Billing for your hardware and paint shop in Odisha
Steel by the bar, cement by the bag and paint by the litre, each on the right site's page.
Why an Odisha hardware counter loses the rod rate, the puja shade and the roof before the rains
The rod rate moves in the week, and the contractor's quote does not
Steel rods and bars sell by the piece, by the kilo and by the length, and their rate follows the mill's rate, which changes more than once in a month. A contractor quoted a price for a floor last week and comes this week for the bars. You look up the rate on a slip that is a week old, and one of you is wrong by a few thousand rupees.
Before the puja every front room wants the orange, and nobody remembers which orange
In the weeks before the puja every house wants its front room painted, and the colour most ask for is orange. You mix the orange for one house on Friday, and a neighbour wants the same orange on Monday. The shade lives in your memory and on a scrap of wall, and the tin the customer carries home is not marked.
Sheets, tarpaulin and nails, the day before the first rain
The day before the first cyclone rain, roofing sheets, tarpaulin, nails and rope leave the shop in small lots for the coast. Nobody can say at four o'clock how many lots have gone, and the next lorry has only a few days to reach the shop before the sky closes in.
Tools for a counter of steel, cement, nails and paint
Godown stock
Cement bags counted in the godown and the shelf in front counted on its own, so when a tempo loads for a site you read the godown's count and the shelf is not touched.
Orders to suppliers
An order to the rod dealer at the rate of the day, and a note of the bundle when it arrives, so the mill's rate and your bill rate sit one under the other.
Low stock warnings
A sign that tarpaulin, roofing nails or a popular orange is running low before the first rain or the puja weeks begin.
From a 12 mm bar by the piece to the same orange, found again a year later
Each size of bar its own item, with the rate of the day on the bill
Make a 12 mm bar and a 16 mm bar two items, each with its own rate and its own count by the piece. When the mill's rate moves, change it once, and every bill after that carries the new rate. The contractor's bill from last week stays as it was, with last week's rate and its date.
The roof sheet cut by the foot in the week before the first rain
In the week before the first rain every roof is mended, and every customer wants a different length. Make the sheet an item counted in feet, and bill the feet cut. As the stack in the yard is cut, the phone shows the feet left, so the last customer before the rain hears the feet left and not a guess.
The same orange found a year later
Make each shade its own item, with the shade's name in the title. The customer's page keeps the bills, so a year later you open her page, read which orange she took for the front room, and pull the tin of that orange off the shelf.
Steel towns, chromite works and ore districts: where Odisha's hardware shops sell
Hardware goes where something is being built or mined. A few districts, and what the people there do.
- Sundargarh is an industrial district of Odisha, with a steel plant, a fertilizer plant, a cement factory and spinning mills.
- At Kalinganagar in Jajpur district, industrial firms use chromite ore. A sharp price rise in 2021 pushed several plants towards closure.
- Keonjhar is one of Odisha's top mineral districts. Iron ore covers most of it, and manganese ore is found at Joda East and Barbil.
- Cuttack is home to silver filigree, and its craftsmen get business from the city's Durga Puja, which had 165 puja committees in 2019.
Questions Odisha hardware and paint shops ask about bars, sites and shades
A man takes tarpaulin and nails before the first rain and says he will pay after. Where do I write it?
A man with an open roof takes tarpaulin and nails and will pay after the rains. Write each on his page with the day, and on the day he comes you read what he owes.
A contractor's lorry takes bars of several sizes for a site. Do I bill the whole lorry as one line?
No. Bill each size as its own line with the count that went on the lorry, so the stock of each size falls by what the site took. The lorry's day stays on the contractor's page.
A contractor has my quote for the bars from Monday, but the rod rate moved by Thursday. How do I bill him?
Keep his quoted rate as its own item for his bars, and sell the rest at Thursday's rate. His bill shows the quoted rate on his lines and the day's rate on the others, and his page shows why the two differ.
Odisha's iron ore and the prawn district of Balasore
Odisha produces about half of India's iron ore, and its installed crude steel making capacity has grown to 33 million tonnes a year, says the state mines directorate. The steel that a hardware counter sells has come out of the same state's ore.
Balasore district has been declared Odisha's production and processing cluster for scampi, the freshwater prawn. A hardware shop in such a district serves the people who work in that trade.