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Billing for your kirana store, in any corner of India

Loose sugar, packed biscuits, the lane's udhaar and the UPI scanner, all on one bill on your phone.

A smiling shopkeeper behind his counter in a small shop packed with jars, packets and sachets
A smiling shopkeeper behind his counter in a small shop packed with jars, packets and sachets

How the day goes once the shelf and the book agree

  • Three brands and four sizes: the evening shows which one the lane takes

    A city lane's kirana carries a soap or a biscuit in three brands and four sizes. Put each brand and size in as its own item, and the evening's sales show which of the twelve the lane buys and which only stands on the shelf. The next wholesale order drops the ones that stood, and the shelf and the money in it are free for the ones that sold.

  • The scanner sits beside the bill, not beside the notebook

    In Goa the UPI scanner has found a permanent place in kirana shops, and the state recorded over 4 crore UPI transactions worth Rs 6,064 crore in one January. The scanner is shown from the same phone that makes the bill, so the bill and the payment start in one place, and at night you read the day's sales from that one phone.

  • The once-a-week trip is packed sugar and oil first, rice and flour for the wedding

    Sugar, oil and dry fruits go first before a big festival, and rice and flour go fast in a wedding season. Those are the lines to read in the bills of the same weeks last year before the trip to the far market, because that trip is the only chance to refill. The bag that comes back is packed for those first, and the rest of the shelf waits for the next trip.

Open white sacks of grains and tea with handwritten price tags, a shopkeeper weighing goods behind
Open white sacks of grains and tea with handwritten price tags, a shopkeeper weighing goods behind Photo: Guilhem Vellut from Annecy, France, CC BY 2.0

What crowds a kirana counter from the Himalayas to the coast

  1. Hundreds of goods, each sold a different way

    Walk a kirana from the Himalayas to the coast and the counter looks the same: a wall of small things nobody has time to write down. In a hill village the list is short and every item is carried up by someone, so a missing item is a week's wait. In a city lane the list is long and every item comes in three brands and four sizes. The owner is the only one who knows where everything is, and a day away from the shop means the shop does not know either.

  2. The wholesale market is a relationship, and the bill stays in the hand

    Stock comes from a wholesale lane, and the owner often goes in person. In Delhi, traders at Khari Baoli say they deal with the same buyers for twenty or thirty years, and much of their business runs on that trust, not on digital systems. That trust is good. But the paper slip from the wholesaler is also the only record, and next month nobody remembers what the last sack of dal cost.

  3. Every house in the lane has a page in the book

    A kirana is the one shop where a family can take a week of goods today and settle on the first of the month, or when the salary, the harvest or the wedding money arrives. The book is kept by whoever is at the counter. When a customer says the total is wrong, there is the notebook, a pencil, and a long argument in front of a queue.

Bowls of loose dark tea leaves on open sacks, each with a handwritten price tag, at Khari Baoli in Old Delhi
Bowls of loose dark tea leaves on open sacks, each with a handwritten price tag, at Khari Baoli in Old Delhi Photo: Michael Vito from South Orange, NJ, USA, CC BY-SA 2.0

Tools for a counter that sells everything

  • Bills on your phone

    One bill for pulses weighed from an open sack, a spice sold by the hundred grams and a sealed packet of salt.

  • Credit book (khata)

    A page for the pensioner who settles on the day the pension comes, and another for the mason paid by the week, each read on its own day.

  • Orders to suppliers

    The trader you have bought from for years, with what his last sack of dal cost noted beside this week's rate.

  • Low stock warnings

    For a shop a long bus ride from the wholesale town, the running-out list decides what fills the one bag that comes back.

Two women at a provision stall in Riangdo, South West Khasi Hills, with bowls of green chillies and ginger on a blue cloth
Two women at a provision stall in Riangdo, South West Khasi Hills, with bowls of green chillies and ginger on a blue cloth Photo: Timothy A. Gonsalves, CC BY-SA 4.0

Self-help groups in Maharashtra who sold at fairs and haats

Women's self-help groups working with Swateja Mart in Maharashtra used paper for bills and stock and sold at fairs and haats. With Bharatrath, their bills, stock and online orders sit in one place.

Questions only a kirana owner asks

I buy a whole sack of dal and sell it by the quarter kilo. How does the count come down?

Keep the dal as one item counted in kilos. Each quarter kilo sold takes a quarter off, and a new sack adds its kilos.

Open sacks of dal, rice and tea sit on my counter, each with a hand-written price. Can the same price list go on the phone?

Yes. A price chalked on a sack is only as good as the customer's memory of it. Put each sack in as an item with its rate, and the bill shows the same price in writing, so trust has a paper to stand on.

My wholesale market is a few hours away and I go once a week. How should I plan the trip?

Carry cash for the heavy sacks and a bag for the fragile things. Put first what cannot wait a week: salt, oil and matches, which a house runs out of in days. Rice and sugar can ride on the next load. A forgotten thing is a week without it.

The same sugar sells loose to one house and in a packet to another. Where do I see the total sugar sold?

Both are items and each has its own line in the day's sales. Add the two lines for the total, and see which way of selling is faster.

More questions every shop asks

Two kirana counters far apart: the signal and the wholesale unit

A PayNearby report says Mizoram, Meghalaya, Nagaland and Assam led growth in cash withdrawals through local shopkeepers (AePS) in the Northeast in 2024. In many villages the grocery counter is also where people take out cash, so the shop's own sums have to be right before anyone else's.

In Himachal Pradesh the state corporation runs 121 wholesale units, each feeding about 42 fair price shops, and it delivers to shop doorsteps through empanelled transporters.