Pharmacies
Most pharmacy searches are about tonight, not about distance.
Answer the question people are actually asking at 22:15 on a Sunday: which branch is open now, and can it dispense this.
Bring your location data
CSV import, Google Sheets sync or dashboard edits.
Shape the visitor journey
Search, filters, hours, directions and custom actions.
Match your site
85+ available settings, markers and provider map styles.
What your network looks like
Branches you operate, a small number of which hold the late and Sunday rota while the rest shut at six, plus counters inside supermarkets that keep the supermarket's hours rather than yours.
Why a generic map falls short
Nobody browses pharmacies. The search happens late, on a phone, usually with someone ill in the next room, and a result that turns out to have closed an hour ago is worth exactly the same as no result at all.
What visitors need to do
- Open now has to be the first control on the page, not a filter three taps down
- Publish the bank holiday rota before the bank holiday, across every branch at once
- Filter by service: vaccinations, travel clinic, blood pressure checks, needle exchange, prescription collection
- Say which branches have a private consultation room, because some services cannot be given without one
How Handled covers it
- Opening hours per branch with an open-now filter and a closing soon status, so a rota branch surfaces the moment the others shut
- Filterable tags for the services each branch is commissioned to provide
- Google Sheets sync with change review, so a bank holiday rota is checked row by row before it publishes
- Custom fields for dispensing hours, the consultation room and the direct number for the counter
Not every pharmacies business is the same
Standard community branches
Most of the estate, shut by six, and the branch a regular patient already knows. The detail that catches people out is that the counter closes before the shop does. Dispensing hours belong in their own field, because someone arriving at 17:55 for a prescription needs to know the pharmacist stopped at half past.
Rota and extended-hours branches
The two or three sites holding the late, Sunday and bank holiday rota carry almost all of the urgent search traffic, and they carry it in bursts. When everything else closes, an open-now filter has to leave exactly these standing. Get their hours wrong and the search that mattered most in the week returns nothing.
Counters inside supermarkets and health centres
The host sets the hours, and the host closes for a stocktake without asking. These counters also break for lunch when a standalone branch does not, which is invisible on a map and obvious to anyone who drove there. Hold their hours separately and put the entrance and floor in a field.
Distance-selling and online dispensing units
A dispensing unit with no walk-in counter is not a place to send a patient, however near it is. Describe it as a service area with a coverage radius rather than a pin, and tag it so a walk-in search never returns it. A patient at the door of a unit that cannot serve them is the worst outcome in this trade.
Setting it up
1. Build the rota calendar before you build anything else
Late nights, Sundays, and every bank holiday for the year ahead, branch by branch. This is the data the whole locator exists to publish, and it is the data most likely to be sitting in one person's spreadsheet. Everything else can be added later.
2. Separate dispensing hours from door hours
Opening hours drive the open-now filter, so those are the times the door is unlocked. Put the hours the pharmacist is at the counter into a custom field shown on the card. The two differ at nearly every branch and patients only care about the second one.
3. Tag services against what each branch is commissioned for
Vaccinations, travel clinic, blood pressure checks, needle exchange, emergency contraception, prescription collection. Add a consultation room tag, because several of those cannot be delivered without one and a patient filtering for them is filtering for the room as much as the service.
4. Stage the bank holiday rota in a sheet and review the diff
Google Sheets sync shows the change row by row before it publishes. A rota update is one edit across every branch at once, which is precisely when a branch marked open on Easter Sunday by mistake gets missed. Review it the week before, not the morning of.
5. Check the unmet demand rate for the late hours
The analytics page reports the share of searches that returned nothing. Filter your thinking to the evenings: repeated late searches in an area with no rota branch is a commissioning argument, and it is measured rather than assumed.
What to prepare before you publish
You do not need a perfect data system to start. A clean first list is enough to test the visitor journey, then you can keep it current from the workflow that suits your team.
- Location name and address
- Phone, website or booking link
- Categories, products or services
- Opening hours and special hours
- A map provider key
- The page where the locator will be embedded
Questions we get asked
Can the pharmacy finder put open now ahead of distance?
Yes. Open now is a control on the results rather than something buried three taps down, and it runs off hours held per branch, so when the rest of the estate has shut the rota branch is what is left standing.
How do we publish the bank holiday rota across every pharmacy branch at once?
Stage it in a sheet and let Google Sheets sync show the change row by row before it publishes. A rota update is one edit touching every branch, which is exactly when a branch wrongly marked open on Easter Sunday goes unnoticed.
Our counter closes before the shop does, so how do we show dispensing hours separately?
Opening hours drive the open-now filter and describe when the door is unlocked. The hours the pharmacist is at the counter go into a custom field shown on the card, because a patient arriving at 17:55 needs that second number.
Can patients filter branches by service, such as vaccinations or a travel clinic?
Yes. Services are filterable tags per branch, covering vaccinations, travel clinic, blood pressure checks, needle exchange and prescription collection. Add a consultation room tag, since several of those cannot be given without one.
How do we handle a pharmacy counter inside a supermarket that follows the host's hours?
Hold its hours separately rather than copying the estate default, and set them from the host's published times, including the lunch break a standalone branch does not take. Put the entrance and the floor in a custom field.
How much does a pharmacy branch locator cost?
From $19 per month, with a 7-day free trial and no card required, and no free plan once the trial ends. The Mapbox or Google Maps key is your own, so map usage is billed to you by the provider instead of being resold through us.
If you need something that is not here
Handled is small enough to build to order. If your trade needs a field, a filter or a behaviour the locator does not have yet, say so and we will tell you honestly whether it is a week away or not something we will do.