Billing and udhaar for every kind of shop in Bihar
From the haat day lane to the Patna wholesale godown, the bill, the stock and the udhaar stay on your phone.
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What Bihar's districts are known for
Bihar trades in painting, sesame sweets, potatoes, cattle and fish, and a shop in each district hears it from the people who walk in.
- Madhubani painting, now made on paper and cloth for sale, has become a main source of income for scores of families in the district.
- Tilkut, a festival sweet of roasted sesame seeds and jaggery, is Gaya's product on the national One District One Product list.
- Samastipur is a major potato producer with over 20 cold storages for potatoes, and it also has many sugar mills and a large jute mill.
- The Sonepur cattle fair in Saran is held each November on Kartik Purnima, where the Ganges meets the Gandak, and is one of the biggest cattle fairs in Asia.
- Darbhanga is famous for its trade in fish, mango and makhana.
Chhath week, litchi season and a notebook that cannot keep up
A big note for a small bill at the first sale of the morning
The first customer of the morning hands over a large note for a small bill, and the drawer has no change. You send a boy to the next shop, or ask the customer to wait, or let him go. By noon the drawer is full of coins and torn notes, and by night nobody can say which of the day's sales were paid in cash and which were left owing.
Seasons that decide when the money comes
Litchi in summer, makhana at the ponds, sugarcane and paddy in their months, and then Chhath, when every family buys fruit and sugarcane at once: a Bihar shop sells to families whose own income comes in lumps. So udhaar grows quietly through the months before a harvest, and a page in the notebook that says only a name and a figure does not tell you which month the figure belongs to.
A shop in a small town and a godown in the city
Many owners buy from the Patna wholesale lanes and sell in a town an hour or two away, and some also keep a stall for the weekly haat. The stock sits in three places and the account in one head. When a customer asks if a thing is in, the honest answer is a guess.
A Bihar bazaar day, from the first cart to the haat-day list
The litchi weeks, the Sankranti week and the Chhath week, read from their own days
Each bill is saved with its day, so after litchi season, Makar Sankranti and Chhath you can open those three runs of days one by one. Next year you order to what sold in each, a bigger lot of what ran short and a smaller one of what sat on the shelf.
The same list at the lane shop and at the haat stall
The same fifteen-item list is called out at the lane shop on Monday and at the haat stall on Thursday. A villager who buys at both gets a bill on his phone that looks the same from either counter, so he knows both are yours.
The count on the morning you reopen after the festival
In many small towns the shop shuts for a day or two around Chhath. When you reopen, the stock count on your phone is where you left it, and the first bills of the day go on the right pages. Nothing is rebuilt from memory, and the first customer is served from the shelf and the screen.
Tools for a Bihar counter, from the lane shop to the stall
Bills on your phone
One slip for a whole Chhath basket of sugarcane, fruit, diyas and sweets, sent to the family on WhatsApp so the head of the house can check the total.
Godown stock
The lot that came from the wholesale lane counted at the godown, apart from what is on the counter, so a stock question at the stall is answered from the right place.
Low stock warnings
A warning when sugar, oil or diyas run low, which in Chhath week means at the counter and not on the day after.
Your own online shop
A page naming the litchi and the Chhath goods that travel, opened by a family in another city before it sends the list home.
Many shops, one owner
The lane shop and the haat stall under one account, each with its own stock and its own bills.
Questions from shops in Bihar's lanes and haats
A litchi family and a cane family both buy on udhaar. Can each wait for its own crop?
Yes. Each family has its own page, so the litchi family's bills can stay open until its fruit is sold and the cane family's until its cane is. Every bill carries its date, so a bill from Chhath week reads apart from one from a summer morning, and when a family pays you mark that part off its page.
A family says it comes only on haat days. Which haat days did it come?
Open the family's page. Each bill has its date, so you read down the dates and see the haat days.
One phone serves a whole village family. Which number do I put on the family's page?
Put the family's name and the number of the phone they actually use. The page belongs to the family, and any member who comes to the counter can be shown it.
Patna, Champaran and Muzaffarpur: the goods behind the Bihar counter
Patna has long been a major farm hub and trading centre. Its most active exports are grain, sugarcane, sesame and medium-grained Patna rice, so the goods a Bihar shop sells often start their journey in the same city where the wholesale lanes are.
Agriculture is the main income in East Champaran. Rice and sugar cane are the major crops there, and pearl button making and fishery are popular small industries, which means the families who shop in a Champaran lane earn from the field, the pond and the workshop.
Muzaffarpur farmers sent the first air export of their litchi to the UK in May 2021. A shop in that district sells in a town whose fruit has been flown overseas, and its owner knows what a short season is worth.