Billing for your hardware and paint shop in Tamil Nadu
Bags, rods, sand and paint on one bill, and each contractor's site on its own page.
Mills and factory towns that keep a Tamil Nadu hardware shop supplied and busy
A hardware shop sells to every building site and every workshop around it. A few Tamil Nadu districts show what is being built.
- Viluppuram's cane feeds 7 sugar mills, and a mill town like that buys pipes, fittings and paint for its sheds every season.
- Vaniyambadi and Ambur, in the old Vellore district, are leather centres with units that make leather, shoes and garments for export, and a hardware shop near them supplies the workshops' repairs.
- About 5,000 families made Kanchipuram silk sarees in 2008, and a hardware shop in that town sells the nails, paint and fittings that keep a weaver's house and workshop in repair.
Tools for cement, rods, sand, pipes and paint tins
Bills on your phone
The sand, counted by the cubic foot at the yard, billed to the mason on the same bill as his bags and rods, and sent to his own phone.
Sell to other businesses
A smaller shop in the next town runs short of waterproofing in the northeast monsoon and applies to buy it from your godown on credit. You see the request and decide whether to let that shop in.
Godown stock
M-sand and river sand lots logged into the godown as they land, each lot at its own rate per cubic foot, so the godown and the counter agree on Thursday night.
Low stock warnings
A warning on waterproofing, tarpaulin and pipes, the goods that run out within days of the first monsoon rain, which the shelf stocked for the painting season does not cover.
Online orders
A painter orders the tins of a shade from your own online shop in the evening and collects them when the shutter goes up.
A monsoon shelf of the wrong goods, a contractor with three sites and a godown that disagrees with the counter
The northeast monsoon and a shelf of the wrong goods
When the rains come, waterproofing, tarpaulin sheets and pipes sell out within days. The shelf was filled in the painting season with emulsion and brushes, the order for the rain goods goes out late, and the customers who needed them go to the next shop.
A contractor, three sites, one notebook page
A contractor takes sand for a house at one end of the town and for a shop at the other, and the sand goes by the cubic foot. The notebook has one page under his name, with the cubic feet of the two sites mixed. When he says the sand was for the house and not the shop, nobody can say how many cubic feet were which.
The godown and the counter tell two stories
Cement and rods leave the godown by tempo, and what is on the shelf is what is left after the tempo came back. A customer hands some bags back, a bag splits on the way, and the count at night, the count in the godown and the count in the book become three different numbers.
The tempo load checked against the godown, a sand rate that follows the yard and a repainting season
The tempo's morning load checked against the godown
A bag of cement splits on the road in the tempo, and the split bag is sold by the kilo. So cement is an item by the bag and an item by the kilo, each with its own count, and the weights in the evening add up to the bags that left in the morning.
A sand rate that follows the yard
When the lorry brings a new load of sand from a new yard, change the rate per cubic foot on your phone, and the next bill uses it. The bills you made before stay at the old rate, so a contractor never finds his earlier bill has changed under him.
The weeks before Pongal and the weeks after the rain
Houses are painted before Pongal and repaired after the rains. The daily report keeps the weeks when emulsion, putty and brushes went, so next year you stock the paint shop's shelves for those weeks and not for the weeks that are dead.
Questions Tamil Nadu hardware and paint shop owners ask about sites and units
Can the colour-mixing charge go on the bill with the tin?
Yes. Add the tinting as an item with its own rate. It sits on the same bill as the tin, and the report shows it on its own line.
A mason works on a house and a shop. Can his rate differ for each?
Yes. Give each site its own page with its own discount, and every bill under a page uses it.
Tarpaulin and sealant sell fast when the northeast monsoon starts. Can the phone tell me before they are gone?
Yes. Each is its own item, tarpaulin by the piece and sealant by the tin. Set a lowest count on each, higher before the monsoon, and the phone shows the one that is nearly out, so the order goes before the rains.
River sand and M-sand come from two yards at different rates. Can I note which yard each lot came from?
Yes. Give each yard a page as a supplier. The sand you order and what arrives are noted there with days and rates, so when one yard's rate moves you see it beside the other's.
Tamil Nadu's sand yards and its mill towns
In February 2020 the state PWD said Tamil Nadu had nearly 1,000 M-sand manufacturing units, selling at an average of Rs 35 per cubic foot. A shop that sells sand by the cubic foot lives by that rate, and it differs from one yard to the next.
Coimbatore has many textile mills and more than 700 wet grinder makers, and is famed for the quality of its cotton and dyed fabric. A town of mills and workshops keeps hardware shops busy with repairs, bolts, belts and paint through the year.