Billing for your garment and cloth shop in Tripura
Risa, rignai and ready-made, each at its own rate and its own GST, on one bill that goes to WhatsApp.
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What a Tripura cloth counter can do before the festival crowd arrives
GST bills
A bill with GST worked out for each piece, handloom and mill cloth together, so the tax is not a guess at the counter.
Orders to suppliers
An order to the weaver and a note of what came, so the weaver's account and your stock tell the same story.
Credit book (khata)
A festival set taken on credit stays on its family's page piece by piece, risa and rignai apart, so the pending amount is never a round guess.
Godown stock
A weaver's batch of risa counted in at the back room, then moved to the rack piece by piece as families come, so the two counts together say how many of that weaver's pieces you hold.
Why a risa and a rignai that belong together end up on two racks and two accounts
Hand-woven and mill cloth do not carry the same tax
A hand-woven risa and a factory-made shirt lie side by side on your counter, but the GST on them is not always the same, and a rate can change in the middle of a season. When a customer picks one of each and the helper does the sum on a pad, the tax is either guessed or left out. Weeks later, when the month's figures are added, you cannot tell which pieces carried which rate.
A woman who asks for a risa and a rignai wants a matching pair
The two cloths come from different weavers, hang on different racks and are priced separately. At the counter you add the two prices in your head and say the total aloud. If she takes one today and comes back for the other next week, nobody remembers which colour she took, and you sell the matching piece to someone else.
Owed to you by the family, owed by you to the weaver, for the same cloth
A family takes a set before the festival and pays when the money comes. You took the same set from the weaver on a promise too. Two accounts run in opposite directions, one in your customer notebook and one on a slip from the weaver, and when either side asks what is pending you have to find two different papers.
Handloom, cane and agar: the Tripura districts your customers come from
Cloth shops in Tripura serve people who earn from weaving, farming and trees. Here are two districts and what the district sites say.
- West Tripura's district site says cane and bamboo chairs, tables, mats, hats and bags are exported, and handloom goods are sold at the Purbasha government emporium.
- North Tripura supplies an estimated 90% to 95% of Tripura's agarwood industry, with about 15,000 families growing and processing agar trees.
From the weaver's delivery to the family that comes back for the matching piece
Handloom and other cloth on one bill, each with its own GST worked out
Give each kind of cloth the GST rate that applies to it once, when you set up the item. A risa and a ready-made shirt can then go on one bill, each with its own tax worked out, and the customer gets the bill on WhatsApp. When the month ends, the tax is already sorted piece by piece.
The matching piece is still on your shelf when she comes back
Keep the risa and the rignai as two items with their own stock counts. When she takes one, the count of that one goes down, and the other stays visible on your phone. You can tell her on the spot that the matching piece is there, and keep it for her.
The festival pair priced as a pair is an item of its own, apart from the single pieces
Make the risa and rignai set an item at the pair price, beside the single risa and the single rignai. A customer who takes the set is billed on one line, and the stock of each piece goes down by one. The pair price is no longer worked out at the counter.
Artisan clusters that brought their stock and sales into one place
Questions Tripura cloth and garment shops ask
Can a risa and a rignai that go together be sold as one set and still be counted separately?
Yes. Each cloth is its own item with its own rate and its own stock. One bill carries both, so she gets a single bill, and the stock of each goes down by one.
Cloth from several weaving areas hangs on one rack. Can I tell which area's cloth sold best?
Yes. Put the area where the weaver works at the end of the item's name. The daily report then gives each area its own line, and the order to the weaver goes first to the area that sold.
At the Kharchi fair my stall carries only risa and rignai pairs. How do I compare them with the same pairs in the shop?
Open the week's sales for the pair at the stall and at the shop. The same item shows both, so you read the colours the fair chose against the colours the shop sold, and carry that into next year's fair.
A customer saw the news about GST on handloom and says my price is wrong. What do I show her?
Show her the bill: the handloom line and the mill-cloth line sit side by side, each with its own GST worked out. If the news changed the rate for handloom, only the handloom line moves, and the mill line stays as it was.
The 2025 GST cut and the weaving areas of Tripura
In 2025 the GST on Tripura's handloom fabrics and stitched apparel was cut from 12% to 5%, and the PIB says this benefits over 1.37 lakh households. For a cloth shop, it means a handloom piece now carries a lower tax than before, and the bill should show the rate that applies to each piece.
Tripura's hand-woven Risa and Pachra-Rignai are traditional women's wear, produced mainly in the Belonia, Kailasahar, Sonamura, Sadar and Khowai sub-districts, says the Handloom Export Promotion Council. A shop that stocks them is stocking cloth made in those areas.