Billing for a shop that sells by the foot, the bag and the quintal.

01 · Units

Ten units, because this trade genuinely uses ten

Cement goes by the bag, TMT by the quintal, wire by the metre, pipe by the foot, paint by the litre, fittings by the piece and rods by the bundle. A system that counts everything in pieces makes the counter do conversions all day and puts the stock figure wrong by the end of the week. Units here are free text and quantities take decimals, so eleven and a half feet is eleven and a half feet.

• pcs, kg, mtr, ft, bag, box, ltr, set, bundle, quintal
• Type your own if the list is missing one
• Decimal quantities for cut lengths and part bags
• Any script, so bora and gattha work too

02 · Credit

The contractor who pays when the job is paid

A hardware shop's real credit risk is not a neighbour taking a packet of nails, it is a contractor running a tab across a three-month site. Each party carries one date you expect to be paid by, nothing is said about them until it is near, and when the money arrives it is allocated to the specific bills it clears rather than knocked off one running figure.

• A payment-by date per party
• One payment split across several bills
• Part-paid bills keep their open amount
• Parties grouped by area for collection

03 · Barcode

Off, because most of this stock has no barcode

Scanning is switched off by default for hardware, which is the honest default: loose screws, cut wire, sand and cement do not carry a barcode, and an empty scanner on every bill is a step that wastes time. It can be turned on for the packaged part of the shop without affecting anything else.

• Barcode off by default, on in one tap
• Search by name from the first few letters
• Items added while billing, not beforehand
• Negative stock allowed for material sold before it is entered

04 · Tax

Eighteen percent, with per-item exceptions

GST is on at eighteen percent from the first bill, which covers most of the trade, and the HSN picker offers cement, TMT, paint, sanitary, pipe and timber codes rather than a general list. Items on a different rate carry their own, and the bill splits tax correctly for a buyer in your state or outside it.

• GST on, 18 percent, from the first bill
• Cement, TMT, paint and sanitary HSN codes offered
• Per-item rate where a product differs
• Estimates before a job firms up, then a GST invoice