Billing for your hardware and paint shop in Madhya Pradesh
Bags, trolleys, cans and each site's account, on one phone.
The whitewash weeks counted, the six o'clock tempo billed before the pour and the pipe by the metre
The whitewash weeks, read as they go
In the weeks before Diwali each drum of distemper, each brush and each roller comes off the stock as the bill is made. By the second week you see which drum sizes are nearly out and send the order to the supplier while the whitewash season is still on.
The six o'clock tempo, billed before the pour
When a slab is to be poured, the contractor's tempo comes to the shop at six in the morning for bags and bars. Make the bill on the phone as the tempo is loaded, with the site's name on it. The driver leaves with the bill in his phone and reads it against the site's list when he unloads.
A trolley of sand and a trolley of gitti are two lines on the site's page
Make sand and gitti two items sold by the trolley, each with its own rate. A site that takes two trolleys of one and one of the other has three trolleys on its page in two lines, and the yard's count of each goes down as the trolleys leave.
Cement by the bag, gitti by the trolley and a pipe cut to length at the Diwali whitewash
Cement by the bag, gitti by the trolley, paint by the can
A contractor rings up in the morning and orders fifty bags of cement, two trolleys of gitti and a drum of primer. Three units in one order, and each of them leaves the shop by a different door. The cement goes on a truck from the godown, the gitti is loaded on a trolley from the yard, and the primer is handed over the counter, so the order is written down in three different places.
The tinting counter in the whitewash weeks
Before Diwali every customer wants his own shade. You mix it by hand from a base and a tint, while four other customers wait with drums in their hands. Each shade takes minutes, and the counter is a queue of people who each think their shade is the only one.
A pipe cut to length, and the leftover piece
A plumber asks for four metres of pipe from a long length, and you cut it. The leftover piece goes into a corner with a rate in your head. By the end of the week the corner holds a dozen leftovers. Write each leftover in as an item of its own, with its length in the name, and the corner is a list on the phone.
Sagar, where the roads meet the trade
A hardware shop in Madhya Pradesh depends on the roads, the cement and the families that build.
- Sagar is a major road and agricultural trade centre, with oil and flour milling, ghee processing, handloom cotton weaving and bidi making. The hardware shops of such a town sell to contractors who build along the roads.
- Jabalpur is home to the Gun Carriage Factory and the headquarters of West Central Railway; Bhedaghat nearby is known for its marble rocks. A factory and a railway headquarters bring families who build and repair their houses, and need pipes, paint and bags of cement.
- Indore is called a commercial capital, and soyabean is a kharif crop grown in most of the district. A shop in a commercial city sees contractors who have more than one site at a time.
Tools for a hardware and paint counter in Madhya Pradesh
Credit book (khata)
A page for the cement dealer you buy from, with a dated line for each truck and the bags it carried, so what he says he sent and what the godown holds can be read side by side.
Godown stock
The bags stacked behind the wall counted apart from the bags at the counter, so no lorry is sent for what is already in the godown.
GST bills
A GST bill with the site's name on it for the slab pour, riding in the driver's phone to the site.
Orders to suppliers
The cement order for the two or three brands a mason asks for by name before a pour, each truck noted against its brand.
What hardware and paint shop owners in Madhya Pradesh ask
In the weeks before Diwali I sell distemper, lime, brushes and rollers together. Can I see what is running low?
Yes. In the whitewash weeks the drums of distemper and lime go first, then the brushes, then the rollers. Set a low level on each, and the warning shows the drum before it is empty.
What must be on the tempo at six for a slab pour: how many bags, how many trolleys?
Ask the contractor for the slab's list: the bags of cement, the trolleys of sand and gitti. Load the tempo by that list, with the bill's lines in the same order, so nothing is missed at the site.
Sand and gitti are counted in the yard and cement in the godown. Can I read both as one evening's count?
Yes. The yard and the godown are two places, each with its own count: trolleys in the yard, bags in the godown. In the evening you read both, and the contractor's list for the morning is set against what the two places hold.
Nine cement units and the sand and gitti behind a house
Madhya Pradesh has nine cement units, in Rewa, Satna, Damoh, Katni, Sidhi and Neemuch, says the MSME Development Institute Indore state profile. A hardware shop buys cement by the truckload and sells it by the bag, so the godown and the shop each need a count.
Madhya Pradesh produced 19,424,543 cubic metres of sand and 11,989,031 cubic metres of stone and gitti in 2011-12, says the MSME Development Institute Indore. At the shop, sand and gitti go out by the trolley, and each trolley is one line on a contractor's site page.