Billing for your book and stationery shop, from the class list to the pencil box
One textbook in many languages, a school's order and the second-hand shelf, all on one phone.
Tools for shelves of textbooks, notebooks and pens
Low stock warnings
A warning when the last copies of a title are going, in the week before school opens, while there is still time to order. Notebooks go a few at a time and run down slowly. A class's textbook goes in one afternoon, because every parent of that class needs the same one.
Orders to suppliers
Each publisher's distributor gets its own order, written from the school lists as they arrive, and the cartons are ticked off when they come.
Sell to other businesses
A school or a tuition class applies to buy from you on credit, and has its own page, not mixed with the parents.
How a bookshop handles the first week of school and the second-hand shelf
A globe, a map and a drawing board sell a few a year
The bulky teaching aids, a globe, a wall map, a drawing board, sell perhaps a few in a whole year and stand in the back of the shop. Keep each as an item with its count. The list shows which have not moved since last year, and the shop stops ordering more of a map that nobody asked for.
A used book is priced against the depot's cheaper new one
A student sells back last year's textbook for less than the new one costs. But in Chhattisgarh a depot sells the new book at a discount, so your used copy must be cheaper than that to move. Put the used copy in as an item of its own, with what you paid the student and the rate you ask, so you can see what each used book really earns beside the depot's new one.
Greeting cards are counted by design, and the festival shows which were wrong
Cards sell in the days before a festival and then almost not at all. Keep each card design as an item with its own stock. The day after the festival the count shows which designs are still in the box, and those are the ones you leave out of next year's order. A calendar is a different job: it sells at the year's end and in the first weeks of the new one.
A textbook in nineteen languages and a depot that sells it cheaper
The same class, the same book, in many languages and editions
Assam's free textbooks are printed in 19 languages, including Assamese, Bengali, English, Bodo, Garo, Manipuri, Karbi, Hmar, Nepali and Mising. A bookshop in any state faces a smaller version of this. The Class 6 science book comes in the state's language and in English, and often in a new edition after an old one. A parent says the class and the subject, and the shop has four books on the shelf that fit. A new edition makes an old one worth less overnight, and the old stock sits on the shelf.
A government depot that sells the same book at a discount
In 2021 the Chhattisgarh Textbook Corporation sold Class XI and XII books through six depots, including Raipur, and over a hundred registered vendors, with 15 percent off at depots. A private shop sells the same book and has to know what it paid, what the parent can find elsewhere, and what rate is fair. Without that number at hand, the shopkeeper either loses the sale or sells at a loss. Some parents will go to the depot for the textbook and to the shop for everything else, and the shop has to be the better place for the second half. A parent who has seen the depot's rate expects the same in the shop.
School opens in one week and every parent comes the same days
A bookshop earns much of its year in the weeks before school opens. A parent arrives with the school's list, and the shopkeeper pulls the books one by one, adds them in his head and writes the total on the back of the list. By the second day the list has no title left that is in stock in full, and the pad has no record of who bought what. A busy week leaves a pile of notebooks, covers and pens sold in handfuls, too small to count and too many to ignore. By the second day the stock of the common titles is in doubt.
Questions a bookseller asks about editions, sets and schools
The same Class 6 science book comes in two languages and two editions. Can I keep them all?
Yes. Each language and each edition is its own item, with its own rate and its own stock. A bill takes the one the parent picked.
A used title has sat on my shelf for months. How do I see which used books are slow?
Each used title is its own item, so the report shows the days it sold. A title with no sale for months is one you stop buying back from students.
Textbooks have a printed rate and my notebooks and pens have rates I set. Can one list hold both?
Yes. Each is an item with its own rate. A bill takes a textbook at its printed rate and a notebook at yours, and the stock of each shows on the phone.
Textbooks by post and by depot: an island request and an Ahmedabad sales point
In May 2020 the MP asked for textbooks to be delivered to homes in rural islands such as Swaraj Dweep and Shaheed Dweep in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, where poor networks and few cable connections limited learning from home.
In Gujarat, anyone unable to get priced textbooks in the market can buy from the Textbook Board's sales depot at Nirnay Nagar, Ahmedabad, at a 12.5 per cent discount.