Alja^uaryPi907m-}    Four  Things  Every  Druggist  Should  Know.  19 
within  the  scope  of  these  business  records,  simply  enter  it  as  you 
would  when  a  customer  buys  goods  on  credit.  In  posting  from  the 
day-book  or  the  slips,  carry  the  customers'  accounts  to  the  regular 
ledger,  and  the  business  records  to  the  special  ledger,  giving  totals 
only.  If  it  takes  you  ten  minutes  every  morning  to  do  your  regular 
bookkeeping,  it  won't  take  you  three  minutes  more  to  include  this 
special  business  bookkeeping.  Is  it  not  worth  this  slight  expense 
of  effort  ? 
Something  ought  to  be  said  in  detail  about  these  various  records. 
Total  sales  for  the  year  of  course  include  credit  as  well  as  cash 
sales;  how  are  they  to  be  handled?  There  are  several  methods. 
One  would  be  to  consider  all  payments  of  accounts  as  cash  sales, 
and  record  them  daily  as  a  part  thereof.  At  the  end  of  the  year 
the  standing  accounts  could  be  deducted  from  those  of  the  year 
before,  and  the  decrease  or  increase  subtracted  from  or  added  to 
the  sales.  A  better  way,  perhaps,  would  be  to  have  three  spaces 
in  the  sales  column,  one  for  cash  sales,  another  for  credit  sales,  and 
a  third  for  the  totals.  This  method  would  enable  you  to  watch  your 
total  sales  from  day  to  day  and  month  to  month. 
THE  DEPARTMENT  RECORDS. 
The  department  records,  it  will  be  seen,  are  in  part  repetitions  of 
the  general  records,  and  this  would  grieve  the  heart  of  the  double- 
entry  bookkeeper  whose  principle  it  is  never  to  have  the  same  item 
charged  against  two  accounts  at  the  same  time.  But  as  long  as  we 
understand  that  we  are  repeating  charges  no  particular  harm  is 
done.  What  we  are  to  record  concerning  the  departments  are 
merely  the  sales  and  the  purchases.  Both  are  recorded  elsewhere 
against  the  general  business,  and  are  only  repeated  separately  in 
order  that  we  may  know  how  each  department  stands  when  con- 
sidered by  itself. 
The  department  sales  are  easily  arrived  at,  either  by  using  a  sepa- 
rate money  drawer  or  cash  register  for  each  department,  or  by 
figuring  up  the  department  sales  every  day  from  the  itemized  slip 
made  by  the  general  cash  register.  In  either  case  the  credit  sales 
are  of  course  to  be  added  so  far  as  they  fall  within  the  different 
departments.  The  department  purchase  records  are  in  the  main 
gotten  from  manufacturers'  or  jobbers'  invoices,  but  one  must  not 
forget  also  to  make  a  charge  of  anything  that  may  be  taken  from 
