Billing for your kirana or grocery store in Maharashtra
The monthly list, the loose dal and the udhaar page of every family, all on one phone.
Where the dal, grain and sugar on a kirana shelf are grown
What fills a kirana shelf in Maharashtra comes from fields in a few districts:
- Jalgaon is a major business centre for tea, gold, pulses, cotton and bananas, so much of the dal on a Maharashtra shelf passes through it.
- Kalamna in Nagpur is one of the largest wholesale markets for oranges and grains in Asia.
- Ahilyanagar is the largest district in Maharashtra, with 19 sugar factories, and sugar, milk and bank cooperatives flourish there.
- Nashik is a major hub for onion and pomegranate farming, as well as grapes and wine.
Why a Maharashtra kirana's month-end list takes a night to add up
The monthly list and the notebook page
Most families in a Maharashtra town send a list at the start of the month: tur dal, wheat flour, oil, sugar, tea, poha. Some come with it themselves, some send a child. The goods go out in pieces over two weeks, and each trip gets a line on that family's page in the notebook. When the family comes to pay on the twenty-fifth, you and the housewife both read lines written in a hurry, and a missing line costs somebody money.
Everything is loose, nothing is a fixed price
The dal comes out of a sack, the flour out of a bag, the oil out of a drum. A customer wants half a kilo of one thing and two hundred grams of another, and you multiply the weight by the rate in your head while the next customer calls out. Poha, shengdana and jowar flour all carry different rates, and by evening you could not swear which scoop went at which rate.
The monthly list that goes out in two deliveries, at two rates of dal
When the rate of dal climbs while a family's monthly list is still being filled, the first delivery leaves at the old rate and the second after the rise. One list then carries two rates, and the family asks why the same dal costs differently on one page.
Loose poha, a sack of dal and the first of the month
The family page you can read on the twenty-fifth
Each family has a page where every delivery sits with its date and what was sent. When the housewife comes to pay, you open the page, read down the month and settle the total in a minute. The talk at the counter is about the goods, not about who wrote what.
Weigh it, pick it, send it
A child comes to collect the family's list, and you weigh and pick each item with the child watching. The bill reaches the family on WhatsApp and the child shows it at home, so the mother knows what the child carried, whether it was two hundred grams of shengdana or three kilos of flour.
The old sack and the new sack on separate lines
When a new lot of tur dal comes at a different cost, put it on its own line with its own rate. Bills made from the old sack keep the old rate and bills from the new sack keep the new one. When someone asks why Friday's dal cost more than Monday's, the answer is in front of you.
What a kirana counter in Maharashtra reaches for
Credit book (khata)
A page for each family on the monthly list, every trip dated, so the twenty-fifth is a short job.
Bills on your phone
Bills for loose goods by kilo and gram, such as poha, shengdana or oil, with the rate beside each line.
Orders to suppliers
The month's order to the wholesaler, written with the counts of tur dal, flour and sugar still in the shop in front of you.
Low stock warnings
A warning when tea, sugar or oil is nearly finished, before the first of the month when everybody's list arrives.
Offers for regular customers
A lower rate on sugar or tea for the families who take their whole monthly list from you and not a few things from the shop across the road.
Swateja Mart's handmade goods and a stock list once kept on paper
Questions Maharashtra kirana owners ask
The monthly list goes in two trips and the oil goes on the second. How do I add it up?
Each trip is its own bill under the family's name, with its date. On the twenty-fifth read the two bills together: the dal of the first trip and the oil of the second add up to the month, and the family sees two trips and not one lump.
A regular bought dal on Monday and again on Friday, and the sack changed in between. How does his page show which sack each bill came from?
Make the old sack and the new sack two items, each with its own rate. Monday's bill carries the old one and Friday's the new one, so the regular reads two lines with two rates, and you answer him from his own page.
Before a fast, families buy sabudana and shengdana together. Can I see next morning how much of each went?
Yes. Each is an item counted in kilos, so the day's report lists what left of each.
Tur dal before Diwali and a payment app, six years on
Before Diwali 2026, drought-hit Kharif output pushed tur dal in Maharashtra up about Rs14-16 in a fortnight to around Rs132 per kg. A kirana owner who buys by the sack feels this in the week of the festival list.
In October 2020 PhonePe announced that payments were accepted at over 20 lakh shops in Maharashtra, a company announcement now six years old. It tells you that paying by phone at a kirana counter has been a habit in the state for years.