack shows only a month and year, follow your local rule on which day it expires.

How should you run a monthly expiry check?

Expiry checks fail when nobody owns them. Write an area plan that covers every shelf, drawer, fridge, cupboard, trolley and kit bag, with a named person and a week of the month for each. Do one area at a time and finish it.

Use three windows that you choose, measured in months to expiry. Many teams start with three, six and twelve months, then adjust to their usage and their suppliers' returns terms.

How do you handle short-dated, expired and recalled stock?

Anything that must not be used comes off the usable shelf the same day: expired, damaged, recalled, short-dated for return, patient returns and stock affected by a temperature problem. Label it, keep it apart (fridge lines stay cold and labelled as your procedure says), log the reason and value, and record who decides what happens next. The decision on use is the pharmacist's, with the manufacturer and your local procedure.

Return what your suppliers' terms allow, log every return and chase credits weekly. Dispose of the rest only through approved routes such as licensed waste contractors, take-back schemes or reverse distributors. Controlled drugs have their own destruction and record rules set by your national law.

For recalls, open a record as soon as the alert arrives and search every location, including bags waiting for collection and the front of shop. Quarantine what you find, confirm to the issuer (including nil stock), and leave any patient-level steps to the pharmacist. Quality matters here: WHO's fact sheet on substandard and falsified medical products states that at least one in ten medicines in low- and middle-income countries is substandard or falsified.

How do you handle shortages and tell patients?

Shortages are now a daily part of the job. Community Pharmacy England's 2025 Pharmacy Pressures Survey reported that 87% of pharmacy staff face medicine supply issues every day, up from 67% in 2022, and that one in four pharmacy teams spend more than two hours a day finding alternatives for patients. A clear admin routine keeps that time from swallowing the rest of the stock work.

When a line is unavailable, ask the wholesaler for the expected date and whether other pack sizes of the same product are in stock, then ask the manufacturer if the wholesaler cannot say. Pass what you learn to the pharmacist, who decides what to do for each patient and contacts the prescriber if a change may be needed. Tell the patient in plain admin words what is unavailable, when you expect it and who will contact them, without suggesting any alternative. Log the owing and follow it up on the expected date. During a long shortage, a short weekly email to local practice managers listing the lines your suppliers cannot supply saves many phone calls on both sides.

How often should you log medicine fridge temperatures?

Follow your local guidance and the manufacturers of what you store. Guidance differs: the UK's Green Book chapter on vaccine storage asks for refrigerator temperatures to be monitored and recorded at least once each working day, while Australia's Strive for 5 guidelines ask for minimum and maximum readings twice daily, then a reset. Both use a range of +2 to +8 degrees Celsius for vaccines.

Whatever the frequency, the record should show the current, minimum and maximum, the time, initials and a reset, written as real numbers. When a reading is outside the range, label the stock, keep it cold, do not move or use it, record the facts and call the person your procedure names. Fill in a who-to-call card before you need it.

What are the most common pharmacy stock mistakes?

• Ordering by eye at the cut-off instead of from reorder points.
• Treating a seasonal spike as normal usage.
• Accepting large minimum orders on slow lines.
• Unpacking fridge lines last.
• Signing for totes without checking lines against the invoice.
• Putting new stock in front of old.
• Running expiry checks with no named owner.
• Leaving expired stock on the shelf to deal with later.
• Sending returns and never chasing the credit.
• Writing ticks instead of numbers on the fridge record.
• Adjusting the system straight after a count without a recount.
• Letting counter staff suggest alternatives when an item is out of stock.

Where does AI help, and where must a pharmacist decide?

AI assistants are good at the admin: tidying an item master export, summarising usage, checking par level arithmetic, comparing an invoice with an order, turning a recall notice into a search table and drafting messages. Use your organisation's approved tool and paste stock data only, never patient-identifiable information.

People decide. A pharmacist reviews every order before it is sent, and no tool decides whether stock can be used, supplied, substituted or discarded, or interprets a fridge excursion. If you want to check how well your team handles this kind of detail work, AssessAll's Demand and Inventory Planning Judgment assessment is one place to start, and Jobulary's guide to if-then plans helps turn routines like the fridge reading into habits. For a full set of templates, The Pharmacy Stock and Expiry Control Kit from Bodhih Training puts a file behind every step above.