Billing and udhaar for every shop in Maharashtra
From the weekly bazaar to the Diwali rush, your bills and your udhaar stay on one phone.
Weekly bazaar days and festival months at a Maharashtra counter
The bazaar day crowd all comes at once
In a Maharashtra town the weekly bazaar can bring more customers in six hours than the shop sees in three days. Bangles, chappals, sarees and vegetables are all asked for at once, and each buyer wants a price, a change of size and a bill. The pencil runs dry before the lane has emptied. By night you cannot say what sold at which rate, so you remember only that it was a good day.
Festival months pull stock in two directions
Gudi Padwa, Ganeshotsav, Dussehra and Diwali come as four separate rushes, and each one wants different goods on your shelf. You order in advance with money you do not yet have, then sell fast in the last week and run short of the thing everyone asks for. What was left over after one festival is hard to find in the pile when the next one comes.
A long monsoon slows the road and the money
When the rains are heavy, a truck from the city reaches a village shop late, and a customer who was to pay at the end of the month pays after the next. You are short on the day you must pay your own supplier. Your page for each customer is in one notebook and your supplier's is in another, and neither tells you the day's real position.
Where Maharashtra buys, sells and makes things
Maharashtra is large, and a shop owner in one district hears of the others through the goods that arrive. A few places and what they are known for:
- In Nagpur, Kalamna is one of the largest wholesale markets for oranges and grains in Asia, and Sitabuldi is the city's main commercial market.
- Ahilyanagar is the largest district in Maharashtra, with 19 sugar factories, and sugar, milk and bank cooperatives flourish there.
- Solapur is a major textile hub, famous for its woven chaddars (cotton sheets) and towels.
- Jalgaon is a major business centre for tea, gold, pulses, cotton and bananas.
Gudi Padwa to Diwali, a shop year that stays in order
Bazaar day bills in the time it takes to weigh
Keep your goods and their rates ready on the phone. When the lane fills up, you pick the item, enter the quantity and send the bill on WhatsApp while the next buyer is still choosing. At night you open one list of the day and see what sold from morning to closing.
A festival box with its own count
Make a Diwali pack or a Gudi Padwa gift set its own item with its own rate. Every pack sold comes off the stock count, so in the last week you know how many are left and whether to order more or stop. After the festival the number stays there for next year.
Dues you can read before the supplier calls
Each customer who pays after the harvest or at month end has a page showing every credit bill with its date. A supplier's page sits beside it. Before the rains close the road, you can see who owes you and whom you owe, and decide which order to place first.
What a Maharashtra shop uses first
Bills on your phone
At a bazaar-day stall, a bill goes out on WhatsApp to the buyer who has already walked on to the next stall.
Credit book (khata)
A page for the family that pays after the cotton or sugarcane money comes in, with each part-payment added when it arrives.
Many shops, one owner
One shop in the district town and another in a taluka town, both under one account, each with its own stock and its own sales for the day.
Sell to other businesses
A village cooperative society applies to buy from you on credit and pay after the sugarcane money comes, and you say yes or no yourself.
Daily reports
One page each night with the day's takings from the bazaar stall and from the shop, so the two are never added into one guess.
Handmade food and crafts of self-help group women, on one stock list
Questions Maharashtra shop owners ask before they start
The monsoon road is closed and village customers cannot come to pay. Whose payment has slid to next month?
Open their pages. A bill with no payment after it since the road shut has slid. The balance stays on the page for when the road opens.
Gudi Padwa packs are left on the shelf. How do I keep them out of the Diwali count?
Count the unsold packs when Gudi Padwa ends and decide then to sell them down or hold them, well before the Diwali stock arrives, so the shelf and the count never hold both.
When the cane money reaches the lane, many families come on the same day. How do I take them?
Take each page in turn. Read the family's bills, write what it pays, and the last line shows what is left. The line moves because nobody is searched for in a notebook, and a family that pays part leaves with its balance on the page.
A village cooperative society wants to buy from me and pay after the sugarcane money comes. Can it apply on credit?
Yes, if it trades as a business. Its purchases wait on a page of their own until the cane money arrives, and the members who buy from you themselves stay on their own pages, so the society's account and a member's never mix.
Industry, vines and sugar behind Maharashtra's counters
Thane is third in Maharashtra for industry. It makes chemicals, medicines, plastic and iron goods and powerloom fabrics, and Bhiwandi is known for textiles. A cloth or hardware shop in Mumbai's region buys goods that were made a short way away.
Pune district makes vehicles such as trucks, scooters, motorcycles and rickshaws, and has 7 sugar factories. Spare parts, paint and tyres sell near such works, and a sugar factory means cane growers who buy and pay by the season.
Nashik is called the Wine Capital of India for its grapes and wine, and is a major hub for onion and pomegranate farming. When the onion crop is sold, money moves through the district's shops all at once.