How to keep shop accounts: a simple routine for sales, cash, baki and stock

Most khatas mix everything on one page. Keep five separate records instead:

1. Sales book - every bill: date, customer (if on credit), items, amount, how it was paid.
2. Cash book - money in and money out of the drawer and each account (cash, bank, bKash, Nagad), with the balance at the end of each day.
3. Baki (due) book - one page per customer: what they bought on credit, what they paid, what they owe now.
4. Purchase and supplier book - what you bought, from whom, what you paid and what you still owe them.
5. Expense book - rent, electricity, salaries, transport, tea for the staff. Small amounts add up.

Separate records let you check one against another, which is how mistakes are found.

• Count the drawer. Opening cash + cash sales + cash collected from baki - cash expenses - cash paid to suppliers = what should be in the drawer. Write down any difference the same day; a difference found a week later cannot be explained.
• Check mobile banking. Match the bKash, Nagad and Rocket messages against the bills marked paid that way.
• Write today's baki. Every credit sale goes on the customer's page, with the invoice number.
• Note what ran out. A short list of items customers asked for that you did not have.

• Read the baki book. List customers who owe more than a set amount or whose oldest bill is more than 30 days old. Call them, or send someone. Dues older than 90 days are often never paid; act before that.
• Check supplier dues. Know what you owe and when, so purchases do not stop at a bad moment.
• Reorder. Use the "ran out" list and a quick look at the shelves.

• Count stock, at least for your top products. Compare with what your records say you should have. A gap means theft, wastage, or sales not written down.
• Work out profit in three lines: - Sales for the month - cost of the goods you sold = gross profit. - Gross profit - expenses for the month = net profit. - Example: sales ৳6,00,000, cost of goods sold ৳4,80,000, gross profit ৳1,20,000; expenses ৳70,000; net profit ৳50,000.
• Look at the market's money. Total baki owed to you vs. total owed to suppliers. If the first grows month after month, your profit is sitting with customers, not in your drawer.

• Taking money for home from the drawer without writing it down. Record it as a withdrawal; it is not an expense, but it is not in the drawer either.
• Counting baki as cash. A credit sale is a sale, but the money is not yours yet.
• Using the sale price to value stock. Value stock at what you paid for it.
• Forgetting returns. A returned item must go back into stock and come off the customer's bill.

Every step above is arithmetic on records you already keep. Software does the arithmetic as you bill. In Posify24, for example:

• The point of sale writes the sales book, takes the item out of stock and records each payment against its account (cash, bank, bKash, Nagad, Rocket).
• A credit sale goes onto the customer's due ledger automatically; a due-ageing report sorts dues into 0-30, 31-60, 61-90 and 90+ days.
• The accounts module keeps the cash book, expenses, withdrawals, a daily opening and closing report, profit and loss and a balance sheet.
• Stock count and wastage screens handle the monthly count, and a low-stock list replaces the "ran out" note.

If you are deciding between a khata, Excel and software, read Excel, a paper khata or POS software. For a mudi or grocery shop, see POS software for grocery shops.