Note who owes you and how much, one page for each customer
The udhaar is in a notebook, in your head and in three other people's heads. Put it on one page per customer.
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What sits beside the credit book in a hill store, an island shop and a cloth shop
Credit book (khata)
The storekeeper in the hill town opens the neighbour's page and reads down its dated lines, instead of trying to remember who took what in which week.
Bills on your phone
At the cloth counter before Diwali the bill is made as the cloth is cut, and it goes under the family's name, so the udhaar is written at the moment it is given.
UPI payments
Where an island customer can use UPI, one scan clears the week; where he cannot, the cash he brings is taken against his page.
Daily reports
Open the days before Diwali to see how much the counter sold, and set it beside what the notebook says is still owed.
Orders to suppliers
A distributor who wants his money within the week has a page too, kept beside the customers' pages, so what you are owed and what you owe are in one place.
The same khata page, used three different ways
The page speaks, so you do not have to
Open the neighbour's page and show her the lines, each with its date and its bill. The talk at the water tap becomes two sentences, because the page is about what was bought, not about whether she can be trusted. You keep a customer and the street keeps its peace.
The cash day, with each family's page open
Cash reaches an island shop on its own days, and between them nothing is paid. UPI is patchy in the rural islands, so in that gap the page on your own phone is the only record of who owes what. When a family comes to settle, every line is there to read with its day.
Diwali udhaar, dated from the first bill
A family that takes cloth on the third of October has a bill dated the third. By the week after Diwali you can see which families still have bills from October and which cleared in the festival week, without turning back through the notebook. You know how much of your stock-up money is out with customers.
Udhaar to neighbours, udhaar in cash and udhaar before a festival
The neighbour you meet every day
In several smaller hill towns in Uttarakhand, organised retail is limited, so the neighbourhood store keeps meeting the daily needs of the street. Your customer is also the woman who lives above you, and you will see her at the water tap tomorrow. Asking about last month's udhaar across a counter is hard, so the notebook stays closed and the amount grows.
A shop where cash is the way to pay
In the rural areas of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, UPI is still patchy and cash remains the preferred way to pay at many businesses. A customer there who is short on the day goes on udhaar and settles in cash when it arrives. Until then the only record of the weeks in between is whatever you wrote and whatever you remember.
Stocking up in September, lending in October
In September 2025, traders in Bhopal said they would start stocking up from 22 September, expecting buying to rise before Diwali after the GST cut. A cloth or general shop that stocks early pays the wholesaler first, and then lets regular families take what they need on udhaar until after the festival. Your own money is out on the shelves and out in the notebook at the same time.
Questions from shops that lend and borrow in the same month
A distributor wants his money within seven days, but my customers pay in thirty. How do I see the gap?
A Kashmir Reader column says shopkeepers there must settle accounts with distributors within seven days, and in Jharkhand suppliers may give a grocery shop anywhere from about 7 to 30 days, depending on the supplier. Every bill on a customer's page carries its date, so you can see which families have gone past a week and how much of your money they are holding.
A customer pays me back a little at a time. How do I keep his page right?
Write each payment when it comes, whatever its size. The last line is what he still owes, and it gets shorter each time he pays, which is how he and you both see the debt going down.
Two sisters-in-law both buy for one house. Whose page is it?
Make one page for the house and put every bill under it. The page is about who owes you, and the house owes you, whoever carried the bag home.
A family says the third week's bills are wrong. How does the page settle it?
Ask the family to open the bill it received for that day on its own WhatsApp. If it matches the line on your phone, the line is right. If it does not, you have found the one line to talk about.
A customer cannot read. How does she check her page?
Read the lines out to her from the page, each with its date and what was bought. She can ask a child at home to read them again later. A page that is read aloud in front of her settles more than a notebook that stays closed.
Credit, cash and festivals across India's shops
A Kirana Club survey found about 70% of kirana stores in Haryana, Rajasthan, Bihar and Madhya Pradesh used a Paytm QR code to take payments from customers. A shop that is paid by QR still gives udhaar to the regular customer; the QR takes the payment and the khata holds what is not yet paid.
Chhath Puja brought Bihar business worth about Rs 15,000 crore in 2025, the largest share of any state, the traders' body CAIT said. In a festival season like that, a lot of what is sold across a counter is sold to families the shop already knows.
In West Bengal, in 2012, Nielsen put modern trade at 12.5 per cent of Kolkata's FMCG sales, above the national average of 9.2 per cent. Even in that city most FMCG sales went over the counters of ordinary shops, where a regular family's udhaar is still a page or a notebook.