Billing for your mobile and electronics shop in Kerala
A phone with its GST bill, a cover for fifty rupees and a repair left on the bench, all on your phone.
From the cover fitted while the family watches to the Onam weeks read next year
The strip cut from the roll, and what is left on it
Before Onam and Christmas the shop sells LED strips for the house and the star. Make the strip an item by the metre and the bulb an item by the piece. Each family's metres come off the roll's count, with no line in a notebook. When the next family asks, you know what is left on the roll, and you order the next roll before the cut ends.
The spare screens counted as they go into jobs, and the box ordered before it is bare
Keep the screens, batteries and glass as items with a count. Each job takes one off, so the box under the bench and the phone agree, and you order the next lot while the last screen is still there. The phone with a cracked screen is never again waiting for a part you forgot to order.
The cover that went with each gift phone, kept from one Onam to the next
In Onam week every gift phone leaves with a cover. Open the days of this year beside those of last, and read the covers beside the phones. The phones tell you how many families came. The covers tell you how many asked for the whole set, and those are the covers to hang first next time.
S.M. Street, Chalai and Thrissur: where Kerala shops cluster
Mobile and electronics shops in Kerala sit beside cloth, sweet and spice shops in the busy streets of the districts.
- S.M. Street, also called Mittayitheruvu, is one of Kozhikode's busiest streets for sweets, textiles, electronics and spices.
- Chalai in Thiruvananthapuram is called Kerala's oldest market, believed to go back to the 14th century, and a one-stop place for shopping.
- Thrissur is counted the hub of jewellery and textile business in South India and makes 70 percent of Kerala's plain gold jewellery.
Why a Kerala mobile shop dreads the monsoon's wet phones and the Onam gift bills
The festival light strip is cut from a roll, and nobody knows what is left on it
Before Onam and Christmas, families buy LED strips for the house and the star, cut from a roll by the metre. A customer takes a metre and a half, the next takes four, and the roll in the corner shrinks with no line in the notebook. When the next family asks for six metres, you unroll it to see.
In Onam week every phone is a gift and needs a bill to keep
In the weeks before Onam the counter is three deep. Families buy a phone for a son or a daughter and want a proper bill with GST for the warranty. Each bill takes a minute by hand, and that minute is the minute the next family has been waiting, so some give up and go to the shop next door.
Screens, batteries and glass go into repairs and nothing says which
Spare screens, batteries and tempered glass sit in a box under the bench. Each repair takes one, the customer is billed for the job, and the part leaves the box with no line in the notebook. A month later the box is empty and nobody can say which jobs used the last three screens.
Tools for a counter of repair parts, gift bills and Onam crowds
GST bills
GST worked out on the phone as one line, and on the cover and charger bought with it as lines of their own, so the warranty bill carries the phone alone.
Online orders
A page of the Onam gift phones in each colour, with their rates and the covers that fit, so a family can choose at home and send its list on WhatsApp.
Daily reports
Covers and chargers counted by line, day by day, so the Onam weeks and the Christmas weeks can be read against the monsoon months, when the phones come in wet.
Questions Kerala mobile shop owners ask
A shop in town buys the Onam gift phones for its staff and wants GST on the bill. Does each phone need its own line?
One bill, with one line for each phone, each named by model and colour. The GST is worked out on every line, so the shop reads one total and keeps one record.
The sons come home from the Gulf for the Onam fortnight and every family wants the same colour. How do I know what is left?
Each colour of a phone is its own item with its own count. Open the phone in the list and read how many of each colour you hold before you say yes to the next family.
The son swaps the Onam gift phone for another colour. Which bill goes with the warranty?
The bill of the phone he finally keeps. Cancel the first bill and make a fresh one for that colour, so the warranty is shown with the bill of the phone he carries away; the cancelled bill stays on the page with its day.
Onam, the bellwether, and a Palakkad paddy belt
Consumer goods makers see Kerala's Onam, India's first major festival season, as a bellwether for sales in the rest of the year. A mobile shop in Kerala is selling in the weeks that makers watch.
Paddy is concentrated in Palakkad's Chittur, Alathur, Kuzhalmannam, Kollengode, Nenmara and Palakkad blocks, where yields of 3,000 kg per hectare are common. A mobile shop in one of these blocks sells in a place where paddy is grown on a large scale.