Accountants for Pharmacies & Pharmacists

NHS contract income: reading the FP34

A pharmacy's core income is not a simple invoice — it is a monthly statement of dispensing fees, retained buying margins, advance payments and later deductions, adjusted months in arrears. Reconciling the FP34 to the bank and to expected item volumes is how you spot underpayments and margin drift. Pharmacy-specialist accountants build this reconciliation into the monthly routine and benchmark gross margin against sector norms, which is where the real profit conversations happen.

Locums, IR35 and the right structure

Many pharmacists mix salaried roles with locum shifts. Locum work through an agency or your own limited company sits squarely in IR35 and off-payroll territory — the engager may decide your status, and the wrong structure means either unnecessary tax or an HMRC challenge. A pharmacy-savvy accountant runs the status tests, compares sole trader, umbrella and limited company routes properly, and keeps your self assessment and expense claims (GPhC fees, indemnity, travel between sites) clean.

VAT and the retail side of the business

A pharmacy's VAT position is genuinely unusual: NHS dispensing income, private healthcare services and standard-rated over-the-counter retail all flow through one till. The partial-exemption and apportionment questions that follow are specialist territory — get the mapping wrong and you either overpay VAT or build up a liability. This is one of the clearest cases where a sector accountant pays for themselves at setup, then keeps the returns routine.

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Frequently asked questions