Billing for your hardware and paint shop in Uttar Pradesh
The bag, the kilo of nails and the contractor's account, all on one page.
Where UP builds: factory lanes, mill towns and carpet looms
A hardware shop sells to the people who build in every district. A few of them:
- Ghaziabad is an important place for industry in Uttar Pradesh. In 2017-18 it had 1,987 registered industrial units employing 89,780 people.
- Moradabad is called Brass City, Peetal Nagri. It is famous for a huge export of brass handicrafts to North America and Europe.
- Jaunpur's economy depends mainly on agriculture because it has no heavy industry. About 85 industrial units, such as a flour mill, run at Satahariya.
- Sitapur is known for its traditional wool carpets, called dari, woven on traditional looms. It is the district's One District One Product.
Bags, pipes and paint shades: what a UP hardware counter asks of a phone
Bills on your phone
Two bags of cement, a kilo of nails, three feet of pipe and a litre of paint on one bill, each in its own unit.
Credit book (khata)
A page for each mason, plumber and painter, with every site and every day's material on it.
GST bills
A GST bill for the builder who buys material for a site and needs it for his own books.
Orders to suppliers
Orders written from the contractor's list the morning a site starts, with the day the cart is booked.
Daily reports
Litres of each paint and bags of cement counted by the day, so the pre-Diwali weeks stand out from the others.
Low stock warnings
A warning when a base colour or a size of pipe is running out, before a contractor arrives with a list.
Five units on one bill, and a contractor who pays when his client pays
The handful of screws and the short pipe that leave without a line
The small sales are the ones that go missing. The apprentice weighs a handful of screws and cuts a short length of pipe, and the customer is already at the door. No line is written for either. At the end of the month the shelf is lighter than the notebook says, and nobody can say on which morning it went. The notebook is honest, but only about the sales somebody wrote.
The mason, the plumber and the painter, each on a different site
The mason is at a wall in one lane, the plumber at a bathroom in another, and the painter at a house across the town. Each takes material from the same counter on your word, bag by bag over weeks. Each has his own site in his head, and none of it is on a page, so the same name has three different numbers.
The rush before Diwali, when every wall wants a new coat
Before Diwali every house wants a coat of paint, and the shop sells emulsion, distemper, brushes and rollers faster than at any other time. Paint is mixed to a shade, and the same customer returns for 'the blue from last time' that nobody wrote down. The rush ends, and tins of shades that only one house wanted are left on the shelf.
From the contractor's site page to the same blue as last time
One page for each site, with every bag and every day
Give each contractor or site a page of its own. The cement, rods and pipes go on it as they leave, each with the date. When the owner of the house pays the contractor and the contractor comes to you, the page shows what went to that site and the total, and nobody guesses.
The shades that sold one tin to one house are ordered small next Diwali
After Diwali, open the shades that sold one tin to one house and then sat on the shelf. Those are ordered in small lots next year, and the shades that went by the many tins are ordered deep. The emulsion is on the shelf in the week it sells, and the odd shades do not tie up your money.
The same blue as last time, found in a moment
Make each shade you mix its own item, named with its colour and its base. When the customer comes back for the blue of last time, you find it and bill it again at once, and he does not stand at the counter while you hunt through your memory.
What UP hardware and paint shop owners ask about site accounts, shades and loose goods
The contractor says he will pay when his owner pays him, maybe after a month. How long can the page stay open?
That is for you to decide. A month's wait is credit you give, and each visit his page shows what is still due, so you see how much you have lent him.
A customer wants the blue he bought last time. How do I find it?
The Diwali customer who returns for last time's blue is answered from his own page. Open it, read the blue and the day he took it, and bill the same blue again at its rate.
I mix a shade to order and a part tin is left. How do I count it?
Put the part tin in as an item named for its shade, sold by the litre, with the litres left as its count. The sealed tins stay in their own item.
A builder has three sites and wants a GST bill for each. How do I keep house A's cement off house B's bill?
Give each site its own page and make each site's GST bill on it, with the tax worked out on only that site's goods. House A's cement is never in house B's tax.
Craft towns that Kanpur and Lucknow keep busy
Lucknow is a hub for chikankari and zari zardozi work. Behind each workshop are tables to work on, shelves for the cloth and walls to paint, and these come from a hardware counter: planks, brackets, screws and a coat of distemper.
Kanpur has a long saddlery trade from colonial times. Today it is the only independent centre making leather saddlery for global markets. A workshop that has worked so long in one place has had its roof, its doors and its walls mended many times, and a hardware shop nearby is where that material is bought.