You ordered amoxicillin three weeks ago. You're now down to four strips, it's a Friday afternoon, and your supplier says Tuesday at the earliest. Meanwhile, a dog with a skin infection is sitting in your consult room. This isn't a planning failure — it's a reorder-point failure. And fixing it doesn't require a spreadsheet or expensive software.
The question "how much stock should I hold?" is actually two questions. The first is: at what quantity do I place a new order? The second is: how much do I keep as a cushion in case something goes wrong? Once you separate those two questions, the math becomes simple enough to write on a Post-it.
Why Clinics Get This Wrong
Most small clinics order on instinct — someone notices a shelf looks thin, or a receptionist gets a call from the supplier. That works until it doesn't. The problem is that instinct doesn't account for lead time variability, and it treats every product the same way.
A sachet of metronidazole and a box of rabies vaccines are not the same problem. One sits at room temperature and arrives next day from your local distributor. The other requires cold-chain logistics, has a longer lead time, and if it runs out, you can't substitute anything. Applying the same "order when it looks low" rule to both is how you end up with overstocked consumables and a stockout on the item that actually matters.
The Formula — And Why It Works
A reorder point answers one question: below what quantity do I place an order so that stock arrives before I run out? The standard calculation is:
Reorder Point = (Average Daily Use × Lead Time in Days) + Buffer Stock
Three inputs. That's it. Let's define each one concretely, then run through an illustrative example with a two-vet clinic.
- Average daily use: the typical number of units you dispense or consume each day. A rough way to estimate this — count how many units you used last month and divide by the number of working days.
- Lead time: how many days from placing an order to the stock sitting on your shelf, including any delays your supplier regularly causes.
- Buffer stock: the extra units you hold to absorb a demand spike or a supplier delay. Think of it as your insurance policy.
An Illustrative Example: A Two-Vet Clinic in Pune
Take a two-vet clinic seeing roughly 20 patients a day. They dispense, in this example, about 8 strips of amoxicillin 500mg daily across all consults. Their local pharma distributor delivers in 2 days, but occasionally stretches to 3. They want to hold 2 days of buffer stock.
In this scenario: Reorder Point = (8 strips × 2 days) + (8 strips × 2 days buffer) = 16 + 16 = 32 strips. When the shelf count hits 32, they place the order. When the delivery arrives, they still have some stock left — that's the point.
If they want to be conservative and use the worst-case lead time of 3 days: Reorder Point = (8 × 3) + (8 × 2) = 24 + 16 = 40 strips. A slightly higher trigger, but they almost never face a stockout.
Cold-Chain Items Need a Different Buffer
Vaccines don't follow the same logic as tablets. Three things make them harder to manage: longer lead times, minimum order quantities from distributors, and the fact that you can't just "top up" from a nearby pharmacy if you run short.
Using the same illustrative clinic — say they administer, on average, 5 doses of a combination vaccine (DHPPiL) per day. Their cold-chain supplier takes 4 days, and they've had delays stretch to 6 days twice in the past year. A sensible buffer here is 3 days, not 2, because a stockout means turning away patients and damaging trust.
In this example: Reorder Point = (5 doses × 4 days) + (5 doses × 3 days buffer) = 20 + 15 = 35 doses. But because the supplier has a minimum order of 25 doses, the clinic orders 50 when they hit 35 — enough to cover the lead time and leave a reasonable working stock.
The key difference with cold-chain items: your buffer should cover the *worst* lead time you've actually experienced, not the average. The cost of a vaccine stockout — in missed revenue, rescheduled appointments, and client frustration — is far higher than the cost of holding a few extra doses in the fridge.
Three Item Classes, Three Approaches
Not every item in your clinic deserves the same attention. A practical way to split your inventory:
- Class A — high value or critical (vaccines, Schedule H drugs, anaesthetics): Calculate reorder points precisely. Review monthly. Buffer = worst-case lead time.
- Class B — moderate use consumables (antibiotics, anti-parasitics, IV fluids): Calculate reorder points once, review quarterly. Buffer = average lead time + 1 day.
- Class C — low-cost, easy-to-source items (syringes, cotton, gloves): Rough rules of thumb are fine. Order fortnightly or when you open the last box.
Most clinics have 10–20 Class A items, 30–50 Class B items, and a long tail of Class C. Spend your mental energy on A. Get B roughly right. Don't overthink C.
How to Do This Without a Spreadsheet
Write the reorder point for each Class A and Class B item on a small label and stick it inside the shelf or drawer where that item lives. When someone pulls stock and sees the label's number, they know to flag it for ordering. No login required, no formula to remember.
Once a month, revisit the numbers for your Class A items. Demand changes — a new grooming parlour nearby sends you more tick-case referrals, and your anti-parasitic reorder point needs to go up. The label takes 30 seconds to update.
For Class B, a simple physical check at the start of each week is enough. Walk the shelf, check against the label, write a consolidated order. This is the system, not the memory — and the difference between the two is whether it survives a staff change. For more on building a count process that doesn't require closing the clinic, see How to count your clinic's stock without closing for the day.
Where Software Genuinely Helps
The label system works. But it has one blind spot: it only catches what someone physically notices. If a staff member pulls the last 10 strips of metronidazole during a busy Saturday and forgets to check the label, the trigger gets missed. A practice management system that tracks dispensing against reorder thresholds catches this automatically — every dispense updates the count in real time.
CliniCore's FEFO dispensing and batch tracking does exactly this — it ties each dispense to a batch, keeps a running count, and flags when you cross a reorder threshold. It also surfaces expiry dates so you're not sitting on stock you can't use. If you want to see how that fits into a broader inventory workflow, the features page has the details.
One More Number Worth Knowing: Maximum Stock
Reorder points tell you when to order. Maximum stock tells you how much to order. Without an upper limit, clinics over-order when a supplier offers a bulk deal, and end up with stock that expires before it's used.
A simple rule: maximum stock = reorder point + (average daily use × your comfortable holding period). For the illustrative Pune clinic above, if they're comfortable holding 14 days of amoxicillin, maximum stock = 40 strips (reorder point) + (8 strips × 14 days) = 40 + 112 = 152 strips. Any supplier offer that pushes them above that number isn't a deal — it's a storage and expiry problem in disguise.
The Connection to Revenue
A stockout doesn't just mean a delayed treatment — it often means a missed charge. The antibiotic you couldn't dispense, the vaccine course interrupted, the lab test you had to skip because a reagent ran out. Each of those is revenue you'd already earned that simply didn't get billed. Getting your reorder points right is one of the quieter ways to protect the income your clinic has already generated. For a fuller picture of where billing gaps tend to appear, our revenue leakage audit takes about 60 seconds and shows you the most common places money slips through.