Billing for your supermarket in Ladakh
A month's basket billed line by line, and a back store counted before the cold.
Why a Leh super bazaar fills a basket for the whole winter in one visit, and doubles it before Losar
A basket for the whole winter, filled in one visit
A family from the villages comes to town once before the cold and fills a trolley: rice, flour, oil, tea, soap, tins, a mat for the floor. The bill is long and the checking is slow, since the trolley is full and the taxi outside is waiting. A mistake of one line, in a bill of fifty, is easy to make and hard to find once the sacks are in the taxi. The family does not come again until the snow has melted.
The dry fruit and biscuit flour that Losar asks for all at once
Before Losar the families buy what only this season asks for: dry fruit for the guests, flour for the festival biscuits, oil by the tin, sugar by the sack. The dry fruit comes in few sacks and goes first. You are stocking and billing in the same hours, with the same hands, and the one boy who knows the shelf is carrying a sack.
A hall that looks full and a back store that nobody has counted
A supermarket's hall is full of goods, and its back store is a cold room behind it. The shelf tag says there is sugar, and the shelf says there is none. The sugar is in the back store, or it is not. When a customer asks, you send a boy to see, and he comes back with a bag or an apology. It has happened that the number on the shelf tag was the only thing in the shop that was certain.
From the long bill that the family checks to the back store behind the hall
Brick tea, salt and butter billed together for the butter tea pot
A household that makes butter tea buys brick tea, salt and butter in one visit. Add each as its own item: tea and salt by the weight, butter by the lump. One bill holds the three, and each keeps its own unit and its own rate.
Goods that must not freeze, counted apart in the warm room
Some goods, such as oil and bottled drinks, are kept in the warm room in the cold months. Count them as a place of their own. A shelf that shows none does not mean the warm room is bare, and you read the number before you send the boy.
The morning refill that starts with what fell fastest
Every bill takes its items off the count, so at closing you can see which items fell fastest in the day and how many are left in the hall. The next morning's refill begins with those aisles, not with the aisle nearest the door.
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Women's groups whose stock and bills left the paper notebook
What a Leh supermarket keeps on one phone
Bills on your phone
One bill for the whole winter's basket, fifty lines long. The family keeps it on its phone for the month, and reads from it what should still be in the sacks at home.
Godown stock
The cold back store holds the sugar, the flour and the oil in bulk, and is counted as a place of its own, apart from the hall.
Low stock warnings
A higher warning level on dry fruit and the flour for Losar biscuits than on the usual goods, set before the festival weeks begin so the shelf is not bare when the baskets double.
Questions Leh supermarket owners ask about long bills, the back store and the winter weeks
Rice leaves on the back of a taxi, five sacks at a time. Can I bill them as one line of five sacks?
Yes. Enter the item once and the quantity as five, and the bill shows one line and the total. The count of that item drops by five in one step, so the back store and the bill agree.
The real winter stock is judged only after Losar. How do I see what is left then?
After Losar, read the back store's count and the hall's count together. The festival weeks are in the days behind you, so what remains is the real winter stock, and the spring order is made from it and not from the weeks before.
The sugar is gone from the hall and the back store, and a winter family needs it for Losar. What do I tell her?
Tell her what the count says: none in the hall, none in the back. Open her page and write the sugar she asked for with the day, so the first sacks off the first truck are hers.
A cooperative super bazaar and a winter that is measured after Losar
Leh's Cooperative Department opened the Bami Duniya Consumer Cooperative Store, a cooperative super bazaar, as the first of its kind in Leh district. It shows that a large shop selling many things under one roof is still a new idea in Leh, and that customers are learning how to use one.
In Leh, demand for commodities rises in the Losar New Year festive season, so the real winter stock position is judged only after Losar. A shop owner therefore has to hold his nerve over a long period, and a count of the hall and the back store is the only calm way to do it.