Products, stock, suppliers and orders in one place
The rate is in your head, the supplier's number is on a card and the last order is in a diary.
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A kilo of cashew asked for at four in the evening, and the four places you look for the answer
A customer asks for five kilos more of cashew
The dry-fruit shop's cashew rate changes with the week. The rate is in the owner's head. The tray on the counter is the only way to know how much is left. The supplier's number is on a visiting card in the drawer, and the last order is in a diary at home. To say yes or no, he has to look in four places.
A woman who runs a grain store alone
She weighs from sacks all day, sits beside her scale and remembers the rates of forty items. She buys from two suppliers, one for rice and one for pulses and oil. When a customer asks if she can get a certain flour next week, she is serving someone else and has no way to look at the answer. On days when the supplier's boy is late, she cannot tell which shelf will be empty first.
The long counter with five staff and one owner
In a big lit store with goods to the ceiling, five people serve at once. Unincorporated non-farm establishments employed about 12.81 crore workers in 2025, adding more than 74.52 lakh jobs over 2023-24, says the statistics ministry, and in a store like this one each worker has a different idea of the rate of an item. The owner is asked a dozen questions an hour that a piece of paper should answer. The cashier is not sure either.
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The same question answered from one account
Yes or no on the cashew in the time it takes to say hello
Keep the cashew as an item with its rate, its stock and its supplier, and the last order beside it. When the customer asks for five kilos, the owner looks once. If the tray is short, he can send the order to the supplier from the same screen and tell the customer when to come. The customer who asked at four in the evening is told before the shop closes.
A shop that answers while she is weighing
The woman puts her forty items in, with their rates and units. A customer's question about next week's flour is answered by looking at the item and the supplier, and she writes the order there and then. She does not have to remember to do it after closing. She does not stay behind after closing to write up the day's orders, because they are written when they are made.
The new boy on his first day
A boy who started yesterday is asked the rate of a packet of dates. He opens the item and reads it. The owner, in the back with the supplier, is not called to the counter, and the customer pays the rate on the list.
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What the whole shop sits beside in a dry-fruit shop, a grain store and a long-counter store
The whole shop in one place
The cashew, its rate, its tray count, its supplier and the last order are in one account, and the owner no longer opens a drawer, a diary and a visiting card to answer a customer.
Orders to suppliers
The order for cashew goes to the supplier from the same account, and what arrives is noted there.
Low stock warnings
A look at the list shows the trays that are running short before the customer asks for five kilos.
Bills on your phone
The five at the long counter bill from the same list of rates, so a worker's memory of a price is no longer the price.
Staff shifts Coming soon
Shift planning for the five people at the long counter is coming soon; today it is still done on paper.
Godown stock
The dry-fruit godown behind the shop has a count of its own, next to the count of the tray on the counter.
Questions from owners who keep the shop in their heads and in four notebooks
My items have local names and my supplier uses different names. Which do I use?
Use the name your counter uses. The item is yours, and the supplier is another page. The two names need not match for the shop to work.
I keep two rates for cashew, one for the shop and one for the wedding caterer. Is that two items?
Two items, with the same goods and different rates. Name them so that your helper picks the right one at the counter.
The cashew supplier and the almond supplier are the same man. One page or two?
One page. A supplier is a man or a firm, and he supplies as many items as he brings.
Does 'orders' mean the orders I send to suppliers or the orders my customers send?
Both belong to the shop's day. The orders you send to suppliers and the orders customers send through the shop's own online shop are kept in the same account as the items and the stock.
Does the app tell me when a supplier raises his rate?
No. You tell the app the rate you sell at. A change in what you pay is something you know from your supplier and write in your own account.
India's small establishments, in the statistics ministry's 2025 survey
The statistics ministry's annual survey counted about 7.92 crore establishments outside farming in 2025 that are not incorporated, shops among them. Each is a place where somebody has to know the rate, the stock and the supplier.
Only 37.5% of those establishments were registered in 2025, up slightly from 37.2% in 2023-24, says the statistics ministry. The rest still had a cashew rate, a godown and a supplier's number to keep.