Services
Service tiers
Start with compliance essentials, add management accounts and payroll as you grow, move to specialist advisory when buying or selling a pharmacy. You can move tier at any month-end.
Independent pharmacy owners and locums who need year-end accounts, personal tax and NHS income reconciliation handled by people who understand dispensing economics.
- ✓Annual accounts and corporation tax return
- ✓Personal self assessment
- ✓NHS dispensing income reconciliation (FP34 cash flow)
- ✓VAT retail scheme compliance
- ✓Locum self-employment and MTD ITSA set-up
- ✓Unlimited email support
Established pharmacy owners who want monthly numbers that track the FP34 payment lag, payroll for dispensing staff, and extraction planning that fits NHS income timing.
- ✓Everything in Dispensary
- ✓Monthly management accounts
- ✓Pharmacy payroll (PAYE, RTI, auto-enrolment)
- ✓Employer NIC planning (15% rate, £5,000 threshold, £10,500 Employment Allowance)
- ✓Salary and dividend extraction modelling
- ✓Capital allowances on pharmacy fit-out (AIA up to £1,000,000)
Pharmacy buyers, sellers and group operators who need transaction-level advisory: goodwill valuation, acquisition due diligence, incorporation, and CGT/BADR planning on exit.
- ✓Everything in Ownership
- ✓Buy-side financial due diligence and goodwill review
- ✓Sell-side valuation and CGT/BADR planning (18% BADR rate, £1m lifetime limit)
- ✓SDLT and stamp duty advice (asset vs share purchase)
- ✓Incorporation and business structure modelling
- ✓Group and multi-site reporting
All services
Pharmacy Purchase Accounting
The two decisions worth real money on a pharmacy acquisition are made before you sign heads of terms, not after: share purchase versus asset purchase, and how goodwill is treated. Market entry is regulated under the NHS (Pharmaceutical and Local Pharmaceutical Services) Regulations 2013, which means the NHS contract, not the shop, is what you are actually buying. We provide deal-support accounting, financial due diligence, and finance-ready accounts for lenders, from first look through to post-completion setup.
Pharmacy Sale, CGT and BADR
On a qualifying pharmacy disposal, Business Asset Disposal Relief charges CGT at 18% for 2026/27 on gains up to the £1m lifetime limit per person. Beyond that, standard CGT applies at 18% within the basic-rate band and 24% above it, against a £3,000 annual exempt amount. The BADR rate has stepped up from 10% before 2025/26, to 14% in 2025/26, to 18% from 6 April 2026, which means the timing of your exit is a real money decision. Deal structure, earn-outs, and deferred consideration change when the tax falls due. We plan the exit before heads of terms are agreed, not after.
Pharmacy Valuation and Goodwill
Community pharmacies are valued on a multiple of adjusted EBITDA and on pence-per-item benchmarks. Goodwill dominates the price because the value is driven by the NHS contract and prescription volume, not the shop fittings or the retail stock. We explain the method transparently, help buyers and sellers understand what the numbers mean, and provide valuation support for transactions, disputes, and planning purposes. We stay strictly method-level: we do not assert a specific multiple without a cited market source, because an invented number here is the most damaging thing we could give a buyer or seller.
NHS Payment Reconciliation (FP34)
Community pharmacy income is reimbursement (Drug Tariff prices) plus remuneration (fees and service payments) under the Community Pharmacy Contractual Framework. It is not shop takings, and a generalist accountant who treats it as retail income will misstate your profit, your working capital, and your tax position. The FP34 payment cycle means prescriptions submitted one month are paid roughly two months later, with an advance on account, and Drug Tariff and Category M clawback means your gross margin is set centrally and adjusted retrospectively. We reconcile the NHSBSA schedules to your ledger monthly, track margin variance against the Tariff, and model the working-capital gap the payment lag creates.
Pharmacy VAT and Retail Schemes
Community pharmacies are registered for VAT and structurally VAT-mixed: NHS-dispensed prescription drugs are zero-rated, most over-the-counter retail sales are standard-rated, and certain pharmacist services can be exempt or standard-rated depending on what is supplied and how. This mix means a pharmacy almost always reclaims more input VAT than a pure retailer expects, because zero-rated outputs let you recover input VAT on costs attributable to that dispensing activity. Getting the retail scheme wrong, or failing to map the supply lines correctly, systematically overpays VAT. Getting it right is the strongest differentiation point in pharmacy accounting, and no generalist accountant can fake the literacy it requires.
Pharmacy Payroll and Workforce Costs
A community pharmacy carries a real payroll: dispensers, counter staff, and often a second pharmacist or locum cover. Employer (Class 1 secondary) NIC is 15% above a £5,000 secondary threshold from 6 April 2025, and the Employment Allowance is £10,500 from the same date for eligible employers. A lot of live accounting content and payroll software documentation still quotes the old 13.8% rate above a £9,100 threshold with a £5,000 allowance, all of which are stale. Running payroll on stale figures either overpays HMRC or creates a compliance liability. We run your pharmacy payroll on current rates, model the true cost of your workforce, and apply the Employment Allowance correctly where you are eligible.
Pharmacy Incorporation and Structure
Incorporating a pharmacy is not automatically the right decision, and it is not always the wrong one. Corporation tax is 25% on profits over £250,000 and 19% on profits up to £50,000, with Marginal Relief between the two thresholds, but both limits are divided by the number of associated companies. A multi-store owner with separate companies loses lower-rate headroom faster than they expect. Profit extraction from a company is a two-layer calculation: the company pays corporation tax first, and dividends are paid from post-tax profit and taxed at 10.75%, 35.75%, or 39.35% in 2026/27 with a £500 dividend allowance. There is also a pharmacy-specific regulatory mechanic generalists miss: a company that owns a pharmacy requires a superintendent pharmacist. We model the structure decision honestly and set it up correctly.
Pharmacy Benchmarking and Margin Analysis
Community pharmacy gross margin is set centrally by the Drug Tariff and retrospectively adjusted via Category M clawback. That means your margin is not a number you control at the point of dispensing; it is a number that emerges from the Tariff movement in subsequent months. Margin variance analysis against the Tariff, not year-end bookkeeping, is the core monthly job. Service income under Pharmacy First and similar schemes is a separately accounted, growing revenue line that must be tracked apart from dispensing to see the true picture. Pharmacy income is contract-driven, not till-driven, which is why benchmarking a pharmacy against generic retail metrics is meaningless. We bring the literacy a generalist accountant structurally cannot.