Billing and udhaar for every shop in Madhya Pradesh
Cloth, sweets, grain or medicine: the bill and the udhaar move from the notebook to your phone.
Two paydays a year, a wedding week in the cloth lane and the tempo that comes back with six stories
Wage families that settle through the month, farm families that settle at the sale
Your counter serves two kinds of family side by side. The family at the factory or the railway is paid through the month and settles through the month. The farm family is paid when the soyabean is sold, and carries its salt, oil and school books until then. Both go into one notebook, and the farm family's one big slip is lost among the wage family's small ones.
A cloth lane on a wedding Saturday
On a wedding Saturday every shop in the cloth lane is three deep. The roll is cut at the counter, metre by metre, and the shopkeeper in the middle of a cut cannot say whether the roll will last the next family. The family that is made to wait goes next door.
The tempo goes out with eight orders and comes back with six stories
A trader in a district town loads a tempo with oil, flour and ration for the small shops around him. Each shop asked for credit by phone, and each now says it paid on the last trip. He has the order in his head and nothing to open, so he writes it down in the evening, and the writing is already a little wrong.
The year read in two halves, the roll cut at the counter and the six o'clock plate
The March wedding cloth, kept for the wheat sale
Open a farm family's page after the soyabean is sold and again after the wheat. The July slips for salt and school books close with the first sale, and the March slip for the wedding cloth waits for the wheat. Each half is settled on its own, and a family that pays at the wheat sale is not asked about July.
The tempo is loaded after the dues are read
The tempo makes one round of the small shops on its route, and the trader has the list of those he has said yes to. The list follows the road, so the boxes are loaded last stop first and nothing is unpacked at the first stop.
The six o'clock plate, paid before the next one is served
At a poha and jalebi stall, the morning crowd comes between the first light and the school bell. Make the plate the unit, put the QR code beside the pan, and the customer scans while the next plate is being filled. The cash box stops being the only record of the morning.
Tools for a counter that carries the months between two harvests
Credit book (khata)
The family's page has two stretches, the rainy-season slips and the winter slips, each closing on the day its money came.
Sell to other businesses
The small shops on the Jabalpur road apply for credit, and the ones you accept are on the tempo's round.
UPI payments
The QR code next to the jalebi pan, so a morning of plates is paid by scanning and not by counting coins.
Your own online shop
A page of the printed rolls with rates per metre, so a wedding family chooses the print at home.
Godown stock
Each load of soyabean that comes in after the crop is sold is written into the godown as what came in that day, so the two paydays of the year show as two rises in the list.
Bhopal zardozi, Dhar's Bagh print, Rewa mangoes and Chhindwara oranges
Madhya Pradesh is large, and each district has something its shops talk about. Here are four of them.
- Zari Zardosi, embroidery made with lustrous metallic threads by generations of skilled artisans, is Bhopal's One District One Product.
- Rewa Sundarja is a GI-tagged mango; its first export, to the UAE in June 2026, was bought at Rs 150 a kg against Rs 100-110 locally.
- Bagh print, a hand block print in natural red and black colours made at Bagh village, is Dhar district's One District One Product.
- Oranges grown in the Sausar and Pandhurna areas of Chhindwara, near the Maharashtra border, are supplied to Nagpur, the Orange City.
What a Madhya Pradesh shop owner asks before starting
A farm family pays all at the wheat sale. How do I set it against the slips since the rains?
Open its page: every slip since the rains is a dated line. On the day of the wheat sale write the payment, and the last line shows what it cleared and what is left.
A farm family and a wage family both ask to take goods before they pay. What do I let each take?
Read each family's page before you answer. It shows what the family has taken and paid. The wage family's page is read through the month, the farm family's against the sale. How much to let each take is your decision, not the app's.
The tempo comes back with six of its eight orders delivered. How do I see which two are left?
Bill each order as it is delivered. In the evening the two orders with no bill are the ones still out.
Indore, Jabalpur and Sagar: three towns and what their counters see
Indore is called a commercial capital, and soyabean is a kharif crop grown in most of the district. A shop in a trading town like this has two kinds of customers: those who pay with each bill, and the farm families who pay when the crop is sold.
Jabalpur is home to the Gun Carriage Factory and the headquarters of West Central Railway, and Bhedaghat nearby is known for its marble rocks. Families with a regular wage buy through the month, and people who come to see the rocks buy small things on the way.
Sagar is a major road and agricultural trade centre, with oil and flour milling, ghee processing, handloom cotton weaving and bidi making. A shop here buys from the mills and the makers, and sells to the families who work in them.