Comparison
HerbalCounter vs Craftybase
Craftybase suits a maker running a repeatable product line through material costing, while HerbalCounter suits a herbalist whose next batch is a one off blend for a named client.
Comparison
HerbalCounter vs Square for Retail: counter or bench?
Square for Retail is built to sell units and take payment at the counter, while HerbalCounter is built to know where each of those units came from.
The short answer
These two are less rivals than neighbors. A retail system counts what you can sell and takes the money, which an apothecary storefront genuinely needs. HerbalCounter counts what you made, from herb lot to batch to bottle, and keeps the client formulas that never cross a counter at all. Most shops we work with keep their point of sale for checkout and run HerbalCounter behind it for production, lots and custom blends. If you resell finished goods and never pour anything, retail software alone is the honest answer for your shop.
HerbalCounter and Square for Retail side by side
| What you are deciding | HerbalCounter | Square for Retail |
|---|---|---|
| What gets counted | Herb lots, batches and finished units, linked as one chain from jar to bottle. | Sellable items on the shelf, counted as retail stock at the counter. |
| Where a bottle came from | Each unit carries the batch code and the herb lots behind it. | Stock is treated as goods to sell rather than as a batch you pressed. |
| Custom client formulas | Written, priced and logged with formula history and refill prompts. | Built around ringing up items and completing a sale. |
| Card payments | Not a payment terminal, so most shops keep their existing checkout. | Payment at the counter is the core of what the product does. |
| Reorder signals | Driven by herb weight consumed by batches, so a big tincture run moves the buy date. | Driven by units leaving the shelf, in the usual retail pattern. |
| Wholesale accounts | Shop and Wholesale keeps batch history by account for buyers who ask before ordering. | Oriented to retail commerce rather than production documentation. |
| Compliance records | Release checks, retain samples and the five label elements are part of closing a batch. | General retail tooling that is not shaped around supplement production records. |
| Best fit | The bench, the herb wall and the client file behind the counter. | The counter itself and everything about taking money there. |
On the right is the kind of tool Square for Retail is and the job it is shaped around, rather than a list of what it includes at any given price. Products change, so check the current details with them before you decide. HerbalCounter is published by MLJ, SASU and this page is written by Jimenez Julien.
Choose HerbalCounter when
- When the bottles on your shelf were poured in your own back room, the shelf count has to reach back to the batch.
- When you buy chamomile by the pound and sell it by the bottle, unit counting alone will never tell you when to reorder.
- When a client blend is made to order and never sits on the shelf, it still needs a record and a lot code.
- When a wholesale buyer asks for batch documentation, retail sales history is not the document she wants.
Choose Square for Retail when
- If you mostly resell finished goods bought in from other brands, a retail system is the right center of gravity for your shop.
- If receipts, card processing and a cash drawer are your daily friction, that is exactly what Square for Retail is for.
- If you have no bench, no press and no batch numbers, production records would be weight you do not need to carry.
A shelf count and a batch record are not the same number
Retail software tells you that eleven bottles of elderberry syrup are left. That is the number you need to decide whether to open the shop tomorrow. It is not the number you need when the question is which of those eleven came from the September batch and which came from the batch you pressed after the supplier switched growers.
HerbalCounter keeps both, because a unit on the shelf is stamped with the batch it was filled from. You still ring up the sale wherever you ring up sales. What changes is that the shelf, the batch and the herb lot stop being three separate counts that only agree by accident.
Buying by the pound and selling by the bottle
The awkward arithmetic in an apothecary is the unit change. You buy nettle in five pound bags, you weigh it out in grams, and you sell it as a 2 oz bottle of tincture or a 1 oz jar of salve. A retail system, sensibly, counts what is sellable and has no reason to model the maceration between those two states.
That gap is where reorder pain lives. A shop looking only at units sold reorders too late on the herbs that go into many formulas and too early on the ones that only appear in a seasonal blend. Counting consumption by weight at the batch, which is what HerbalCounter does, is what makes the reorder prompt match the herb wall.
Running both without doing everything twice
Most apothecary owners with a storefront end up with a point of sale for checkout and something behind it for production. That is a reasonable setup, and we do not ask you to move payments. The thing to avoid is entering the same herb purchase into both systems and then trusting whichever number you looked at last.
The practical division is simple. Payments, receipts and the daily till stay at the counter. Herb purchases, intake lot codes, batch records, custom client formulas and reorder timing live in HerbalCounter, and the shelf stock number is reconciled once a week rather than argued about every month.
Questions people ask before they choose
Do I have to stop using my current point of sale?
No. HerbalCounter is not a payment terminal and does not try to be. Shops keep their existing checkout and use HerbalCounter for herb intake, batch records, custom formulas and reorder timing. The weekly shelf reconciliation is what keeps the two counts honest.
Can staff at the counter see what is in a client blend?
You set that. On the Shop tier, staff accounts can be limited to shelf stock and sales support while client formula records stay with the practitioner. That matters in a room where walk in customers and booked consultations share the same floor.
How does reorder timing work if sales happen in another system?
Reorder prompts come from herb weight consumed by batches and by dispensary fills, not from card transactions. When you close a batch, the grams used come off the herb lot, and the prompt moves. Shelf sales adjust the finished unit count when you reconcile.
Other comparisons on herbalcounter.com
Comparison
HerbalCounter vs Practice Better
Practice Better is built around the practitioner and her caseload, while HerbalCounter joins that client record to the batch you actually weigh, macerate and press.
Settle it with a batch you already ran
A head to head only ends on your own bench. Pick a batch from the last few months, herb lots and supplier codes included, and we will rebuild it on a shared screen in about twenty minutes. You will see for yourself how quickly a finished bottle reads back to the jars it came out of before you move anything off paper.