Billing for your dairy and milk round in West Bengal
Each house's litres, the curd and chhena, and the sweet maker's order, all in one place on your phone.
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From the Poush Sankranti payesh litres to the fodder order after the flood
The house that makes pithe for the neighbours takes more than its own family needs
In Poush the houses make payesh and pithe, and each asks for extra milk for the day. A house that makes pithe for the neighbours too takes more than its own family needs. Put its extra litres on its page as a bill for the festival day, with the date. The month's page shows the usual litres and the festival's extra ones, so the house reads a number it can place, and the neighbours who ate the pithe are not on its page.
The days the lane was flooded and the can stayed home
In a heavy monsoon some lanes cannot be reached for a day or two. Bill only the days the milk was delivered, and a day that was missed is simply not on the page, whether the water stood in the lane or the cycle could not pass the bridge. At the month's end the house sees fewer days and the total it expects, and nobody has to argue about two days of water.
The fodder order, written from the phone and ticked when it arrives
After a heavy flood the fodder is short and dear, and the dairyman has to order early. Send the order to the fodder supplier from your phone, and note what arrived and on which day. When the next flood comes you open this year's order and see how much you asked for and how much came. The straw, the oil cake and the green fodder are three different lines, and the cows' feed for a week is no longer a figure you carry in your head.
Why a Bengal dairy's day is counted in cans, not in a book
The six o'clock round with a can and no pencil
You start before six with the cans on the cycle. One house takes a litre, the next half a litre, a third two litres when guests have come, and a fourth is away and takes none. In the Kolkata flats the can is left in a bag on the door handle, and in the village it is poured into the family's own steel pot at the gate. The flat's bag has to be hung before the building wakes, and the village pot is poured while the gate is still shut, with a can in each hand and the half-light on the lane.
Rain that turns the evening's milk
In the monsoon the milk that was not sold by evening turns sour. You sell some of it to houses at a lower rate, and make chhena of the rest. Months later one house remembers a bigger discount than the next, and the houses that did not take the sour milk remember that too. Nobody wrote the rate on the day.
Two kinds of buyers, one can
The houses on your round pay at the month's end by the litre, and the sweet shops in the market buy milk and chhena in big lots on credit and pay after the festival. In the Pujo and Bijoya weeks the sweet makers' orders are heavy, and they are mixed with the household accounts in one notebook, so each is hard to read. A sweet shop that has bought chhena on credit all month will also ask for a pot of curd for the Bijoya feast, and that is written on no list at all.
What a milk round and a dairy counter ask of a phone
The whole shop in one place
The milk, the curd, the chhena and the fodder orders as one list of items, so a short load of fodder after a flood is seen beside the day's litres.
Daily reports
Each day's litres on its own line, so the monsoon days when the milk turned and the Poush days of payesh can be read beside the ordinary ones.
Low stock warnings
The curd and the chhena that will not last the festival day, seen on the phone before the houses begin to call.
Questions a Bengal dairy asks
On Poush Sankranti a house wants dawn milk for the payesh pot and afternoon milk for the pithe. Can they be separate lines?
Yes. Make the dawn litres and the afternoon litres two lines on the festival day's bill, with the time in each name. The house sees which litres were for which pot, and you see which round the extra went on.
The rain turned the evening's milk sour. Can I sell it cheap or make chhena without mixing it with fresh milk?
Make the sour milk its own item at a lower rate, or make chhena an item by the kilo. The report shows the litres sold cheap and the kilos of chhena apart from the fresh milk, so the rain's cost is one number.
The boiled milk goes out in earthen pots. Can a house that keeps its pot too long be seen on the page?
Yes. Note the pot on the house's page with the day it went. A pot with no return line a week later is the one to ask for, before the next boiled milk goes out in it, so the earthen pots do not run short.
Banglar Dairy's price rise and who buys the milk
From November 2025 the state-run Banglar Dairy raised milk prices: Supreme from Rs 56 to Rs 60 a litre and Tripti from Rs 52 to Rs 54, citing a fodder shortage after heavy rain.
A study of Bihar, West Bengal and Jharkhand farms found cooperatives took only 21 per cent of the milk that was marketed.