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Billing for your fruit and vegetable shop in Madhya Pradesh

The fruit rate, the kilos and the week's udhaar sit on one bill on your phone.

A fruit seller standing behind tall heaps of apples, pomegranates, oranges and grapes with a scale at his counter
A fruit seller standing behind tall heaps of apples, pomegranates, oranges and grapes with a scale at his counter Photo: Ananth BS, CC BY 2.0

The noon count, the firm tomato and the mess page read out on payday

  • The noon count that orders the evening's apples

    The fruits that fast-breakers buy first, apples and pomegranates, are the ones that run out first. Bills taken off the stock through the morning mean the noon count already shows what the evening will lack. You send the second order to the wholesaler at lunch, and the crates arrive while the evening crowd is still on its way.

  • The fasting fruits, each at the rate of the market that morning

    In the fasting weeks apples, pineapples, pomegranates, bananas and pears sell fast. Make each its own item with its own rate and its own kilos. When Indore's market lifts the rate of pomegranates by morning, change that one item and leave the other four. The evening count shows which of the five the fasting families took.

  • The mess menu, a different vegetable on each weekday

    A hostel mess cooks by a weekly menu: onions on Monday, tomatoes on Wednesday, greens on Friday. Keep the mess's page by those weekdays, and the evening before each one you can read what the menu will need and what is on your shelf.

A seller's hand placing a weight on a scale beside a heap of green limes
A seller's hand placing a weight on a scale beside a heap of green limes

Fasting-week fruit, the three-week peas and the dhaba's weekly slip

  1. The fasting weeks send the same five fruits out of the door

    Indore's fruit market association says sales rise almost 60 percent when Hindu fasting begins, and the fruits people ask for are apples, pineapples, pomegranates, bananas and pears. Put those five on your own counter in those weeks. You buy more of them, the market rate moves with the crowd, and the fruit that went at one rate in the morning is bought at another by evening. A customer who takes a kilo of each wants one bill and a total he can check.

  2. Peas and raw peanuts that stay for three weeks and vanish

    Some vegetables come for a few weeks of the year and then are gone. Your rate board has a line for tomato, onion and potato, and none for what arrived on Tuesday. So the new item gets a price in your head, a different price from your helper's head, and by the time the season ends nobody can say what it really sold at.

  3. The mess orders that swell in the fasting weeks

    The small dhaba, the tiffin maker and the hostel mess near you take vegetables every day and pay on one fixed day. In the fasting weeks their orders swell and change, and the daily rhythm changes with them. By payday you cannot say which weekday carried the swell.

A vegetable cart seen from above, with trays of tomatoes, beans, carrots and potatoes and the seller at his scale
A vegetable cart seen from above, with trays of tomatoes, beans, carrots and potatoes and the seller at his scale Photo: Sharvarism, CC BY-SA 4.0

Tools for a Madhya Pradesh fruit and vegetable counter

  • Bills on your phone

    With four fasting customers waiting, the helper taps pomegranate, pear and banana, and the bill is on the first customer's phone before the fourth has chosen.

  • Credit book (khata)

    The mess's page keeps Monday's onions, Wednesday's tomatoes and Friday's greens in the order they were taken.

  • Low stock warnings

    At noon the apples show low, so the second order goes out before the evening crowd.

  • Daily reports

    The kilos of each fruit that went out on each fasting day stay on file for next year's fasting weeks.

  • UPI payments

    A QR code beside the scale for the fasting-week crowd that pays and leaves in seconds.

Rewa's Sundarja mango and the oranges of Chhindwara

Fruit reaches a Madhya Pradesh counter from many districts. Two of them are worth knowing by name.

  • The mango of Rewa, called Sundarja, has a GI tag. Its first export, to the UAE in June 2026, was bought at Rs 150 a kg, against Rs 100 to 110 locally.
  • Chhindwara grows oranges in the Sausar and Pandhurna areas, near the Maharashtra border, and they are supplied to Nagpur, the Orange City.

Farmers' market-stall bills that sit beside their online shop

The Farm sells for farmers and farmer groups across India. With Bharatrath, the bills of its market stalls and the stock of its online shop are kept in one place.

Questions from a Madhya Pradesh fruit and vegetable shop

A fasting family wants all five fruits ripe for the evening. Which do I weigh first?

Weigh the pomegranate and the apple first, the ones that run out first in the fasting week, and the bananas and pears last. The family has the bill on WhatsApp before the next one.

Tomatoes fell to a few rupees a kilo in September. How do I see the cheap days in my own sales?

A glut fills the heap and thins the takings: the kilos rise as the rate falls, but the rupees do not rise with them. Open the cheap days and read the kilos and the rupees side by side.

The hostel mess changes its order in the fasting weeks. How do I know what to hold for it?

Read its page from the last fasting weeks: the lines show what the mess took when the onions fell away. Hold that for it, and ask the mess a week before.

New peas reach the market in the night. How do I set my rate on the first morning?

Add the peas as an item at the rate you choose that morning, a little above what you paid. As more peas arrive and the rate falls, change it on the phone.

The mandi has more tomatoes than the city can eat. How much do I take from the lorry?

Open the days of the last glut on your report and read how many kilos a day went. Take that many and no more, since a heap bought cheap still goes soft on the stall.

More questions every shop asks

The peas from Nashik and the tomatoes at Choithram mandi, Indore

Before Navratri 2026, new peas from Nashik and raw peanuts from Shivpuri and Sagar reached Indore's Choithram Vegetable Market, and the peas sold wholesale at Rs 100 to 110 a kg. A shop that buys from a market like this meets a new item with a new rate every few weeks, and the rate card has to take it in the same morning.

Indore uses about 5,000 to 7,000 crates of tomatoes a day. In September 2026, supplies from Sendhwa, Palsud and Jalwaniya went past this at Choithram mandi, and tomatoes sold at Rs 6 to 20 a kg. When supply runs past what a city needs, the wholesale rate falls fast, and a shop that sells by the kilo has to change its rate within a day.