Bills and stock for the shops of Goa, from the village counter to the seasonal stall
A shutter that comes down for the afternoon, a stall that lives on market day and a counter that waits for the season: all on one phone.
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Why a Goa shop earns at odd hours: the afternoon shutter, the one big market day and the months when the visitors thin out
The shutter that comes down for the long afternoon
Many shops in Goa open early, close in the heat of the afternoon and lift the shutter again towards evening. The morning has its own customers and the evening has others, and in between the owner has gone home to eat and rest. A sale from the first hour and a sale from after the break end up on different scraps of paper, and the day is added up late at night, when the owner is tired and a small slip is easy to make.
A stall packed into a van at dawn and unpacked at dusk
On the weekly bazaar day the stall's goods go into a hired van before sunrise: crates, a tarpaulin, a scale, sacks. By the afternoon some of it has sold and some is carried home. At packing time everyone is tired, and what went out and what came back is never counted, so the unsold goods are put back in the back room with the rest and the shop's stock is a guess again by evening.
A beach-lane counter that waits for the season, and the weeks of rain that follow
A snack stall or a small shop near the beach does most of its work in the weeks when visitors fill the lanes. Then the rains come, and the counter is quiet or shut. The village regulars who buy on credit through the quiet months are the people who keep the shop alive, and the visitors who paid so quickly in the season are gone. When the next season starts, the owner cannot say which weeks paid and which only felt busy.
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From a shutter pulled down for the afternoon to a day that adds up whole
The siesta hour and the evening hour on one sheet
Make each bill on the phone, in the first hour or when the shutter goes up again after the siesta, and both halves of the day are one list. When you close, read it once. The tired owner at night is not the one adding the morning to the evening by hand.
The bazaar stall's takings checked against the list of what left the back room
Keep the stall as a place of its own in the account. Before the van leaves, move the goods to it from the back room. At night the bills made at the stall are on one side and the leftovers on the other. The money in the box has to match the goods that left, and a gap is seen the same evening, not at the next stock-taking.
The first dry week, with the season's debts and the village's side by side
When the visitors thin out the owner finally has time to sit and settle. Open the pages: the neighbour who took goods in the busy weeks, the tea stall that took bread, the family that bought on credit all through the rains. Each page shows its dates and what is still owed. Read them over a cup of tea, and send each person the figure on WhatsApp.
Tools for a counter with a long afternoon break, a bazaar day and a season
Bills on your phone
One list for the bills made before the shutter comes down and the bills made after it goes up again.
Many shops, one owner
The load for the bazaar counted out of the back room at dawn, and what is left on the stall counted at dusk as a place of its own.
Credit book (khata)
A page for the village regular who takes her week's goods at the Friday bazaar and pays the Friday after.
Daily reports
The takings of a market Friday opened beside an ordinary Tuesday in the rains, so the next van is loaded for what the Friday really sold.
What a Goa shop owner asks before starting
After a crowded Friday, how much do I load into the van for the next one?
Read the Friday's bills item by item to see what left the back room, and set them against a plain weekday. Load for the usual pace plus what the Friday's bills show went first, and not for the crowd's number alone.
My stall opens again after the rains. What do I read first?
Read the pages with something still owed before you read the first day's sales, oldest bill first. Those are the regulars who owe from the last season, and you choose whom to speak to first.
From June the beach shacks shut and my shop lives on the village again. Can I see which goods the village buys when the visitors have gone?
Yes. Open last year's monsoon weeks in the daily report and read item by item what went. The order for the rains is then made for the houses around you, not for a season that has left.
The Friday bazaar in the north and the road and rail at Margao in the south
Mapusa is an important commercial town in North Goa, where a weekly Friday bazaar is held at the modern market and attended by large crowds. A stall there sells to a crowd in a few hours, and the bill that gets made is the one that takes seconds.
Margao is the most important town in South Goa, an important commercial and cultural centre linked by rail and national highway with Karnataka and Maharashtra.