Opening a practice: the first supply order is where you overspend, because you have no history yet

Anyone opening a practice buys their first supply order without the single most important figure for deciding it, namely how much they will actually consume.

Lacking that figure, you buy for safety, and buying for safety means buying too much. It is a reasonable reaction, but it carries a cost that lands exactly when cash is most fragile.

The first useful criterion is to separate what stops you from what slows you down. Either you cannot work without it, or you can work with some inconvenience: these are two different categories and they deserve different treatment.

The first category covers basic single-use items and everything to do with sterilisation and protection. Without gloves, masks, saliva ejectors and autoclave pouches the day does not start.

On these items it makes sense to begin with a real stock, because running out stops the business and forces the emergency reorder, which is always the most expensive way to buy.

The second category covers materials specific to procedures you do not yet know how much you will perform. Here stock should be kept low, because the case mix in the first months is unpredictable.

The typical mistake is buying in depth in a discipline you imagine developing which then, given how the patient base turns out, stays marginal for two years.

The third criterion is expiry. On anything with a date, quantity should be calculated on projected consumption before that date and not on the saving from a volume discount.

A twenty per cent discount on a product of which you will throw away thirty per cent is not a discount.

The most valuable thing you build in the first months is not the stockroom, it is the history. Every recorded order becomes the figure that tells you what you actually consume, and from then on decisions stop being guesses.

For this reason it is worth ordering through a channel that keeps track of what you bought and when, rather than scattering orders across phone calls, emails and different reps.

After six months that history is worth more than any shopping list drawn up at opening, because it describes your practice and not a generic one.

In summary: the first supply order is oversized because the consumption figure is missing, separate what stops you from what slows you down, keep stock low on materials for disciplines not yet running, a volume discount does not offset an expired product, and the order history is the real asset of the first months.