Billing for your supermarket or general store in West Bengal
The month's basket, the ilish cut to order and the tea poured loose, all on your phone.
From the ilish weighed after cutting to the mishti doi counted at night
Ilish by its size grade, each grade with its own rate
Ilish is priced by the size of the fish, and a larger fish costs more for each kilo. Keep each grade as its own item with its own rate, and enter the weight of the piece the customer picks. The bill shows the grade and the weight, and the stock shows how many of each grade are left on the ice.
Bori, papad and badi from open tins, and the tin filled before the afternoon crowd
Bori, the dried lentil dumplings, and papad and badi are sold loose from tins, and a Bengal kitchen asks for them by the hundred grams. Each has its own item and a rate for the kilo. The tin's stock comes down by the grams sold, so at noon you see whether the bori tin will last the afternoon crowd, and you fill it before the crowd arrives and not during it.
Mishti doi by the pot, counted at night against the day's sales
Each size of pot is an item with its own count. When the day ends, the count on the phone shows how many pots should still be in the counter, and the pots on the shelf can be checked against it. A pot that was dropped or given as a taste shows up as a difference, and tomorrow's order is made from the sold number.
What a store with a fish counter, a tea counter and a sweets counter asks of a phone
The whole shop in one place
Three counters, one list: the fish counter, the tea counter and the sweets counter each keep their own items and their own suppliers on the same phone.
Low stock warnings
The loose tea in its canister and the mishti doi pots at the sweets counter, shown as running low before the afternoon crowd.
Offers for regular customers
An offer for the masher-bazar family that shops the fish, tea and sweets counters in one month, written on the bill of the counter that earned it.
Rice and farm districts behind a Bengal supermarket's fresh section
The fresh section begins in the farm districts. These are two of them.
- Purba Barddhaman has rice as its main crop, and the district calls itself the only one in West Bengal strong in both industry and agriculture.
- Purba Medinipur is mainly farmland growing paddy, potato, vegetables and betelvine, and its produce goes to local markets and to nearby Kolkata.
Why a Bengal general store is at its fullest in the first week of the month and its fish counter at its busiest by noon
The first week of the month, when every family brings its month's list
In many Bengal families the month's shopping, the masher bazar, is done in the first week after the salary comes. A family fills two baskets with forty things, shared among the aisle, the fish counter and the sweets counter. Each writes its share on its own slip, and a mistake among the forty is hard to find once the bag is closed.
The fish counter, with its ice, its scale and its waste
A Bengal general store with a fish counter sells ilish, rui and chingri to families who want them cut and cleaned. The fish is weighed whole, the head and the scales come off, and the customer asks for the price by the weight of what she takes home. The whole weight, the cleaned weight and the rate on the board are three numbers, and the bill uses the one that was said last.
Tea by the hundred grams, curd by the pot, packets by the piece
The tea is poured and weighed by the hundred grams, the mishti doi is sold by the earthen pot, and the packets are counted by the piece. Three counters, three units, three ways of writing a sale. A weight of tea and a pot of curd cannot be added in one column, and the shop cannot say which counter earned more.
Questions a Bengal supermarket asks
The customer says the weight of the whole fish, but the board rate is for the cleaned weight. Which do I bill?
Keep whole fish and cleaned fish as two items with their own rates, and bill the weight she agreed to on the one she chose. The bill carries the item and the weight, so the figure said last at the counter is not the one that decides.
A customer brings back a pot of mishti doi that was cracked when she opened it. How do I show it?
The first bill stays as it was. Take the pot off the count as broken, with the day, and give her a fresh pot, taking that one off the count too. The count and her page both show what happened.
Ilish heads are sold separately from the fish, by the piece. Can I bill them?
Yes. The head is an item of its own with a rate for a piece, so a customer who wants the fish and the head gets two lines on one bill.
A handloom block and Kolkata's big stores
Spencer's Retail had its top-selling outlets in Kolkata in 2012. A general store in the same city serves the same families month after month, so the list one family brought last month is the best guide to what the shelf needs this month.
Dhaniakhali block in Hooghly is world famous for its handloom sarees, grows paddy and potato, and has a large number of potato cold storages. A general store near such a block sells to the weaving families in the lanes and to the potato growers by the cold stores, and their paydays are not the same.