Billing for your mobile and electronics shop in Himachal Pradesh
The first smartphone in a house, the repair on the bench and the old phone taken in, kept on your phone.
A first smartphone, a phone on the bench and the wholesaler's rate that changed on Monday
The first smartphone in a house that never had one
A father from a village buys his first smartphone for his daughter's schoolwork. He has never used one. He asks you to put his number in, set up WhatsApp and show him where the camera is. You do it between other customers, and when he goes there is nothing on paper to say what he bought, which model, or on what day, if the phone gives trouble next month. A first phone is a bigger day for the family than for the shop, and it deserves a record.
The phone on the bench for three days
A man from a village two valleys away leaves a phone with a cracked screen, and you tell him to come on Friday. The screen comes from the wholesaler in the city by bus. On Friday his son comes to collect it, and you cannot say what was fitted, what it cost, or whether the father has paid. He walks back up the hill with half an answer.
The wholesaler's rate that changed on Monday
The same phone came up from the city on two different days, and the second lot cost you less than the first. Both sit on the same shelf with one price card. A customer asks for it on Wednesday, and you cannot say which lot the box in your hand came from or what you paid for it, so you do not know if the sale made money or lost it.
The cable at nine at night, the repair page that waits out a closed road and the bus down to the wholesaler
The cable a trekker wants at nine at night, found by its count
A trekker walks in as you pull the shutter down, wanting a cable, and the one that fits his phone is in the third box. Keep cables, chargers, covers and earphones as items, each with its own rate and its own count. The cable is one tap and the count goes down by one. At the end of the walking season you see which charger the visitors really bought, and the next order is for those.
The repair page that waits out a closed road
When snow shuts the road, the screen does not come up from the city and the owner cannot walk down. Open a page under the owner's name when the phone comes in. Put what is fitted and the labour on it as lines with their rates, and what has been paid. The page holds the job through the closed days, and when the road opens, whoever collects, the son or the neighbour, reads on it what was fitted and what is still owed.
The cheap handsets for first-time buyers, counted apart from the better ones
Keep the cheap handsets that a family buys as its first smartphone as items of their own, apart from the better models. The report then shows how many first smartphones the valley bought this month, and the wholesaler's order on your bus day leans to those.
What a hill mobile shop keeps on the phone, from the first sale to the bench
Credit book (khata)
A page for each house in the valley, with every phone, cover and repair it has taken from you over the years, and what has been paid, so you know which phone is whose.
GST bills
A homestay owner buys a laptop or a phone before the tourist season, and the bill has the GST worked out and the model in the item's name, so the bill names the exact machine.
Daily reports
Each day's sales kept, so a Wednesday after a rate change can be read beside the Tuesday before it.
What mobile shop owners in Himachal ask
A customer wants the phone kept for him until tomorrow, when his money comes by bus. How do I stop it being sold?
Make the bill when he says yes and note what he has paid. The count falls, so the next customer cannot buy it, and his page shows what he owes.
A tourist leaves a phone for a part and goes down the valley today. How does he know what is left to pay?
Make the repair bill with the advance he has paid and send it to his number. He reads what is left on his own phone, and the page waits with you.
A man buying his first smartphone wants the bill on the phone itself. How?
Take his number and send the bill on WhatsApp once the phone is set up. The first message on his new phone is then his bill, with the model and the day.
Four-G towers and the Himachal villages they reach
In November 2024 the Chief Minister said 294 4G towers were commissioned and 37 more were underway in Himachal, with remote Rarik village in Lahaul and Spiti linked by VSAT. A phone shop in the hills sells into these villages as the signal reaches them.
BSNL's 625 new 4G towers in Himachal (October 2023) are meant to connect almost 3,000 villages where no other carrier has a signal, leaving a family one network.