Billing for your mobile and electronics shop in Mizoram
The phone on the bench, the old one taken in part payment and the power bank that sold out, each on its own line.
Tools for a counter where one visit has to do everything
Branches and franchises
My brother keeps the Champhai counter and I keep the Aizawl one: each counter's stock and sales read apart from a single account.
Orders to suppliers
An order to the distributor in town for the earbuds and cables that used to come across the border, each arrival noted against it, so the kind she remembers is on the counter when she comes down.
Offers for regular customers
A small discount on the charger for the family from up the hill that comes down every month, written on its own bill.
A customer from up the hill who comes once a month, three phones on one bench and a screen in the wrong town
Three phones on one bench that look alike
Three phones are on the bench for repair, all black, all with a cracked screen. One is for a screen change that will be ready on Friday. One is waiting for a part. One is a customer's child's, and the customer will not take it until the child is out of school. You know which is which today. By Thursday a customer asks for hers, and you cannot say which of the three it is without turning each one over, and that is a bad moment to guess.
A customer who lives far up the hill and comes down once a month
A customer from a village far up the hill comes to town once a month. In one visit she wants a new phone for her son, a cover and a charger for it, the screen of her own phone changed, and a power bank for the days the lights are off. She will not be back for a month. If you forget one thing, it is a month before it is put right.
The screen for the repair is in the other town's drawer
You keep a repair counter in one town and a sales counter in another. A customer leaves a phone for a screen change, and the screen she needs is in the drawer of the counter forty kilometres away. You find out on the second day, when you open the drawer. She was promised Friday, and you promise her Monday.
The visit as a checklist, three grades of one charger and two counters on one phone
The visit as a checklist: the bill she reads before she leaves
A customer who will not be back for a month wants a phone, a cover, a charger and a repair. Put them all on one bill, one line each, and send it to her phone. She reads down the lines at the counter and tells you what is missing. A charger that is out of stock shows on the bill that day, not a month later.
Three grades of one charger, each with its own count
Make the cheap charger, the middle one and the good one three items, each with its own rate and its own count. The bill says which she took, and the stock shows which grade is nearly out. When she says she wants the same one as last time, her page tells you which that was.
The repair counter in Aizawl and the sales counter in Champhai, read on one phone
With both counters under one account, each has its own stock and its own sales. Before you promise Friday, you open the other counter and see whether the screen is there. At the end of the day you read each counter's sales and then the two together.
A border town's gadget trade and a frontier district's entry gates
A mobile shop sells to the districts around it, and what passes through them matters. Two of them.
- At Champhai, the Zokhawthar trade centre handles essentials, soft drinks, bread, edibles and electronic gadgets for the border trade with Myanmar.
- Siaha district trades with Myanmar's Rakhine and southern Chin states through the Khaikhy, Lomasu and Lodaw entry points.
Questions Mizoram mobile shops ask about the once-a-month customer, chargers and two counters
Three phones of one model wait on the bench: one has a cracked back, one a swollen battery, one a dead screen. What do I write for each?
Make a bill for each repair in the customer's name, with the repair as its item: back panel, battery, screen. The bench then has three bills with three repairs, and the phone in your hand is matched by its fault and its owner, not by a scratch.
The earbuds I used to get across the border have stopped coming. How do I see how many are left?
The pairs on your shelf are all there will be of that kind. Name each kind by its make, so a customer who comes back for the same pair is shown the nearest kind you still hold and is not told it is finished.
A woman from the hill wants a screen guard for her son's phone but does not know the model. How do I find it?
Ask her to show the bill on her phone. The model is in the item's name, and each guard is named by its model too, so you find the guard that matches without guessing from the shape.
A church youth group buys a speaker, cables and power banks for its programme. Can all of it go on one bill in the group's name?
Yes. Open a page in the group's name and put the speaker, each kind of cable and the power banks on the bill as separate lines. Send the bill to the leader's phone. When the group comes again for its next programme, its page shows what it took the last time.
Villages without a signal and a border trade that stopped
Mizoram has 54 villages without mobile or internet connectivity, 21 of them uninhabited, and BSNL is installing mobile towers in 14 villages under the 4G saturation project.
In June 2024 official border trade between Mizoram and Myanmar's Sagaing division was suspended after Myanmar's army destroyed a bridge, and the earbuds that came across it stopped coming.