Billing for your supermarket in Jharkhand
The basket, the festival table and the month-start queue, all billed in seconds.
What the phone keeps beside the aisles and the festival table
Godown stock
The festival table, the aisles and the back room each counted as a place, with goods moved between them without losing either count.
Bills on your phone
The evening bag of three things billed in two minutes, each at its rate of the day, so the shopper who wants to be out does not wait at the counter.
The whole shop in one place
The aisles, the festival table, the back room and the orders to the distributor kept together, for a store that adds new goods for each festival.
A puja table by the door, a customer with the street price in her head and the evening hour when everyone wants to leave
A puja table by the door, and its takings in the same drawer as the aisles
In festival week the store sets up a separate table at the door with the goods people need for the day. It is staffed by someone from the aisles, and its sales are rung with the rest. At closing nobody can say what the table brought in and what the aisles did, or whether the table is worth its space.
A customer walks in with the street price in her head
For many goods a family has a price from the open market and a price from the store, and the two are not the same on any day. The cashier is asked why, with a queue behind, and the answer is a rate that was changed in the morning and is not on any paper at the counter.
In the evening hour every customer wants to be out in two minutes
People stop on the way home with a bag of three things, and the same cashier who bills a family's full trolley bills them between the trolleys. Each has one or two items and no patience, and a bill that takes a minute is a bill that loses a customer.
A capital, a plant town and a market suburb: who shops the aisles in Jharkhand
A Jharkhand supermarket serves different shoppers in different places, and the owner reads the neighbourhood from the baskets.
- Ranchi, the state capital, is an important centre of trade and commerce in Jharkhand; nearby forests supply furniture, match box and paper industries.
- In Jamshedpur most people work in industrial units: Tata companies, iron and steel, automobile and cement.
- Chas, the suburb of Bokaro Steel City, is notable for a large wholesale market.
The festival table read apart, the evening line cleared and festival goods added in a minute
The Chhath table's sales are read apart from the aisles
The Chhath table holds soop, daura, banana, coconut and dry fruit. Count it as a place of its own, apart from the aisles. At closing on each puja day you read what the table sold and what the aisles sold, so a busy table is not hidden inside the store's total, and next year you know how much of each to bring out to it.
The evening line clears, because each small bill takes seconds
Every item is in the app with its rate, so a bill of one or two items is made in a few seconds. The shopper pays at the counter and goes home, and the line behind her is a line of people leaving, not a line of people waiting for the cashier to add.
Goods that exist only for the festival are added in a minute and counted out after
A new item for the table needs a name, a rate and a unit, and it is on the next bill. After the festival, its count shows what is left, and you decide whether it goes back to the back room or waits for next year.
A Maharashtra store run with women's groups, now on one screen
Questions Jharkhand supermarket owners ask about festival tables, the evening line and the back room
On the last day of Chhath some festival goods are left on the table. What do I do with them?
At closing read the table's count of each festival item. What is left is a number you know, so you can set a lower rate on it and watch it go in the next days' sales.
How do I use last year's Chhath table to plan this year's?
Open the days of last year's festival and read how many of each festival item sold. Put this year's table together from those numbers, a little more of what went fast.
A customer buys for her neighbours too and wants a separate bill for each. Can I make three in a row?
Yes. Each is its own bill, one after the other, with its own lines and its own total. The counter does not need to be cleared in between.
A Reliance puja counter and a clay stove at Rs 99
At Chhath in Ranchi, a Reliance store set up a separate counter selling soop, daura, banana, coconut, dry fruit and ghee for the puja. A separate counter is a separate shop in miniature, and whoever runs it has to know what it sold.
During Chhath in Ranchi, a clay stove cost Rs 99 at a Reliance store, while the open retail market charged Rs 200 to 250. When a family can see both prices in one afternoon, the store that can show its own rate on the bill is the one that is believed.