Billing for your organic store in Goa
The grower's name on the sack, the quarter kilo on the bill and the month's money on a page.
From a heap of cashew nobody can read to a Monday count of kilos and bottles
A gift box of cashew as an item, the box and the kernels in it each on their own line
Make the empty box an item sold by the piece and the cashew an item sold by the kilo. A gift box is two lines on one bill, and the grower's name is in the cashew's item. A customer buying a box for a relative can say whose farm it came from, and the grower's page is behind the line if she asks for more.
Kilos of cashew and bottles of juice, each counted in its own unit
Make the kernels an item sold by the kilo, the juice an item sold by the bottle, and the kokum two items, one by the kilo and one by the bottle. A bill takes the right unit off the right count. At closing the sack and the shelf can be read against the phone without any converting in the head. Nothing is converted in the head, and no sack is weighed twice at closing.
The season's heap read on a Monday, so the slow months have a number
Each Monday open the report for the week and the count of each lot. You read how much of the cashew has gone since the season and how much is left. The money locked in the back room becomes a figure that falls week by week, and you can see when to stop taking sacks. Each Monday's figure is a small thing, but over a season it tells the owner when to stop taking sacks and when to start asking a better rate.
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Why a Goa organic shop cannot say whose cashew is at the bottom of the heap
A sack of cashew with no farm's name on it
A Goa organic farmer said in 2020 that about 1,500 certified farmers grow organic cashew in Goa, and that cashew plantations are organic by default. The shop buys kernels from several growers, and they arrive in plain sacks. A customer asks which farm this lot came from, and the owner has to guess, because the slip with the grower's name went into the drawer with the others. The customer who bought a box to give away would like to put a name on the gift, and the shop cannot say whose it was.
Cashew by the kilo, cashew apple juice and kokum syrup by the bottle
One tree gives the shop three goods in two units. Cashew kernels go by the kilo, juice pressed from the cashew apple goes by the bottle, and kokum is sold as dried rind by the kilo and as syrup by the bottle. The owner prices each from memory, writes the sum on the back of an old bill, and at the end of the day the kilos in the sack and the bottles on the shelf are guessed, not counted.
A cashew season that brings every grower to the door in the same few weeks
When the cashew is ready, the growers come at once, each with a few sacks, and each wants to know what the shop will pay. The shop takes more than it can sell in a month, and the money is locked in a heap in the back room that sells slowly through the year. Nobody can say, in the slow months, how much of the heap is left or whose sacks are at the bottom of it.
A farm business whose stall bills and online shop met in one place
Tools for a shop that buys from growers and sells by weight
Orders to suppliers
Each grower's sacks of cashew noted by the day they came in, so the heap in the back room is read grower by grower on the phone.
Bills on your phone
A gift box of cashew by the kilo and a bottle of kokum syrup on one bill, each in its own unit, sent on WhatsApp to the person giving the box.
Online orders
This week's cashew, kokum and coconut oil in the shop's own online page, so a family that has moved away can send for a box.
Daily reports
Cashew sold week by week through the quiet months, so the owner knows when the heap is nearly gone.
What a Goa organic shop owner asks before starting
Can the grower's name go on the line of the bill?
Yes. Name the item after the grower, and the name is on the bill's line. The grower's page, with each sack and its day, is behind it.
A buyer wants the farm's certificate number on my bill. Can it be printed there?
No. A bill carries items, rates and totals, not certificate numbers. Keep the grower's page, name the item after him, and show the paper itself to a customer who asks.
I buy cashew apples and sell the juice by the bottle. Can both be items?
Yes. The apples are an item counted by the kilo and the juice an item counted by the bottle. Each has its own count and its own line in the report.
What Goa's organic fairs say to a shop that sells local produce
Goa's Agriculture Director said Goa has about 10,000 hectares under organic cultivation, at a Margao seller-consumer fair with 60 stalls of organic products. A shop that takes a stall at such a fair can keep the fair's stock as a second place in the same account.
The Directorate of Agriculture's two-day Buyer-Seller Meet 2024 at Margao, under the Centre's PKVY scheme, brought farmers, self-help groups and buyers together to trade organically grown local produce. A buyer who meets a grower there can open a page for him afterwards and note what each delivery brought.