Billing for your supermarket and general store in Haryana
A chain store in the sector, the ten-kilo bag and the PG kitchen, all on your phone.
What a Haryana supermarket beside a chain store uses
Daily reports
The first week of the month beside the last, so the ten-kilo bags are ordered for the week the big lists come in.
Bills on your phone
The ten-kilo bag of flour and the five-kilo bag billed as two items, each at its rate, on one bill sent on WhatsApp.
Credit book (khata)
Each PG floor has its own page, so on Saturday's rent day each floor's share is read apart and who has not paid is clear.
Low stock warnings
A warning that the ten-kilo bags of flour are down to the last few while the five-kilo bags are still on the shelf, so the order goes in for the size the big lists ask for.
A chain store in the sector, the ten-kilo bag and the PG kitchen
A chain store opens in your sector, and the first week's shoppers go to look
A big store opens a few streets away, with a bright hall and a banner at the gate. For the first week the families of the sector go there to look and to buy a trolley. Your counter is quiet, and you cannot tell if it is the opening week or the start of a slide, because you have no record of how many families you had before.
The ten-kilo bag, the five-kilo bag and the family that buys the big one
Families in a joint household buy flour, rice and oil in the biggest bags and tins, because the household is big. The same flour sits on your shelf in a ten-kilo bag and a five-kilo bag at different rates, and a customer asks which is cheaper per kilo. When the two bags blur into one line in the notebook, you cannot say which one the families chose.
The PG kitchen that takes sacks every week and pays on Saturday
Where rooms are let to workers and students, the owner of a paying-guest house cooks for the whole floor. He comes for a sack of rice, a tin of oil and a carton of tea every week, and he pays on Saturday when the rents come in. The sack is in a pile of the day's slips, and by the next week he asks what he owes.
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Manesar's jobs and Kundli's factories: the families who shop in a Haryana sector
A supermarket sells to the families who live on the jobs around it. Two districts show where those jobs are.
- IMT Manesar in Gurugram district is an industrial hub developed by HSIIDC, with many manufacturing industries providing jobs to thousands of people.
- In Sonipat, The Tribune called the Kundli industrial estate a preferred industrial destination in January 2019.
Regulars with an offer, two bag sizes and a PG's weekly page
Last week's trolley remade for a family the shop knows by name
Give the families that shop every week a page of their own. When a mother says the same as last week, open the page, read last week's list line by line and make this week's trolley from it, changing only what she changes. A big hall has the barcode but not her name, and you have her page.
Two sizes of the same flour, each its own line
Keep the ten-kilo bag and the five-kilo bag as two items with their own rates and counts. The shelf and the report then show which size the families choose, and you order more of that one for the first week of the month.
The PG's page, sack by sack, closed on Saturday
Give the PG owner a page of his own. Each week's sack, oil and tea go on it with the day. On Saturday he sees the total and pays, and the page is clear for the next week.
Women's groups whose shop records moved to one phone
Chain stores, bag sizes and PG kitchens: what Haryana supermarkets ask
Two PG kitchens in my lane take rice sacks every week, and one pays late. Can I read each one apart?
Give each kitchen a page of its own. Each sack goes on its page with the day, and the page shows what that kitchen owes, apart from the other.
A PG kitchen cooks for a whole floor and takes a sack of rice, a tin of oil and a carton of tea. How do I tell him on Saturday what the floor ate?
On Saturday he reads three lines for the week, rice, oil and tea. Set what the floor's money covers against them, and tell him what it covers and what it does not.
A family wants the ten-kilo bag, but only five-kilo bags are left. What can I offer?
Read the five-kilo count on the phone. If two are on the shelf, offer them as the nearest to the big bag and bill two bags at the five-kilo rate. The ten-kilo bag is noted when the next order arrives.
A family asks whether the ten-kilo bag is cheaper per kilo than the five-kilo. Can I answer?
Yes. Both bags are items with their own rates on the phone. Read the two rates and divide for her: the ten-kilo rate over ten, and the five-kilo rate over five.
A chain store at Spaze Edge, Gurugram
DMart leased 43,000 sq ft at Spaze Edge, Sector 47, Sohna Road, Gurugram, to open on 26 January 2022 as its second store in Haryana. A store of that size in a sector is a decision made once, and the family stores around it live with that decision for years. The families who live in that sector shop in both places, and the one thing a small shop can keep is how well it knows them.
DMart is expecting a footfall of 2,000 to 2,500 at its new Spaze Edge store in Gurugram, the report says. A neighbouring store does not need that number. It needs to know its own, and to know it on the day, which is what a record of every day's bills gives.