A second qist plan while the first still runs

He has paid every fridge instalment on time and now he wants a washing machine as well. Do not answer from his record. Answer from three numbers: what is still standing on plan one, what his household can carry every month, and what your own galla can afford to send out of the shop for another year.

Why his good record is the wrong place to start

Half past six in the evening, the shop lights just switched on. Adnan buys a packet of tea, then stands at the counter the way a man stands when he came in for a second reason. Seven instalments paid on the fridge, not one of them late. Now his wife wants a washing machine, and he is asking whether you will write a second plan.

Your first thought is his record, and his record is excellent. That is exactly what makes this moment dangerous. A record tells you how he behaved carrying one instalment. It tells you nothing about how he will behave carrying two.

The real question is not "is he a good customer?" It is "can his house carry two instalments at once, and can my shop carry two at once?" Both of those are arithmetic, and arithmetic can be done in three minutes with him standing there.

Run the same four tests on everybody who asks. Then the answer belongs to the shop, not to your mood on a given evening. And if you have never set down how a plan should be shaped in the first place, build the first one properly before you sell anybody a second.

Test one: what is still standing on plan one

Start with the balance, never with the behaviour.

Open his khata and look at one number: how much of plan one is still to come. Not how many instalments he has paid. How many are left.

Say the fridge was Rs 42,000 on a twelve-month plan and seven instalments are done. Five stand, about Rs 17,500. That is money already promised to you out of the same household budget, on the same date, for five more months.

A customer eleven instalments into a twelve-month plan is nearly free. A customer three instalments into an eighteen-month plan is carrying that weight for fifteen more months, and a second plan would sit on top of every one of them.

The rule that keeps you out of trouble is short: the closer plan one is to finishing, the easier the yes. Nothing else about him has changed.

Test two: what his month can carry

Now add the two instalments together and hold the total against what leaves his house every month.

You do not know his earnings to the rupee. You do know roughly what a man in his line of work brings home, and you know what he buys from you. That is enough for an honest guess, and an honest guess beats no number at all.

Say Adnan's fridge instalment is Rs 3,500. The washing machine plan you would write is Rs 2,800 across ten months. Together, Rs 6,300 every month. He also runs a grocery khata with you that settles around Rs 4,000. So Rs 10,300 leaves that house before rent, electricity or school fees are touched.

Say both plans run side by side for one month

What you believe that house earns in a monthRs 45,000

Your ceiling: a quarter of it, fixed in advanceRs 11,250

Plan one, the fridge instalmentRs 3,500

Plan two, the washing machine instalmentRs 2,800

Both instalments together, against that ceilingRs 6,300

His ordinary grocery khata, cleared each monthRs 4,000

Leaving his house every month, before rent and feesRs 10,300

Only an example, never a claim about a real shop or a real household. Put your own figures in the same six rows and read the last line.

Set one ceiling for every customer and stop arguing case by case. A workable one: what a household pays you in instalments must never pass a quarter of what you believe it earns in a month. If you put Adnan's house at Rs 45,000, a quarter is Rs 11,250, and Rs 6,300 of instalments fits inside it. Add the grocery khata and it is tight, but it stands.

Pick your own fraction. A fifth is safer, a third is brave. What matters is picking it once, in a quiet hour, and then applying it to everybody who walks in. A ceiling decided in advance is the only thing that survives a customer you genuinely like standing in front of you. The same habit already decides how much udhaar one name should carry.

Test three: how far a clean record actually goes

A good record is real, and it is smaller than it feels.

Seven instalments paid on time prove seven months. They prove his work was steady for seven months and that he is the sort of man who comes in on the date. They do not prove his work will hold for the twenty-two months that two overlapping plans would run.

So let the record buy him something, and not everything. A clean payer earns a bigger ceiling, never an unlimited one. In practice that might mean stretching your quarter to a third for him, or dropping the second down payment, or giving him the longer plan he asked for. It never means the ceiling disappears.

Ask the plain version out loud: if his work stopped in month four, how much would be standing across both plans together? If that figure frightens you, the second plan is too big, however well he has paid so far.

One thing worth saying to yourself before you write anything. The markup on a qist plan is a one-time profit that you set when the plan is made, and it never grows after that. Nothing is ever added for an instalment that arrives late: no late fee, no charge for the delay, not one rupee, not ever. A second plan simply gets its own one-time markup at its own start, and there it ends.

A man who never missed a fridge instalment can still miss a washing machine instalment, because it is the same money in the same pocket. What you do when a qist is missed does not soften because he was good before.

Test four: what your own shop can carry

This is the test most shopkeepers skip, and it is the one that closes shops.

A qist plan is your money sitting in somebody else's house. The washing machine cost you Rs 24,000 from your supplier. The day you hand it over, that Rs 24,000 walks out of your galla and comes back in ten small pieces across ten months.

Ten in the morning on a Tuesday, and the supplier's man is at the shutter with an invoice in his hand. Your book says Rs 380,000 is owed to you across forty running plans. Your galla holds Rs 9,000. You are profitable on paper and you cannot pay the man standing in front of you. That is the danger of a second plan in one picture.

So before you weigh the customer's numbers, weigh your own. Count what is already lent out across every plan on your books. Ask what you would do next if three customers went quiet in the same fortnight. If the honest answer is "borrow", you have no room for a second plan for anybody, and his record has nothing to do with it.

Your shop can carry only so much at one time. Deciding who gets that room is your work, and the fair way to decide it is the amount and the month, not the friendship.

Two plans, two records, never one merged balance

When you say yes, say yes to a second plan. Not to a bigger one.

The tempting shortcut is to add the fridge balance and the washing machine price together, call the total one plan, and write one fat instalment. It looks tidier on the page. It is the worst thing you can do here.

A merged balance hides which item has been paid for. Fourteen months later he says the fridge was finished long ago and everything since went to the machine. You say the payments were split across both. Neither of you can prove a word of it, because the day you merged them, the record lost the ability to answer that question.

Six things the second plan must own by itself

• Its own khata, opened fresh, not added to the first
• The item written by name, price and model
• Its own down payment, taken before the item leaves
• Its own schedule of dates, on the same day of the month
• Its own closing date, written where you can both see it
• A fresh yes from the guarantor, for this item and this amount

Keep them apart all the way down. Separate record, separate schedule, separate item written by name, separate closing date. When the fridge is finished, it is finished, and you can say so with a page in your hand instead of a memory.

In Wasoolo each plan sits in its own khata with its own schedule, so the two never blur into one number, and a statement shows him exactly what is left on each item. Hand him that page once and the argument that would have cost you a customer never starts.

The middle answers that beat both yes and no

Yes and no are not the only doors in the room. Four answers sit between them, and one of them is usually the right one.

Ask for a bigger down payment. If the first plan took ten per cent down, ask twenty or twenty-five on the second. It cuts the amount standing, shortens the plan, and tells you something true: a man who cannot find the down payment will not find ten instalments either.

Shorten the plan. Six months instead of twelve. The monthly figure rises, so run it against your ceiling again, but your money comes home in half the time and the overlap with plan one is brief.

Wait until plan one has three instalments left. Give this answer most often. "Two more months on the fridge and the machine is yours." He hears a yes with a date on it, not a refusal. You get almost no overlap. Nobody loses face in front of the shop.

Sell him the second item on ordinary udhaar instead. For a smaller item this is cleaner than a plan: no schedule, no markup, he clears it as he can alongside his groceries. The difference between udhaar and a qist plan on a big item tells you which one this item wants.

The counter answer, in words that hold up later

✓Say this

• Two more instalments on the fridge, and the machine is yours.
• I can do Rs 2,800 for ten months, with Rs 6,000 down today.
• This will be a second plan, with its own page and its own dates.
• Let me speak to your guarantor myself before I write it.

✕Not this

• You have always paid, so take it and we will settle it somehow.
• I will add it to the fridge balance and give you one instalment.
• Pay whenever you can. We do not need a schedule for you.
• Your guarantor signed once already, that covers this one too.

Small things that make two plans easy

Put both instalments on the same day of the month. If the fridge falls on the 5th, write the machine for the 5th as well. One date for him to remember, one visit, one reminder, and you see both payments inside the same minute. Two separate dates mean twice the chasing and twice the chance of a miss.

Ask the guarantor again, in person. The man who stood behind a Rs 42,000 fridge plan did not agree to Rs 28,000 more, and assuming he did is how you lose two customers in one afternoon. Call him, name the new item and the new amount, and get a fresh yes. He may refuse, and a refusal is useful: it usually means he knows something about that household's month. Whether a plan this size needs a guarantor at all is its own question.

Write the second plan exactly the way you wrote the first. Item, price, down payment, instalment amount, the dates, both signatures. A second plan for a customer you trust is precisely where paperwork gets skipped, and precisely where it earns its keep.

Common questions

He has never missed an instalment. Is that not enough on its own?

It is good evidence and it is short evidence. Seven paid instalments prove seven steady months, not the twenty-two months two plans would run. Let the record raise his ceiling, and keep the ceiling.

Should I merge the two plans into one instalment to make it simpler?

No. A merged balance hides which item has been paid for, and any argument fourteen months later becomes impossible to settle. Two records, two schedules, two closing dates.

How many plans can one customer run at the same time?

Judge it by the money, not the count. Add every instalment he owes you, hold the total against the fraction of his monthly earnings you fixed in advance, and the number of plans answers itself.

Does the guarantor on plan one cover plan two?

Usually not, and never assume it. Speak to him yourself, name the item and the amount, and take a fresh yes. If he will not stand behind the second one, take that seriously.

Should I charge something more because he owes me on two plans now?

No. The markup is a one-time profit fixed when a plan is made. Nothing is added later, no late fee for a slow instalment, no charge for the second plan being a second plan.

What is the safest answer when I am unsure?

"Two more months on the fridge and the machine is yours." It is a yes with a date, it costs him nothing, and it removes the overlap that would have made the second plan risky.