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Bad accounting practices are just, well, bad – for your business and for its value when it comes time to sell. If your books are unreliable, a potential buyer is going to look askance at your pharmacy and wonder what else is wrong.

We have been helping pharmacist-owners sell their businesses for decades now, and we have often been surprised that the one part of their operations to which they are closest – the dispensary – is also one to which they pay the least attention in ter

The RRSP deadline looms the end of February, and the new year brings an additional $6,500 of contribution room for Tax-Free Savings Accounts.

After a tumultuous 2022 investment year underscores the need to clean up your investment pantry for tax-loss selling purposes.

When the day comes to start thinking about selling their business, a pharmacist-owner usually hopes that the transaction will be their big step towards realizing dreams of financial and personal independence.

Most pharmacist-owners are more concerned with running their businesses than with planning how to get out of them. Yet inevitably, the day will come when you realize it is time to turn the equity in your pharmacy into capital.

Obviously, rising interest rates are a challenge for any business owner, and to pharmacist-owners who have been preparing to sell, the new rate environment might seem like very bad news.

Would-be pharmacist-owners are finding that the days of cheap borrowing costs are waning. So, are existing pharmacist-owners in the process of refinancing as the terms on their mortgages come due?

As with accounting and legal resources, planning to sell your pharmacy provides an opportunity to re-evaluate your financial advice and confirm that you have the right advisor.

We would suggest that planning for selling your business is a good opportunity to review your current accountant, their experience and their abilities.

Selling your pharmacy is not just a financial transaction, but a legal one, and it behooves you to consult a lawyer early in the process.

If you are planning to exit your pharmacy business, you need a good team of advisors on your side.

All babies are beautiful – to their parents. It can be the same with a business.

Let’s face it: inventory can be a pain to manage. But handling inventory effectively is vital to the success of any retail operation. Doing it right means achieving a delicate balance.

Pharmacy owners invariably enter into a variety of agreements as part of the normal course of business. Unfortunately, we see many owners who have not read their contracts before they sign them.

With interest rates rising, the housing market seems to be in a state of flux.

Effective benchmarking is an essential step towards boosting your pharmacy’s performance, and professional services – so often a grey area for pharmacist-owners – is a great place to start.

To successfully acquire a pharmacy, you need to collect adequate information from reputable sources, understand the regulatory environment and sources of revenue, utilize trusted professionals, and be wary of irrational enthusiasm.

We are often asked by our clients, “How long will it take for you to sell my pharmacy," to which they seem to expect an answer of “three to six months.” A better question is: how long will it take to plan and execute my exit correctly?

Wealth tends to sneak up on you as you pay off your first pharmacy mortgage and the surpluses start. Learning how to live with wealth is in fact, a new skill that needs to be learned, just like you learned your professional skills.

Family-owned businesses possess many strengths, such as their ability to look at the long-term development of their operation and align interests between management and owner.

As Peter Drucker famously said, "If you can't measure it, you can't manage it." When it comes to measuring performance, pharmacist-owners often operate in a business vacuum.