Billing for your cloth and garment shop in Bihar
A sari by the piece, dress cloth by the metre and the whole family's Chhath shopping on one page.
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Paint on cloth and pearl buttons: what Bihar's districts put on a garment
What Bihar's districts make and grow ends up on the cloth counter in one way or another, and the customers know where it came from.
- Madhubani painting is now made on paper and cloth for sale, and it has become a primary source of income for scores of families in the district.
- In East Champaran, agriculture is the main income, and pearl button making and fishery are popular small industries.
- Patna has long been a major farm hub and a trading centre, where grain, sugarcane, sesame and Patna rice are the busiest exports.
- Muzaffarpur farmers grow the GI-certified Shahi Litchi, and the first air export of it to the UK, in May 2021, was sourced from them.
What a Bihar cloth counter keeps on its phone
Bills on your phone
One bill for the house's Chhath cloth, a gamchha line for each man going to the ghat, the saris and dhotis beside them, and dress cloth for the tailor.
Credit book (khata)
The silk sari the family took is named on its page, with the half still due after Chhath.
Sell to other businesses
Before the wedding stitching begins, the tailor applies to buy dress cloth and lining from you on credit. Once you accept, each lot goes on his page in metres, and his page stays apart from the family bills.
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From the family's Chhath shopping to the last metre of the season
The sari she liked, paid for today and fetched tomorrow
A woman likes a silk sari and pays part of the money today, and her husband will come with the rest tomorrow. Make the bill for what she paid and leave the rest on her page. Tomorrow you make a second bill under the same name for the balance, and the sari goes home with the two bills together.
Each dhoti, gamchha and lungi counted as it goes
Make dhotis, gamchhas and lungis items by the piece, each with its own rate. A man who takes three gets one bill, and each count comes down by the right number. At the end of the day you know how many of each went, and you do not wait for the empty shelf to tell you.
The tailor's month, settled in one message after the Chhath rush
When the rush is over you send him his page on WhatsApp. Dress cloth and lining sit on separate lines, each lot with its day. A lot he forgot is there with its date, and you both read down the page once instead of arguing from memory.
Eight people's new clothes in one visit, a blouse piece and the tailor who buys by the metre
Eight people's new clothes, bought in one afternoon
Before Chhath and Diwali a family comes to the shop together, and every member needs something new: saris for the women, kurtas for the men, frocks for the girls, shirts for the boys. The head of the family sits at the counter and the others choose. The pieces go into one bag, and when the bill is written the family asks which piece cost what, because the grandmother's sari is going to be a gift.
Dhotis, gamchhas and lungis: cheap, many and bought in twos and threes
Men's cotton is a different trade from the silk. A dhoti, a gamchha and a lungi each cost little, and a man takes two or three of one kind in a single visit. The pile on the counter is large and the bills are small. A busy afternoon of these leaves no record of which were sold, and the pile on the shelf looks the same until it is suddenly not there.
The tailor who stitches the whole lane's Chhath and wedding clothes
He takes dress cloth for one customer's kurta and lining for another's blouse, in small lots on many days, each lot at its own rate. In the rush weeks he comes three times in a day. By the end of the month the lots are a long run of small notes, and none says which order the cloth went into.
Artisan clusters that put their sales in one place
What cloth and garment shop owners in Bihar ask
A family buys eight pieces and wants to know the price of each. Can the bill show that?
Yes. Each piece is a line with its own price, so the family reads the bill and sees what the grandmother's sari cost on its own.
Can dhoti, gamchha and lungi be three items with their own counts?
Yes. Each is an item by the piece with its own rate and count, so the report shows which one went in which week.
The tailor says he took forty metres and I wrote fifty. How do I settle it?
Open the tailor's page and read the lines together. Each lot is there with its day and its metres, so the two of you see where the ten metres come from.
How do I see which silk sari has not sold since the last wedding season?
Open the daily report for the weeks since then. A sari that appears on no day's bills stands out from the rest.
Bhagalpur's silk and a chain store in Muzaffarpur
Bhagalpur is a leading silk garment export hub, its district economy depends largely on silk, and Russia was one of its key markets. A cloth shop that sells silk is selling what a whole district lives by, and the buyers who come in know it.
Value-fashion chain Baazar Style Retail opened its 275th store in Kalambagh, Muzaffarpur, on 11 July 2026, according to its exchange filing. A shop that competes with a chain store has the family's name, the day and the count of each piece on its own phone.