Billing for your supermarket in Puducherry
The long basket billed line by line, and the back room counted apart from the shop floor.
Tools for a store with a shop floor, a back room and a trolley at the counter
Branches and franchises
Each store's stock and sales seen from one account, so the shelf that is thin in the second store is seen before the drive.
Godown stock
The back room's count of the maker's coir mats kept apart from the packets on the floor, so the maker's next visit starts from a number.
Daily reports
The first store's sales beside the second store's for the same Pongal days, so the goods that rushed in one are not ordered for both.
Who fills the trolley: the field, the boat and the trading street of Puducherry
The people who fill the trolleys live in the town, the fields and the trading streets of the territory.
- 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 local maker's mat with no code to two stores in one account
A household's month of rice, oil and biscuits, and the day the lump of money arrives
A household that is paid in lumps buys one month of rice by the kilo, oil by the litre and biscuits by the packet, long before the money comes. Its month has the rice of the first week, the oil of the second and the biscuits of the last, each in its own unit and on its own day. The shop waits for the lump, and the month is read as three goods.
The first store's Saturday sell-outs decide Monday's car
On Sunday night open the first store's Saturday sales and read which goods sold out. Those are the goods the car fetches from the second store on Monday. The first store is restocked from what its own customers took, not from what looks old on the second store's shelf.
Coir mats and brooms found by name, on the same bill as the rice
Make each coir mat and broom an item with its own rate, named as the counter says it. The counter finds the mat by its name, and a shopper who buys a coir mat has it on the same bill as her rice, each in its own unit. A broom is found the same way, and when a new lot of mats comes you add it to the same item and the count moves.
Why a Puducherry supermarket stocks coir mats beside packets and runs a second store one delivery behind
The weighed goods of the days before Pongal
In the days before Pongal the rice, the jaggery and the sugar are weighed out one scoop at a time, the oil is poured by the litre and the festival vegetables are picked by the kilo. Every household wants its own quantity of each. The girl at the counter writes each weight and keeps it straight while the next household waits.
The local maker's coir mat that has no code and no tag
A small maker brings coir mats and brooms to the shelf. They have no packet, no code and no printed rate. The counter has to ask what the rate is and key a name, and if the maker's goods have to be found among hundreds of packed items, the shopper waits. Neither the maker nor the shopper is at fault, and the queue pays for it.
The second store that is always one delivery behind
A second store at the edge of town gets what the first store has left. The owner drives between them in the evening with a list. A shelf at one is full of what the other ran out of, and nobody has counted either since last week. The first store sells out on Saturday and the second sits on the same goods until Monday. The owner sees the gap only when a shopper says that the shelf was bare.
Women entrepreneurs who moved a mart's records onto one phone
Questions a Puducherry supermarket asks about local makers' goods, a second store and sacks
A customer at the second store asks for a mat that only the first store holds. Can I tell her at once?
Yes. Both stores are in one account, and each shows its own count of every item. You see that the first store holds the mat and tell her, before she walks out.
A household takes a sack at the month's end and pays part when the money comes. How do I note it?
Bill the sack as an item with its own rate at the month's end, before the money comes. The household pays what it can when the lump arrives, and you note the part paid on its page, with the rest still owed.
A maker from Yanam sends her mats by bus with the driver. How do I note what reached me?
Note the mats on her page the day they reach you, with their count, and not what she says she sent. The page shows what arrived, and that is the count you pay her on.
Yanam's farms, boats and coir: the households behind the month-end list
Farmers in Yanam grow paddy, coconut, groundnut and pulses, and fishing and animal rearing are important side incomes. A farming household's month has a rhythm of its own, and a store that serves it fills a long list for a house whose money arrives in lumps.
Coir making and handicrafts are the small and medium industries of Yanam. The households that make coir and handicrafts shop for food and household goods from the same shelves as everyone else, and the store sees them on the days when the work has been paid for.