Running two or more clinic branches without losing control

The decision that governs everything else

Before anything operational: do your branches share one patient record, or keep separate ones?

Shared. A patient registered at Kothrud is the same patient at Baner, with one history. Right for a practice where patients move between branches — a dental group, a chain of general clinics in one city.

Separate. Each branch is its own clinic with its own records. Right where branches are genuinely different businesses, in different cities, or under different ownership.

This is very hard to change later. Merging separate records means resolving thousands of near-duplicate patients by hand; splitting shared ones means deciding which branch owns a patient who attended both. Decide deliberately at the second branch, not the fourth.

Invoice numbering

Give each branch its own series with its own prefix — KTD/2026/0001 and BNR/2026/0001. One shared series across branches is technically possible and operationally miserable: two branches issuing simultaneously, and a gap at one branch that has to be explained by activity at another.

Thegapless requirementapplies per series, so separate series is also the cleaner compliance position — particularly if branches have different GST registrations.

Stock is per branch, always

Medicine on the shelf at one branch is not available at another. Stock has to be tracked per branch, and moving it between branches is a transfer — out of one ledger, into the other, recorded at both ends.

Clinics that pool stock across branches lose track within a month. Thecount will not reconcile, and nobody will be able to say where anything went.

Staff who work at more than one

One login, access to the branches they work at, switching between them. Not one account per branch per person — that is how shared passwords start, and a shared password ends any hope of knowing who did what.

Their role can differ by branch: a manager at one, a receptionist at another. The software should support that rather than forcing the highest permission everywhere.

Reporting: per branch first, group second

Every number worth watching should be available per branch —all eight of them — because the whole point of a second branch is knowing whether it is working.

Group totals hide the answer. Two branches, one thriving and one failing, average out to a business that looks fine until it is not.

What changes about the work

• You stop seeing things. At one branch you notice the queue building. At two you find out on Friday. Replace observation with numbers, deliberately.
• Process stops being optional. TheSOP you never wrote down now has to exist, because the second branch cannot learn it by watching you.
• Someone must be in charge at each site. Not you, remotely. A branch without an owner drifts within weeks.
• Cash reconciliation becomes non-negotiable. Daily, per branch, by mode.

Two things worth doing before opening the second

1. Run the first branch entirely by the process for a month, with you absent for a week of it. If it holds, the process is real. If it does not, the second branch will expose exactly the same gap twice.
2. Check your software actually supports branches. Not "we can create a second account" — one login switching between them, separate stock, separate invoice series, per-branch reporting. Buying two subscriptions and reconciling by hand is a tax you pay monthly forever.

Clinikr gives each branch its own records, stock and invoice series, with one login switching between them from the sidebar. Reporting is per clinic today; group roll-up is on the roadmap.