Billing for your mobile and electronics shop in Chhattisgarh
A phone, four metres of light strip and a TV paid in three parts, each billed the way it was sold.
A solar lamp and its cells on one bill, a TV paid in three parts and a wall of covers restocked from a list
A solar lamp, a torch and a pack of cells on one bill, each at its own rate
Give the solar lamp, the torch and each pack of cells its own rate. The family's bill lists them as three lines and goes to the phone of the member who has WhatsApp. When the family returns next month you can open the earlier bill and see exactly which lamp it took.
The TV on a finance paper, kept apart from what the buyer owes you
Some TV buyers pay part to you and the rest through a finance paper. Put the finance in the item's name, with the day the finance instalment falls. The page then shows only what the buyer owes you, and what the finance company is owed is not mixed into that sum. In the Dhanteras crowd nothing has to be remembered, and the drawer does not have to agree with a finance scrap. When the buyer comes with his part, you read him the page and he pays what it says.
Two covers and a charger as two lines, and the wall restocked from the list
Give each kind of cover and charger a rate once. At the counter bill two covers as one line with the number two, and the charger as another, in the time the customer takes to choose the colour. At night the list shows which kinds went, so the wall is restocked by what sold and not by which hooks are empty.
Why a Dhanteras hour, a solar lamp for the forest edge and a wall of covers each break the notebook differently
Dhanteras: a finance paper to write out while a cash buyer for a phone waits behind it
On Dhanteras the shop is full. A washing machine is being bought against a finance paper, and the paper needs the buyer's name, the model and the instalment day written out carefully. Behind that buyer a phone is bought for cash in a minute, and the cash buyer is already looking at the next shop. When the paper is done the hour is gone, and you cannot say which sale it belonged to.
A solar lamp, a torch and a pack of cells for a home at the forest's edge
A family from a home at the edge of the forest comes in once a month, because the nearest town is far. It takes a solar lamp, a torch and a pack of cells, and asks when you will have more of the lamp. You do not know, because the stock is a look at the shelf, and when the family comes again the lamp it wanted is the one that was sold last week. The lamp is the one thing in the house that lights the evening, so a family that cannot find it goes elsewhere.
The empty hooks tell you what to order, and they mislead
You restock the wall of covers by the empty hooks. A hook is empty when a cover sold, and also when one was given free with a phone, or taken for a friend, or fell behind the counter. With forty kinds on the wall, the order you send is a list of bare hooks and not of what customers asked for.
Steel and power towns where the TVs and phones go
The shops here sell to people who work in the state's steel and power towns.
- Bhilai, in Durg district, is called the Steel City of Central India, and its economy depends mainly on the Bhilai Steel Plant and the small units around it.
- Korba is known as Urja Nagari, the power capital of Chhattisgarh, and some estimates say over 60 percent of its GDP comes from coal mining and related work.
Tools for a counter of phones, TVs, solar lamps and covers
Bills on your phone
The phone's model and colour and the TV's size on their own lines of one Dhanteras bill, so the family and the shop both read which set went home.
Credit book (khata)
A Raipur TV buyer's page: what he paid you in parts, each with its day, and the finance instalment day written in the item's name, so what he owes you is not mixed with what the finance company is owed.
Low stock warnings
The solar lamps and the cells shown as running out while a few remain, so the order goes out before the family from the forest edge returns.
Questions Chhattisgarh mobile and electronics shops ask
The forest-edge family wants the same solar lamp next month, and my lot is sold out. What can I tell them?
Order the next lot from the supplier who serves the forest edge and note it when it arrives. The family comes once a month, so the next visit is the day to have the lamp on the shelf, and the bill is made then and not before.
A steel-town family buys a phone for the eldest on Dhanteras and wants the same model for the younger two later. Can the page remember the model?
Yes. The first phone's model and colour are in the item's name on the family's page, so for the younger two you find the same model by name, and all three sit on one page.
Covers on my wall come from two suppliers and look alike. Can I see which supplier sold more?
Yes. Put the supplier in the cover's name when it arrives. The day's sales then list the covers by supplier, so you see whose to order again.
Dhanteras at Raipur's electronics counters
On Dhanteras 2023 in Raipur, electronics and automobiles with on-the-spot finance and instalment options did better sales, and buyers took mobiles, TVs, washing machines and ACs. A sale with finance or instalments has a part that is paid today and a part that is paid later.
Business pundits said all sectors in Raipur would have crossed Rs 1,200 crore of sales on Dhanteras 2023, with Jaistambh Chowk, Sadar Bazaar and Malviya Road crowded with shoppers. In that crowd every counter makes its bills at the speed of its queue.