Billing for your bakery or sweet shop in Maharashtra
Pav at dawn, modaks by weight at festival time and the tea stall's tab, all on one phone.
Where the sugar, pulses and fruit of a Maharashtra sweet shop come from
A sweet shop's kitchen draws on a few districts for what goes into the sweets:
- Ahilyanagar is the largest district in Maharashtra, with 19 sugar factories, and sugar, milk and bank cooperatives flourish there.
- Pune district has 7 sugar factories and makes trucks, scooters, motorcycles and rickshaws.
- Jalgaon is a major business centre for tea, gold, pulses, cotton and bananas.
The tea stall's pav, the festival box and the cost of a kilo of besan
The besan laddu tray, planned when besan costs more
When besan, ghee and sugar cost more in the festival month, open the order to the supplier beside the stock in your godown. You see what the trays of laddu will take from the godown, and you order for the trays you really will make, not for the trays of last year.
A mixed box priced and weighed at the glass counter
Make a festival gift box its own item with its own rate, and sell loose sweets by the weight on the same bill. A buyer who takes a box of modaks, a quarter kilo of pedha and a dozen pav gets one bill with all three, and the stock of each goes down.
Ten festival days of modak, ready to read next September
Every sale of modak in the ten days goes through the bill, so the list shows day by day how many kilos went out. Next year you open the same ten days and make the first batch the size of what sold, not the size of what you hoped.
Tools for the oven, the glass counter and the weighing scale
Bills on your phone
One bill for pav by the piece, modak by the weight and a gift box, so the glass counter does not need three calculators.
Credit book (khata)
A page for each tea stall or hotel that takes pav and khari every morning, with the count and the date on each line.
Orders to suppliers
An order for flour, sugar, ghee and besan written with the stock still in your godown in front of you.
Daily reports
Kilos of modak sold on each of the ten festival days, in a list you can open again next year.
Why a Maharashtra bakery counts pav by the piece and modak by the weight on one morning
Pav before sunrise and a tea stall that pays on Saturday
The first batch of pav and khari comes out while it is still dark. The tea stalls, the hotels and the early walkers take them by the dozen, and the stall boy says he will pay on Saturday. A tick on a wall or a line on a loose sheet records what went out, and by Saturday the dozens have become an argument about whether it was ten or twelve. The stall boy, who has walked the lane for years, shrugs and says he never takes more than he needs.
By the piece, by the kilo and by the box
Pav and biscuits are sold by the piece, modaks and pedhas by weight, cakes by the pound and festival gifts by the box. At the glass counter a buyer takes a few of each. The scale, the price cards and the calculator all give different answers when two customers are waiting, and a heavy hand with the scale costs you more than you think.
Besan, dal and sugar that cost more in the festival month
Before the festivals, the things a sweet shop buys go up when everyone else is buying them too: dal, besan, sugar and ghee. The laddu you priced last month is now costing more to make. You discover this when the month's accounts are done, not when you first sold a box at the old rate.
Questions Maharashtra bakery and sweet shop owners ask
Can chakli, chivda and laddu each have their own count in the faral week?
Yes. Each is its own item with its own rate by the kilo, so you see which one is running out before the others.
A family in another city wants one box for the house and one for each neighbour for the festival. Can it send one order?
Yes. Each box for each house is its own line as you pack it, so the one who ordered reads that all are there. If one neighbour's sweet has run out, you tell her before the festival and not at her door.
Can I keep the pav that I bake for tea stalls apart from the pav I sell at my counter?
Yes. Make a tea-stall pav item and a counter pav item with their own rates, and each has its own count.
Ganeshotsav in Pune and a rise in chana dal, 2026
As Ganeshotsav began in September 2026, Pune sweet shops prepared for higher demand for pedhas, modaks, kaju katli, dry-fruit sweets and festive gift boxes. The week is a test of how well a shop knows its stock. Many families buy a box for the neighbours as well as the house, so the number of boxes needed is more than a family's size suggests.
Besan is ground from chana dal, and chana dal rose by Rs10 to Rs90-94 per kg in Maharashtra before Diwali 2026 because of festive demand for sweets, farsan and besan. The sweet shop that makes besan laddus feels this in the cost of every tray.