The night somebody breaks into your shop

The lock is cut and the shutter is up. Do not tidy anything yet. Look, photograph, and list what is missing before you touch a shelf. The night's cash is usually your smallest loss. The biggest one is your records, and that is the loss you can make impossible long before it happens.

The first hour, before you touch anything

Ten past seven in the morning. Rashid pushed the shutter and it went up too easily. The lock lay in the drain outside, cut clean through, and the galla stood open on the counter, notes gone, coins still in it.

His first movement was to start picking things up. That is the wrong first movement.

Stand at the door and look. Photograph everything before it moves: the cut lock, the open drawer, the gap on the shelf, the marks on the shutter. Then walk the shop once, slowly, with a sheet of paper, and write down what is not there.

Do not sweep. Do not put the fallen tins back. The moment you tidy, you lose your only chance to tell what was taken in the night from what you sold over the counter.

Then call whoever else holds a key, so they hear it from you and not from the street. Then the police. The broom comes last.

Count what is gone, not what you fear is gone

Fear counts high. Most shopkeepers name a figure two or three times the real one, then spend half a year feeling poorer than they are. Count three piles separately.

Cash. What was in the galla at closing, less the change float. If you count the drawer every night you know this within a hundred rupees. If you do not, you are guessing, and this is the morning you find out. The habit of counting the drawer against the book pays for itself once, on a day like this.

Stock. Walk the shelves with your stock list in hand. What goes is small, costly and easy to carry: cigarette cartons, top-up cards, razor blades, batteries, a charger rack. Sacks of flour stay put.

Things. The lock, the shutter, the weighing scale, the calculator, the register, the shop phone.

Say the shutter of a small shop is cut one night

What the street will say was takenRs 214,500

Cash left in the galla overnightRs 9,000

Stock lifted off the shelves, at your buying rateRs 31,000

New lock, shutter repair, one latchRs 4,500

Udhaar balances written in the register that wentRs 170,000

The same balances, still sitting on the computerRs 170,000

What that night actually cost the shopRs 44,500

Only an example, never a claim about a real shop. The register was the biggest line on the list and the smallest loss on the night, because a second copy of it existed somewhere else.

The night's cash is nearly always the smallest line. The stock hurts more. And the thing your whole street will assume you lost, the udhaar written in that register, is not lost at all if a second copy lives elsewhere.

Open the shop the same day

Almost always, open. Half a day, a swept floor, a new lock by noon, but open.

A shutter down all day tells the street you are finished, and the street repeats it faster than you can correct it. The people who owe you money need to see you behind your own counter. Your rent does not care what happened at three in the morning.

One plain sentence, the same one to everybody who asks: "Somebody broke in last night. We are open."

What you tell the street the next morning

✓Say this

• Somebody broke in last night. We are open, come in.
• Your balance is written and it has not changed by one rupee.
• The lock is new. The floor is clean. Nothing else changes here.
• I have filed the report. That is honestly all I know so far.

✕Not this

• They cleaned me out. It was more than two hundred thousand.
• The whole register is gone. I have no idea who owes me what.
• I know exactly who did it. I am simply not saying the name.
• We are shut until all of this is sorted out properly.

Never announce the amount. A number said out loud on your own street doubles by evening, and a doubled number changes how everyone who owes you thinks about paying. Do not say the register is gone. Do not name a suspect, not even to the shopkeeper you trust most. If you are wrong you have destroyed a man, and if you are right you have warned him.

What the police report can and cannot do

Be honest with yourself. The goods rarely come back. Small shop break-ins are quiet, the items are ordinary, and nobody traces a carton of cigarettes across a city.

File it the same day anyway, for what it does buy you. It is the only piece of paper that exists if a landlord or a supplier asks about that night later. If your things surface in a second-hand market, the report makes them yours again. If a helper turns out to be involved, a filed report changes that conversation completely. And if three shops on one street are hit in a season, the pattern only exists on paper.

Take your list, your photographs, the phone's serial number and the make of the lock. Write the amounts as you counted them, not as they feel. A figure you rounded up is the figure somebody reads back to you later.

The week after: putting the numbers back

The cash went in one night. The records take a week.

Start with the sentence that matters most: money other people owe you is not stolen. A cut lock does not cancel an udhaar. Nobody's balance changed at three in the morning. What was taken was your copy of it. So the whole question is whether a second copy exists.

If it does, this is an afternoon of work. When the khata and the stock list are in the cloud, a stolen register and a stolen phone carry nothing away with them. You sign in on another phone or on the computer and every name, balance and date is sitting there. Wasoolo keeps that backup and restore for exactly this morning, and its Trash holds anything deleted for thirty days, so a wrong tap during a panicked clean-up is not permanent. That is the whole argument for keeping the record where a crowbar cannot reach.

If no second copy exists, you rebuild it, slowly. Supplier bills first, because they tell you what came into the shop. Then your own delivery slips and receipt books. Then the phone calls, one name at a time: "my register was taken, tell me what is standing against you." Most people tell you the truth, some shave it, a few names you never recover. Mark whether the customer agreed the figure, because the ones who did not are your arguments six months from now.

Ask every supplier for a statement of your account. Then count the shelves and set your stock numbers from what is actually standing there, not from what the old list claims. The ordinary reasons stock goes missing with nobody breaking in are still running underneath this one, and you will never untangle them from a wrong number.

The goods that were never yours

Half past four on a Thursday, and Nasir remembered the crate. A supplier had left twelve tins of cooking oil in his store room on credit. Four were gone. So was the sewing machine a tailor from the same row had left with him for two days while his own place was painted.

This is what turns a bad week into a bad year, because two people you face every day now have a claim on you.

Decide it fast. The honest default is simple: it was in your shop, in your care, so you carry it, unless something written says otherwise. Not the law everywhere, not always fair, but it is the answer that keeps you a man other people leave their things with. What destroys you is not the paying. It is six weeks of "we will see", which each of them describes to somebody else as you refusing.

Offer one of three things inside two days: replace it, credit the amount against their khata, or split the loss down the middle. A tailor offered half on Saturday tells the row you are decent. A tailor told to wait tells the row something else.

Then keep a list: one page, everything in your shop that belongs to somebody else, with the date it arrived and the name. Produce that list in a minute and you settle the whole thing in a day. Without it you are arguing about a sewing machine nobody can prove was there.

Making the next morning survivable

All of the above is easier if four habits are already in place.

The whole day's takings never sleep in the shop. Leave the change float and nothing more. Whatever the day made goes home with you or into the bank. This one change turns a break-in from a disaster into a bill, and it is far easier to hold to when shop money and house money already live apart.

The record does not live in one place a crowbar can reach. A register on the shelf and a phone in the drawer are one place, not two, when one man with a bag takes both. A khata kept in Wasoolo sits on your phone, on the computer and in the cloud at once, which is the difference between an afternoon and a week of phone calls.

The costly stock does not all sleep on the front shelf. Cartons, cards, batteries, anything small and expensive goes to the back at closing. Four minutes a night.

Somebody other than you has a key and knows what the shop holds. A brother, a partner, a ten-year helper. If you are ill or travelling, that person can open up and say what is missing, which is the same problem leaving your shop for a month already forces you to solve.

The four minutes at closing that decide the next break-in

• Is the day's takings out of the shop, with only the change float left?
• Does the khata exist anywhere a crowbar cannot reach?
• Are the small costly items off the front shelf and in the back?
• Is there a current list of goods here that belong to somebody else?
• Can somebody other than you open up and say what is missing?
• Was the drawer counted against the book tonight, like every night?

About insurance, plainly. Most small shops do not carry it, the premiums and the paperwork rarely fit a one-counter dukan, and proving what was on your shelves is a fight of its own. Nobody here is selling you a policy. The four habits above are the practical substitute: you are not buying protection, you are spreading the risk so no single night reaches all of it.

Common questions

Should I keep the shop closed for a few days after a break-in?

Open the same day if you can, even for half a day. A shutter down all week tells your street you are finished, and people who owe you read a closed shop as a reason to wait.

How do I get my udhaar balances back if the register was taken?

Rebuild from your supplier bills and your own slips first, then call each name and agree the figure. If a second copy sits on a computer or in the cloud, none of that is needed.

Should I tell customers how much was taken?

No. Say that somebody broke in and that you are open. A number said out loud on your street doubles by evening, and it changes how the people who owe you think about paying.

A customer's goods were in my shop that night. Do I have to pay for them?

Unless something written says otherwise, treat it as yours to carry, and settle inside two days. Replace it, credit it against the khata, or offer half and say so. Delay costs more than the goods.

Is a police report worth filing if the goods will not come back?

Yes, the same day. It is the only paper that exists afterwards, it makes the goods yours if they surface in a market, and it changes everything if a helper was involved.

How much cash should I leave in the shop overnight?

Only the float you need to open with change the next morning. Everything else goes home or to the bank. That habit alone decides whether a break-in is a disaster or a bill.