Billing for your shop in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands
One phone for the bill, the stock and the udhaar, on islands where the next ship decides what you can sell.
Counting what the ship brought, bill by bill
The owner reads the day on the ferry back
When the owner goes across the water for the day, the shop goes on selling. On the ferry back he opens his phone and reads the day's sales so far and what is left of the rice and the oil. He steps ashore knowing what the day did, and what to ask for before the next ship.
The monthly family from the far island has a page waiting
Open the page when the family steps off the ferry and read the bills from the last visit with them. The weeks since are no longer a matter of memory on either side. The awkward part of knowing a family for years, the talk about money, is done by the page and not by you. It also lets a new helper serve her on the first day, without asking the owner who she is.
The question that comes back on the next ferry
A family goes home on the ferry with its sacks. When the next ferry brings its question about what was paid for the rice, the answer is already in the shop's record, with the day. It goes back on the family's phone, not in a letter. On a small island the family that asks is also a neighbour, and a neighbour told a guess tells the jetty. A record that answers in a minute keeps the family coming back across the water, and the ferry brings its next order to the same counter.
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When the shelf waits for the next ship
Almost everything you sell crossed the sea first
When weather or a crowded berth holds a ship back, your shelf does not refill. On a mainland street you could ask the next wholesaler for a carton. Here the same ship serves every wholesaler, and the one you would ring is waiting for the same ship as you. What is on your own shelf and in your own room is all the island has until the ship is in.
A family's credit that goes home on the ferry
When a family goes home on the ferry with part of the month's goods unpaid, the unpaid part goes home with it, and the shop has no way to ask until they return. The owner remembers the amount, but a month later nobody remembers which bag of rice it was for.
Money that comes in lumps
A coconut harvest is sold, a boat comes in, a wage day arrives, and for a week the counter is busy. Then comes a thin stretch when you lend to the same families who paid you last week. A shop here carries people between their lumps, and carries them in its head unless the pages are written somewhere. The thin weeks are the ones just before the lump arrives, when the shelves are fullest and the pockets emptiest.
What an island shop can do from one phone
Sell to other businesses
A wholesaler in Port Blair lets a small shop across the water apply to buy on credit, so the small shop can ask for goods between ships and the wholesaler sees its first order waiting.
Godown stock
The godown by the jetty counted apart from the shelf up the road, so a bare shelf sends someone up the road and not to the mainland supplier.
Credit book (khata)
The family that goes home on the ferry with part of the month unpaid has a page of its own, with each bill dated, waiting for its return.
Questions Andaman and Nicobar shop owners ask first
My brother's shop on the next island sells the same rice as mine in town. Can I see what each of us has left without a call across the water?
Read both counts on your phone the same evening. Note which ship brought the sack, and the count taken the day after the crossing shows which island got it and which is short.
Copra is weighed in kilos and the coconuts I sell fresh are counted in pieces. Can both live in the same books?
They can. Copra is an item priced by the kilo, the fresh nut is an item priced by the piece, and a bill can carry both. The count of each goes down in its own unit.
The ship lands with fewer sacks than the wholesaler loaded. What do I write, and when?
Write the count you make at the door the day the ship comes. It sits beside the order, so the wholesaler's loaded number and your landed number are two lines, and the gap carries a date.
Harbours and copra: how these islands get what they sell
Port Blair, the headquarters of South Andaman, has three harbours for ships to the mainland: Haddo, Wharf and Chatham. It lies about 1,190 km from Chennai and 1,255 km from Kolkata. For a shop owner that distance is the length of every restock, and the reason a count of what is left matters more here than on a mainland street.
Trade in copra, dried coconut kernel, has long been the mainstay of the Nicobar islands, which depended almost entirely on copra exports to get goods from outside (2010 report). A shop in Nicobar has long worked the same way: what leaves is coconut, what comes back is everything else, and the account between the two is the shop's.