Billing for your hardware and paint shop in Rajasthan
Bags, bars and pipes in every size, the contractor's site account and the paint tins, all counted.
Tools for a counter of cement, bars, pipes and paint
Bills on your phone
A bill that names bag, bar thickness or pipe size on every line, so a wrong size is spotted at the counter.
UPI payments
A QR at the counter for the mason who pays for a bag of cement on his way to the site.
Daily reports
What sold of each size and shade through the Diwali weeks, kept for next year.
Where a stone-state hardware counter loses a size, a site and a shade
The same pipe in six sizes, and a bar in four thicknesses
A hardware shop sells cement by the bag, bars by the weight and thickness, pipes by the length and the inch, and fittings by the piece. A pipe of the wrong size on a bill means a truck or a boy going back to change it, and a bar of the wrong thickness is an argument. The stock is counted by eye, and eye-counting does not tell a twelve from a sixteen.
Slabs sold by the square foot, bars by the weight, and a house that needs both
In a stone state a hardware shop is asked for marble and sandstone slabs and tiles, which are sold by the square foot and by the piece, along with cement by the bag and bars by the weight. A mason asks for forty square feet of slab and a bag count of cement in one breath. The shop works out each in its head and puts them on one slip.
Lime and blue pigment before the Diwali whitewash
Before Diwali houses are cleaned and limewashed, many of them in blue, and the shop sells lime by the kilo and pigment by the packet in one week, together with brushes and rollers. Shade cards are looked at for an hour and the colour changes at the last minute. The lime that was opened and not sold sits on the shelf in January with no one knowing how much is left.
Rajasthan's districts, and the building trades in them
Building material in Rajasthan is mined, cut and made in particular districts, and a hardware counter hears of each from its masons.
- Ajmer has cement, asbestos cement pipes, marble, granite, feldspar grinding and salt production among its industries that work with minerals.
- The Rajasthan Foundation lists granite tiles and PVC pipes, with dal, edible oil and cattle feed, among Sikar's local industry opportunities.
- Jodhpur is a major hub for carved wooden furniture and wrought iron, and it has a handicraft special economic zone at Boranada.
- Udaipur is renowned for marble carvings as well as miniature paintings, and it has the Shilpgram craft village.
- Jaipur's Sitapura Industrial Area is an export zone with wooden article makers and textile units.
- The HPCL refinery complex at Pachpadra in Barmer will process 9 million tonnes of crude a year and had engaged about 35,000 workers by February 2023.
Every size on its own line, slabs by the square foot, lime counted before Diwali
The wrong pipe does not ride back on the truck
The bill names the size on each line, so the boy who loads the pipe loads that size and no other. The truck leaves with what the site asked for, and a pipe sent to a site far from the town is not brought back for a change.
Marble by the square foot, and the cracked piece written off
A family building a house chooses marble for the floor, and the mason asks for it by the square foot. Enter each kind of slab with its own rate by the square foot, and bill the forty square feet he takes. When a piece cracks coming down from the tempo, take it off the count that evening, so the godown never shows a slab that is lying in pieces in the yard.
What the lorry brought, entered the day it comes
The lime maker's load comes in bags, and the lime on the shelf is sold by the kilo. In January the shelf nobody had counted was found empty, and the lime thought to be there had never come. A load written in bags and kilos the day it arrives is a shelf that can be counted.
What Rajasthan hardware and paint dealers ask
Brushes and rollers sell for a few rupees each. Do they need their own items?
Yes. Each brush size and each roller is an item with its own price, so the small things go on the same bill as the big ones and each comes off its own count.
A mason picks a slab for his step. How do I sell stone by the square foot?
Slabs are sold by the square foot, each size of slab a line on the list. The mason picks his step slab from the list by its size, and the bill is made for exactly that slab, so he carries home only what the step needs.
The mason opens three packets of blue pigment to choose a shade for the lime wash. How do I bill only the one he takes?
Each pigment is its own item with its own rate. Bill only the packet he takes. The other two are still on your count, so the next customer can still be shown them.
A lime wash shade comes in packets of different weights. Do I make an item for each packet?
Make one item for each packet size, with its weight in the name. A bill for one room shows its packet, and the stock of the other packets stays as it was.
Rajasthan's stone, and the market lanes of Alwar
The RIICO chairman also claimed Rajasthan produces 90 per cent of the country's marble and sandstone, from 4,920 mining leases. The masons who cut and lay that stone come to a hardware shop for cement, tools and polish, and each of the three is a line of its own on a bill.
Alwar ka mawa, the milk cake, is the city's famous sweet, sold at Tripolia Market and the markets near Hope Circus. A family on a Diwali errand in these lanes may buy sweets in one shop and lime and brushes for the whitewash in the next, so the hardware counter's busiest week is the sweet counters' busiest week.