Marg runs on the shop desktop. Your pharmacy doesn’t stop at the desktop.
Marg is a 30-year veteran of Indian pharmacy billing, and it does batch and expiry honestly. What it can’t do is leave the counter: no real cloud, no mobile visibility from home, FEFO left to manual rotation, and an AMC bill every year. ShelfLifePro is what the same pharmacy owner would build today.
14-day trial, no credit card. The audit needs no signup at all.
Why stores go looking for a Marg ERP alternative
If more than two of these sound familiar, you're the person this page was written for.
- You can’t see your stock from home — the business lives on one desktop in the shop
- The annual AMC renewal arrives whether or not you got anything new
- Finding near-expiry batches means flipping through screens instead of reading one morning list
- A second store is on the horizon and Marg branch modules aren’t real cloud multi-store
- You want WhatsApp alerts and AI-ranked actions, not another report to remember to run
Where Marg ERP is genuinely good
Credit where due: Marg has run Indian pharmacy billing for three decades. Batch and expiry tracking are genuinely supported, Schedule H/H1 registers are handled, GST returns work, and thousands of counters know its keystrokes by heart. As a single-desktop billing machine, it does its job.
If that's all you need, stay — switching software you don't need to switch is a tax. The rest of this page is for stores where expiry is real money.
ShelfLifePro vs Marg ERP on the things that expire
The snapshot version — expiry-critical capabilities only.
| Capability | ShelfLifePro | Marg ERP |
|---|---|---|
| Cloud + mobile (see the shop from anywhere) | Desktop-bound | |
| Batch + expiry tracking | ||
| FEFO enforced at POS | PartialManual rotation | |
| WhatsApp expiry alerts | ||
| Prioritised morning report | ||
| Near-expiry markdown automation | ||
| Invoice OCR (photo → GRN) | ||
| Schedule H / H1 register automation | ||
| GSTR-1/3B reports | ||
| True multi-location | PartialBranch module add-on |
ShelfLifePro starts at ₹1,999/month, everything included, no AMC. Marg is a perpetual licence (Basic around ₹8,100, higher tiers upward of ₹25,000) plus a mandatory annual AMC — over a 3-year window the effective monthly cost is usually higher than the sticker suggests.
Want the full feature-by-feature version? ShelfLifePro vs Marg ERP
How switching actually goes
No big-bang cutover. Your old system keeps running until you trust the new one.
Export from Marg, run the free audit
Export your batch-wise stock from Marg and upload it to the free 60-second audit. See the near-expiry value at risk before you decide anything.
Import and keep billing on Marg
Your catalog and batches import from the same export. Keep billing on Marg for the first weeks — ShelfLifePro runs the expiry side while your staff learns at their own pace.
Cut over counter by counter
Move billing across when the team is ready. GST reports, Schedule H registers, and batch histories are all there — and now they’re on your phone too.
Starting at ₹1,999/month. No credit card for the trial.
Frequently asked questions
Still comparing vendors? The expiration date tracking software buyer's guide has the full checklist to run against every demo — ours included.
See your own numbers before you decide
Export your stock from Marg ERP, upload it to the free audit, and see the value at risk in about 60 seconds — no signup, no sales call.
Run the free audit