Billing for your supermarket in Sikkim
Two wholesalers for one biscuit, free packets in the carton and a hostel's big order, all counted on your phone.
Lal Bazaar's Sunday crowd, the other half of a Gangtok shopping trip
A supermarket shares its customers with the markets in town, and a Sunday trip often goes to both.
- Lal Bazaar in Gangtok sells fresh fruit, organic vegetables, cheese including chhurpi, and bamboo and cane baskets, and is liveliest on Sundays.
Each source its own count, free packets added the day the carton opens, and a hostel's order on its own page
Each wholesaler's packets counted as their own item
Make the biscuit from each wholesaler an item, with its own rate and count. At the counter you pick the one that is on the shelf, and the phone shows which one is nearly finished and which one sells first. When one wholesaler is late, the other's shelf is already counted.
The free packets added to the count the day the carton opens
When the carton comes, note it on the wholesaler's page with the packets it held, free ones included. The count of the shelf and the count of the notebook start the same, and the difference of two does not appear. The free packets are sold at the shelf rate like any other, and they are in the count.
The hostel's order with its dues on its own page
Let the hostel apply to buy from you on credit and accept it. Each order is then on its page with its date and its items, and what it has paid is taken off. The scrap of paper is no longer the record. A hostel that pays late is easy to see, and one that always pays on time is too.
Tools for a store with two wholesalers and a few big buyers
Online orders
A hostel's weekly list of rice, dal and tea arrives from your online shop page, and the goods are counted out in the stock room before the van comes.
Orders to suppliers
One wholesaler sends on its own days and the other only when asked. Each has a page, so you see which order you must place and which will come without one.
Daily reports
The week before Dasain set beside an ordinary week, item by item, so the big packs of rice, oil and sugar are on the shelf for the families who stock up.
One biscuit from two wholesalers, two free packets inside the carton, and a hostel that wants twenty kilos
The same biscuit from two wholesalers
A large store buys the same biscuit from the co-operative wholesaler and from a private one, at different rates, and the private one sends only when asked. The cartons of both stand on the same shelf. At the counter they are one item, so the store cannot say at which rate the packets it sold last week were bought. A cheaper carton sold first makes a better month than a dearer one sold first, and the books do not show which it was.
Two free packets inside the carton
A wholesaler's scheme puts two free packets into every tenth carton. They are not on the bill, so the bill's count and the shelf's count disagree by two. The owner writes the difference off as a mistake, and a month later the shelf and the notebook are two cartons apart and nobody remembers why. The free packets, like the others, are sold, and the money for them is not in any book.
A hostel wants twenty kilos on one order
A hostel or a school canteen sends for twenty kilos of rice, ten of dal and a case of tea, and asks for a bill with its name on it. The goods are packed in the store room and carried round. Whether it was paid for today or next week, the note on the order is on a scrap of paper. The hostel asks, a week later, what it owes, and the answer depends on a scrap.
Women entrepreneurs who moved from fairs to one stock and bill book
Questions Sikkim supermarkets ask
A month later the shelf is two cartons apart from the book. How do I see why?
Open the wholesaler's page. Each carton is on it with the packets it held, free ones included. Set that beside the count, and the gap is either a carton not entered or free packets not counted, and the dates tell you which.
One wholesaler sends only when I ask. How do I know when to ask?
Read the count of that wholesaler's items. When a count nears the lowest you can bear, send the order for it, and note the carton when it arrives.
The hostel's warden asks for the order to be packed by Friday. How do I keep the date?
Make the hostel's bill on its page when the order comes, so the bags come off the count that day and are not sold to anyone else. On Thursday evening you pack from that bill.
Visitors from the plains ask for warm socks and gloves at the same counter as their tea and noodles. Can those sit on my list too?
Yes. Make each kind of glove and sock an item with its own rate and count. They go on the same bill as the groceries, and the count tells you when the cold-weather shelf is running low.
The co-operative wholesaler, and the store near home
SIMFED, the state apex co-operative marketing body set up in 1983, wholesales consumer goods to Sikkim's multi-purpose and consumer co-operative societies.
Sikkim has lower organised retail penetration than many larger mainland cities, so neighbourhood stores near homes still matter more than large-format retail.