Purchase orders and GRNs: how a clinic traces a recalled batch in minutes

The message usually arrives on WhatsApp. A distributor, a drug inspector’s circular or the monthly CDSCO drug alert names a batch of a medicine as not of standard quality, or a manufacturer recalls a lot of intraocular lenses. Four questions follow at once: do we have any of it, where is it, who has already received it, and can we send it back for credit?

The stakes are real. In October 2025, a batch of a cough syrup made in Tamil Nadu was found contaminated with diethylene glycol and linked to the deaths of children in Madhya Pradesh. The World Health Organization issued a medical product alert covering it and two other oral liquids, and states ordered recalls. Every pharmacy that had stocked them needed to know, at once, whether it still held any.

A clinic with good purchase records answers all four questions in minutes. A clinic without them walks the shelves, opens boxes and searches old bills by hand, and may still miss a strip sold last week. The difference is not the software you use. It is whether every purchase runs through a chain that keeps the batch number from the supplier’s invoice to the patient’s bill.

This article is for owners of clinics, pharmacies, eye hospitals and small hospitals, and for whoever runs the stores. It sets out that chain, what to record at each link, how to run a recall when it comes, and the rules that apply in India.

The chain: from purchase order to patient

Every unit of stock should be traceable along five links:

1. Purchase order. What you asked the supplier for, the quantity and the price you agreed, approved by someone with the authority to spend.
2. Goods received note (GRN). What actually arrived, against the supplier’s invoice: each item with its batch or lot number, manufacturing and expiry dates, quantity, free quantity, rate, MRP and tax.
3. Stock by batch. The shelf, held as batches rather than as a single number per medicine, so you know how many units of batch B2407 are left, not just how many strips.
4. Issue. Every sale, dispense, ward issue or theatre use names the batch it came from. For an implant, the lot and serial number go into the patient’s record.
5. Returns and write-offs. Stock sent back to the supplier or written off for expiry or damage, each with a reason and a record of who approved it.

Break any link and a recall becomes guesswork. The commonest breaks are a GRN typed days after the goods arrived, a batch number entered wrong, and a sale billed without a batch.

Why the purchase order matters, not just the GRN

Many pharmacies skip the purchase order and only record what arrives. It costs them in three ways:

• No three-way match. Comparing the purchase order, the GRN and the supplier’s invoice before paying catches short supply, wrong items, wrong rates and invoices for goods never received. Without the order there is nothing to compare the invoice with except memory.
• No control over buying. An approved order means someone decided the clinic needs fifty vials of a costly injection. Without one, stock arrives because a representative suggested it.
• No record of what was outstanding. When a supplier delivers in parts, the order shows what is still due. A recall of a batch that has not yet arrived is easier to stop than one already on the shelf.

What to record on every GRN

Record these on the day the goods arrive, with the box open in front of you:

• The supplier’s invoice: number, date and the supplier’s GSTIN, with a photo or PDF of the invoice attached to the GRN.
• Batch or lot number, manufacturing date and expiry date for every line, as printed on the pack.
• Quantity received and free quantity as separate figures, so a “10 plus 1” scheme does not distort the cost per unit.
• Rate, MRP and GST as on the invoice.
• Serial numbers for anything sold or implanted one unit at a time: intraocular lenses, stents, orthopaedic implants, hearing aids.

Where the pack carries a barcode or QR code, scan it. Since 1 August 2023, the 300 brands listed in Schedule H2 of the Drugs Rules have had to carry one that encodes the product code, the batch number and the manufacturing and expiry dates. From 1 July 2027 the requirement extends to all vaccines, NDPS drugs and anticancer drugs, and from 1 July 2028 to all antimicrobials. A scanned batch number is never mistyped.

The Drugs Rules ask for less than this. Rule 65 requires a retailer’s purchase record to show the date, the supplier with their address and licence number, the drug, the quantity, the batch number and the manufacturer; it does not require the expiry date. Record it anyway: expiry is what decides which units you sell first and which you send back.

Running a recall in six steps

When an alert names a batch, work through the same steps every time, and write down what you did.

1. Find it. Search your stock by batch number across every store and counter. You need the units still on hand and the GRN each came in on, which tells you the supplier and the invoice.
2. Stop it. Take the batch off sale at once and move it to a locked quarantine area marked “Not for sale”. Tell every counter, including the night shift. Report the quantity you hold to your supplier and to the area drugs inspector.
3. Find who received it. List every bill, dispense, ward issue or implant that used the batch, with the patient and their phone number. For a drug, follow what the alert or the manufacturer asks of pharmacies. For an implant, the surgeon decides who needs to be contacted and how soon.
4. Send it back. Return the units to the supplier against a debit note, or hold them in quarantine if the supplier or the drug inspector asks you to.
5. Write it off properly. Any units you cannot return are written off with the reason, approved by the person in charge, so the stock and the books agree.
6. Keep the file. The alert, the units found, the patients contacted, the returns and the dates. If an inspector or an accreditation assessor asks how you handled it, this is your answer.

Run this once as a drill, on a batch nobody has recalled, to see how long each step takes. The first drill usually shows which link is broken.

The rules that apply in India

• CDSCO’s recall guidelines. The Guidelines on Recall and Rapid Alert System for Drugs (current version effective 18 July 2024) sort recalls by risk. Class I, where use could cause serious harm or death, reaches down to the consumer: sale must stop within 24 hours and the recall be completed within 72. Class II, where harm is temporary or unlikely to be serious, reaches retail level within 10 days. Class III, where harm is not likely, reaches wholesale level within 30 days. The guidelines name pharmacies, hospital pharmacies, dispensing doctors, clinics and nursing homes in the chain, and expect each to report its stock to the supplier and the area drugs inspector, quarantine recalled stock under lock and key, and keep the notice and the return records for inspection.
• Monthly drug alerts. CDSCO publishes a monthly list of drug samples that central and state laboratories found not of standard quality, or spurious, naming the product, manufacturer and batch, on a searchable page of its website. In August 2026 alone, 220 samples were reported as not of standard quality. A manufacturer whose batch is listed is asked to recall it. Checking the list against your stock each month is the cheapest recall drill there is.
• Retail records under the Drugs Rules. A retail drug licence comes with record-keeping conditions under Rule 65 of the Drugs Rules, 1945: purchase records with batch numbers, sale records for Schedule C, H and H1 drugs that show the batch and expiry, and a separate Schedule H1 register with the prescriber, the patient, the drug and the quantity, kept for three years. Other records are kept for at least two years from the last entry, and expired stock awaiting return is kept apart and marked “Not for sale”.
• GST records. Under the CGST Act and its rules, a registered business must keep accounts of goods received and supplied, and stock, and keep them for 72 months from the due date of the annual return for the year.
• Medical devices. Intraocular lenses are Class C medical devices under the Medical Devices Rules, 2017. Rule 89 requires a manufacturer that believes a device may be unsafe to withdraw it “from the market and patients” and inform the regulator. Adverse events with devices are reported through the Materiovigilance Programme of India. A hospital that records each implant’s lot and serial number against the patient can answer a device recall in one search.
• Accreditation. NABH’s hospital standards (6th edition, January 2025) count implants and devices as medication. They expect the batch and serial number of every implant to be recorded in the patient’s medical record, the master logbook and the discharge summary, and medication and implant recalls to be handled effectively.

Rules change and some differ between states. Check the current position with your drug inspector or legal adviser.

Where clinics usually break the chain

• GRNs entered at month end from a pile of invoices, so the shelf and the system disagree for weeks.
• One batch per medicine, with every new delivery added to the same line, so the batch on the shelf is not the batch in the system.
• Bills that do not name a batch, so nobody can say who received the recalled strip.
• Implants recorded only on paper, or only by model and power, so the lot and serial number are not searchable.
• Write-offs with no reason, so expired stock, breakage and loss look the same and nobody approved them.

Where 92health fits

92health keeps the chain in one system for a clinic, its pharmacy, its optical shop and its operating theatre:

• purchase orders with approval, and goods received against them with the supplier’s invoice attached; a GRN without an invoice needs a reason and goes to an approver;
• the supplier’s invoice can be read into the GRN from a photo, and batch, expiry, quantity, free quantity, rate and GST are recorded on every line;
• stock held by batch, sold earliest expiry first, with the batch and expiry printed on every bill line;
• a stock ledger that can be searched by batch number to show every movement of that batch: received, sold, adjusted or written off;
• a sales report by medicine that lists every customer and bill for that medicine over any period;
• the Schedule H1 sales register as a download for any period;
• for eye hospitals, an intraocular lens register by serial number, and a recall list that, given a lot, serial, model or power, shows which patients have the lens, with their phone numbers, and which units are still on the shelf;
• write-offs and stock corrections that go through approval with a reason, and supplier returns from the theatre stores;
• corrections to a recorded GRN that go through approval and move the stock, the books and the payables together;
• supplier bills ready to pay from the GRNs, linked back to their purchase orders.

If you run a pharmacy or hospital store in Chennai, Coimbatore, Madurai, Visakhapatnam, Vijayawada or anywhere else in India and want to see a recall drill on your own stock, book a demo.

Sources

• Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation, Guidelines on Recall and Rapid Alert System for Drugs (including Biologicals and Vaccines), version 2024, effective 18 July 2024.
• Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation, monthly drug alerts on not of standard quality and spurious drugs; press reports of the August 2026 alert.
• Drugs Rules, 1945, Rule 65; G.S.R. 823(E), 17 November 2022 (Schedule H2); G.S.R. 506(E), 22 June 2026 (Schedule H2 extended).
• Medical Devices Rules, 2017, Rules 26 and 89; CDSCO classification of medical devices (intraocular lens, Class C); Materiovigilance Programme of India, Indian Pharmacopoeia Commission.
• NABH, Accreditation Standards for Hospitals, 6th edition, chapter on Management of Medication (MOM.6 and MOM.10).
• World Health Organization, Medical Product Alert N°5/2025, 13 October 2025.
• Central Goods and Services Tax Act, 2017, sections 35 and 36, and CGST Rules, 2017, rule 56.