Moving your drug list from your old pharmacy software

By Vidhyasagar, Developer, Quantzi Infotech on 5 October 2026. 3 min read.

Moving a drug list means exporting the product master from your current pharmacy software as a spreadsheet, checking it against the new system in a dry run that writes nothing, fixing the rows it rejects, and only then importing. The dry run is the step that matters: it tells you, row by row, what will not come across and why.

What a real export looks like

No two pharmacy programs export the same columns, and the export is never as complete as the screen it came from. In the catalogues we have migrated, it is normal for a large share of rows to be missing a generic name, a selling price or an expiry date. That is not carelessness; the old system simply never needed those fields to sell across the counter.

Two things catch almost everyone. First, dosage form and strength are usually written inside the product name (for example “2 MG” at the end) rather than kept as separate fields. Second, a hospital pharmacy sells far more than medicine: surgical items, devices, nutrition products and dressings are often a tenth of the list.

The steps

1. Export the product master from your current software as CSV or Excel. Ask for every column it can give, not just the ones on screen.
2. Download the import template from the pharmacy screen. It is generated from the importer itself, so its columns are exactly the ones that will be read.
3. Map your export’s columns onto the template. Keep the HSN code if you have it: it is how devices, nutrition and consumables are told apart from drugs.
4. Run the import as a dry run. Nothing is written. You get a count of what would be created and a list of every rejected row with the line number and reason.
5. Fix the rejected rows in the spreadsheet, not in the software, so the file stays the record of what you moved.
6. Run the import for real, then spot-check a handful of items you know well, including a device and a nutrition product.

What not to do

• Do not import stock quantities on the same day you are still selling from the old system. Freeze, count, then import.
• Do not delete rows the importer rejects. A rejected row is usually a real product with a gap that someone at the counter can fill in a minute.
• Do not invent missing prices to get a row through. A blank price is visible and gets fixed; a guessed one gets charged.