Billing for your hardware and paint shop in Nagaland
Cement by the bag, sheets by the piece, paint by the tin and a contractor's site, each on its own page.
Building and stone: places a Nagaland hardware counter hears about
Two places a Nagaland hardware counter hears about from its builders.
- Dimapur is the state's main commercial centre, and its only railhead and airport are there.
- Tuensang has coal, marble and limestone deposits, along with jhum farming and handloom.
An order that comes in two small lots, a house built in stages and one shade in three tins
The front wall in December, the small tin for the back later
Some families paint only the front that faces the road, and in the fortnight before Christmas they buy tins for that wall alone. Months later they come back for the back wall and want the very same shade in a small tin. The back wall waits for the family's next good month, and so does the tin.
Retaining walls after the landslides
After a heavy monsoon, families whose yards slipped come for cement, sand and wire mesh for a retaining wall, all in the same few weeks. Each wall is a different size, each family pays a part now and a part when the next wage comes, and the notebook soon has twenty half-filled pages. The masons who build these walls work for several families at once and come for materials in the evening, when the counter is busiest.
The same shade in a one-litre, a four-litre and a twenty-litre tin
Every shade is sold in three tin sizes, and every size is a different rate. A customer asks for the pale green in four litres, and you search the shelf and find the one-litre and the twenty. You do not know whether the four-litre ran out last week or whether you have never stocked it in that shade.
Tools for a Nagaland hardware counter that sells to builders and house-owners
Orders to suppliers
Tin sheets and cement ordered from the supplier in Assam in smaller loads, each ticked on arrival, so one held truck stops one load.
Godown stock
The roofing sheets kept at a relative's yard on the highway, counted apart from those at the shop.
Credit book (khata)
A page for each house that is built in stages, so the foundation, the walls and the roof can each be found on their own day.
Low stock warnings
A warning when a shade in a tin size falls to the number you set.
GST bills
A GST bill for a shop owner's new tin roof, kept for his bank loan file.
Bills on your phone
One bill for the tin sheets by the length, the J-hooks by the piece and the roofing nails by the handful, in the one trip that the truck's load limit on NH-29 allows.
From the lot noted at the gate to the shade that is never out of stock
The landslide months read before the next rains
After the monsoon, open the weeks after the slides in the daily report and see how much cement, mesh and pipe went out. Next June you stock those before the rains, not after the first slide. The same days show how many lengths of pipe went for the drains that families dug beside their walls.
The mason builds for several families, and each family pays for its own wall
After the slides each family builds a wall of a different size, and the mason who builds for several of them comes in the evening for sand and mesh. Bill each load on the family it is for, not on the mason, so his evening trip does not mix one house's wall into another's.
A lowest count for every shade and every tin size
A shade can be down to its last small tin while the big tin sits untouched. So each size of a shade is its own item with its own lowest count. The phone shows which size of which shade is nearly gone, and you add that size, not the whole shade, to the next order, before the customer comes asking.
Questions Nagaland hardware and paint shops ask
Can I see which months of the year sell the most tin sheets?
Yes. Read the sheets' row month by month. The months after a slide are the ones when torn roofs come for sheets, so stock for those.
A family took a second-choice colour last December. Can I see what it wanted?
Open the family's page and read last December's bill for the front wall. The shade they wanted for the back ran out first. The plains lot takes a week, so order it that early.
The village council's grant file wants each material by the day it came. What does the bill show?
Make one bill under the council's name for each delivery, with GST worked out. Each material is a line with its quantity and rate, and the bill carries the day, so the bills together read as the file's list, one day after another.
A church committee pays for its new hall from the Sunday collections. How do I know what the collections have covered?
Each Sunday's payment is written against the hall's bills with its day. The collections add up to one number you can read beside the total of the bills, and the committee sees how much of the hall is still unpaid.
NH-29 and the weight limits: how building goods reach Kohima in the monsoon
In September 2025 monsoon landslides at Pagla Pahar halted traffic on NH-29, the Dimapur-Kohima highway, and left trucks stranded.
In May 2025 the Chief Minister ordered strict weight limits on trucks to protect roads in the monsoon, and told officers to check stocks of essential goods in all districts. A hardware order that comes by truck from Dimapur to Kohima travels on that road and under those limits.