Billing for your stationery and book shop in Puducherry
A class list billed in a few touches, and a school's account kept on a page.
Where the pupils live: Puducherry's fields and boats and the trading town of Mahe
A school-books counter serves the children of the town and the outer regions, and those are children of the field, the boat and the trading street.
- Most people in the Puducherry region farm, rear animals or fish for a living, while the educated work in industries and service jobs.
- Mahe is described as one of Puducherry's growing trade and commerce centres, with small, cottage and medium industries.
From the book that belongs to one syllabus to the notebook of the right pages and ruling
The rubber stamp's text is on the bill, and the clerk who comes on Friday reads the same words
A rubber stamp is made to the words the customer gives, and it cannot be sold to the next person if he refuses it. Write the stamp's text and its size on the order slip, with the day it is promised, and bill the stamp in the clerk's name. The maker's note carries the same words. When the clerk comes on Friday, the stamp is read against the slip, and nobody argues over a spelling.
A project kit as a bill of small items, counted off the shelf
Make chart paper, glue, sketch pens and the thermocol sheet items with their own rates. A parent's project kit goes on one bill, each item takes itself off its count, and at night the count of glue and chart paper tells you what to buy before the next project season.
The shopkeepers' account books sold in the same week as the school books
At the start of the year the stationer sells account books and registers to the shops of the neighbourhood, in the same week as the school books. Make each size and ruling of account book an item with its own count, and the shop owner who buys his khata book from you is a customer with a page of his own. A shopkeeper who comes for an account book in the same week as the schoolchildren is one customer you seldom think of, and the page for him is small and easy to keep.
Why a Puducherry stationer stocks one class under two syllabuses and sells photocopies by the sheet
The stamp an office ordered on Monday and wants on Friday, and nobody sure of the part paid
Offices and shops order a rubber stamp and come back for it days later. The part payment is written on one slip, the order on another and the maker's note on a third. When the clerk comes on Friday, nobody is sure what was paid and which stamp was ordered.
Paper by the ream for an office and by the sheet for a child, on one shelf
Colleges and offices buy paper by the ream, and homes by the sheet. The ream has one rate and the sheet another, and the pack is broken into sheets through the day. At night the sheets in the drawer and the reams on the shelf cannot be made to agree, and the rate each customer was charged is in nobody's head.
A notebook in four page counts and three rulings
The same size of notebook comes with a different number of pages and a different ruling for each class. A child needs the one with the right ruling, and the notebook on the top of the pile is never it. By the second week of the term two kinds have run out and a third has not moved.
Tools for a counter of notebooks, textbooks and a school's list
GST bills
The bill for a college's order of record files and bound registers, taxed line by line and made in the college's name.
Orders to suppliers
An order to the book distributor with the syllabus in each title's name, so the old board's books are not ordered again, and a note of what arrives, title by title.
Daily reports
The reams bought in and the sheets sold across the start of the term, side by side, so you see how much paper left the shop and how fast.
Questions a Puducherry book and stationery shop asks about two syllabuses, photocopies and notebooks
The old board's books are left beside the new syllabus's. How do I tell them apart?
Put the board in each book's item name. The old board's copies have a count of their own, so you see how many are left.
Each class has its own ruling. How many of each should my first order carry?
Ask each school how many of its children use which ruling, and write the number against that notebook item. Take away what is on the shelf, and the rest is your first order. A class with two rulings is two lines, not one.
A college asks for fifty record files bound with numbered pages. Is that fifty of one item?
Yes. Make the binding an item whose name carries the page count, and enter fifty. The bill carries the college's name and the number of files, so the college sees fifty on its bill.
Free school books for some and a new syllabus for others in Puducherry
Puducherry gives textbooks, exercise notebooks and stationery free to all LKG to XII students in government and aided schools, whatever the parental income. So the paper a stationer sells by the ream goes mainly to colleges, offices and homes, and the notebooks to the other kinds of school.
In May 2023 Puducherry's Education Minister said the CBSE syllabus would be introduced in government schools, which reopened on June 7, with new books distributed to schools moving from the State Board. For a shop that sells to any school, a change of board is a change of lists.