Billing for your supermarket and self-service store in Odisha
The village shop's cartons on haat day, the saga board and the shelf count all agree with the bill.
From the village kirana's carton page to the shelf count read against the books
The village shop's own page, applied for and approved
The village shop owner applies to buy from you on credit, and you decide whether he gets it. His page shows each haat day's cartons and the part he paid, so the balance is a number you both can read, and his rate is not in your head.
The shelf counted against the books, a few items at a time
A self-service shop loses packs into a customer's bag without a scan, and cartons opened for the wrong item. Each week pick a handful of items, count the shelf and read the phone's number beside it. A gap shows on the item and the week it began, so you ask about that week and not about the whole month.
The saga board and the bill from one rate
When the afternoon rate for saga or potala changes, change it once on the phone and write the chalk board from it. The next bill carries the same rate as the board, and a customer who says the morning's rate was different is shown the morning's bill.
Tools for a store that sells to families and to village shops on haat day
Sell to other businesses
A village shop applies to buy cartons from you on credit, you approve it, and it takes them at a lower rate, part paid on haat day and the rest at the next haat, with its dues in one place.
Low stock warnings
A sign that the cartons the village shops buy most, such as soap and biscuits, are low before the next haat day.
Daily reports
Two lines in one day's total on haat day: the cartons that went to village shops and the baskets that went to families.
Why an Odisha store loses the village shop's cartons, the saga board and the shelf count
The village kirana owner who buys cartons on haat day
On the haat day the owner of a small village shop comes to your store with a list and a cloth bag, to buy cartons of soap, biscuits and oil. He is not a customer like the others: he buys a lot, at a rate lower than the shelf's, and says he will pay a part now and the rest at the next haat. His rate is in your head, and the balance is on the back of a slip.
The corner of saga, potala and kakharu with a chalk board
A table at the end of the shop holds saga, potala, kakharu and green chillies, priced on a board in chalk. When the saga is cheaper in the afternoon the board is rubbed and written again, and the counter does not know. A customer is billed the morning's rate for an afternoon's heap, or the other way round.
The gap at the month's end that nobody can explain
A self-service shop has no one at every shelf. At the month's end the books say there should be so many packs of an item, and the shelf holds fewer. They may be in a customer's bag, in the wrong carton, or sold and not billed, and nobody can say which. You write the difference off, a little more each month.
Silk towns, puja crowds and steel-town families: who shops in Odisha's stores
A store sees every kind of family in its town. A few districts, and what the people there do.
- Berhampur in Ganjam is often called the silk city of India, and its Phoda Kumbha saree and Joda craft got a GI tag in 2012.
- Cuttack is home to silver filigree, and its craftsmen get business from the city's Durga Puja, which had 165 puja committees in 2019.
- Sundargarh is an industrial district of Odisha, with a steel plant, a fertilizer plant, a cement factory and spinning mills.
- Balasore district has been declared Odisha's production and processing cluster for scampi, the freshwater prawn.
A self-help group mart that moved from paper stock books to digital billing
Questions Odisha supermarket owners ask about village buyers, shelf counts and the saga board
A village shop owner buys cartons from me on haat day and pays part of it. Can he have a page?
Yes. He applies to buy on credit, you approve him, and each haat day's order goes on his page with the part he paid. The page shows what is left to pay.
At the month's end the cash and the stock do not agree and I cannot say why. Where do I look?
Open the month's days one by one and read each day's sales beside that day's cash. The day where the two part is the day to look at, and then you read that day's items one by one.
Pitha flour, coconut, jaggery and betel leaf all sell in Raja week. How do I see which of the four is nearly gone?
Each of the four is an item with a low-stock mark. Read the list on the evening of the first day of the week, and order the one with the shortest stock before the second day.
The malls of Bhubaneswar and the unmapped retail trade of Odisha
Malls such as Esplanade One, DN Regalia and Utkal Galleria have come up in Bhubaneswar, with malls also coming up in Cuttack, Sambalpur, Rourkela and Berhampur.
Odisha officials said retail trade in the state is still not in an organised shape, so the business and manpower involved are unknown. A store that keeps its own records is one of the few that can say what it sells.