Everything a pharmacy actually runs on
Synapse covers the whole day: receiving stock, selling it at the right price to the right kind of customer, taking it back when it comes back, and knowing at any moment what is on the shelf, what is about to expire, and who touched it last.
Point of sale that knows what it is selling
The till is not a generic cash register. It knows the batch it is dispensing from, whether the buyer is a walk-in or a clinic, and which promotion applies today.
- Retail and wholesale price on every SKU, selected by customer type
- Batch selected at the point of sale so traceability survives the transaction
- Split payment across cash, card, mobile money, insurance and credit
- Partial payment with a running balance on the invoice
- Loyalty points redeemed against the bill in the same flow
- Printable and downloadable invoices with your own branding
Inventory that warns you before it costs you
Stock is held per batch, per branch, with a cost, an expiry and a supplier attached. That is what makes recalls fast and write-offs rare.
- Batch numbers with expiry dates and received dates
- Expiry warnings that fire while the stock is still saleable
- Reorder thresholds per product with low-stock notices
- Adjustments for damage, expiry, loss, theft, supplier returns and counting corrections
- Every adjustment logged with quantity before, after, reason and the staff member
- Inter-branch transfers that decrement one branch and increment the other in one transaction
Suppliers and purchase orders in the same place as the stock
Raise an order against a supplier, track it from draft through sent, partial and received, and let the totals roll up automatically when it lands.
- Multi-line purchase orders with unit cost and computed line totals
- Status flow: draft, sent, partial, received, cancelled
- Order totals recalculated from the line items on receipt
- Supplier records with contact person, phone, email and order history
- Return-to-supplier recorded as a first-class inventory adjustment
- Purchase orders scoped to the branch that raised them
Loyalty and messaging that belong to you
Purchase history, preferences and contact details already live in the system. Messaging sits on top of them rather than in a separate tool with a separate bill.
- Points-based loyalty with tier levels
- Customer types that unlock preferred pricing for regulars
- SMS, email and WhatsApp sends from one composer
- Refill reminders driven by what the patient actually bought
- Promotional campaigns scoped by branch, product or category
- Message history stored against the client record
Five roles, one audit trail, nothing lost
Access is decided by role and branch. Every meaningful action is written to an audit log with a name and a timestamp, and deleted records stay recoverable.
- Super admin, business owner, branch manager, pharmacist and cashier
- Branch scoping applied to queries, not just hidden in the interface
- Audit log covering sales, inventory changes, user actions and system events
- Soft deletes across every table, restorable from the audit view
- Database transactions around critical operations so partial failures cannot happen
- CSRF protection on every form submission
Deliberately boring technology
Synapse is plain PHP and MySQL. That is a feature, not a shortcut. It runs on the cheapest shared hosting in your country, any technician can maintain it, and there is no framework upgrade treadmill waiting for you in two years.
PHP 7.4+ with PDO MySQL
No framework, no build step, no Node runtime. Upload the files and it runs.
Runs on XAMPP or cPanel
Test on a laptop, deploy on $3-a-month shared hosting, or put it on a server in your own back office.
Transaction safety
Sales, returns and stock adjustments are wrapped in database transactions. A half-completed sale is not possible.
Soft-delete architecture
Every table carries a deleted_at timestamp. Accidental deletions are reversible for the life of the database.
Branch scoping at query level
Access rules are enforced in the SQL, not by hiding buttons in the interface.
Works offline-tolerant on a LAN
Hosted in the shop, it keeps working when the internet does not.
How Synapse compares
Figures for other systems are drawn from published 2026 pricing guides. Your quote will vary — ask any vendor to put it in writing.
| Capability | Typical Western system | Typical local system | Synapse |
|---|---|---|---|
| Entry price | $400–$800 per month | $25–$60 per month | $39 per month, or $899 once |
| Hosting model | Vendor cloud, mandatory | Vendor cloud or desktop | Your server, your choice |
| Dual retail + wholesale | Rarely native | Rarely native | Native on every SKU |
| Multi-branch | Enterprise tier only | Often one install per branch | Included from the Growth plan |
| Batch & expiry | Included | Sometimes | Core to the schema |
| Patient messaging | Paid add-on | Rarely offered | SMS, email, WhatsApp included |
| White-label | No | No | Yes, on the unlimited licence |
| Source code access | Never | Never | Included with perpetual licences |