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Daily, weekly or monthly qist: which gets paid?
The same plan collects very differently at Rs 200 a day, Rs 1,400 a week or Rs 6,000 a month. Match the rhythm to how your customer actually earns.
The same Rs 24,000 plan, collected three ways
Match the rhythm to how the customer earns. A daily wage earner pays daily and almost never falls behind. A salaried man pays monthly with no trouble at all. The wrong rhythm turns a good customer into a late one, and the plan is what fails, not the person.
One plan, Rs 24,000, three rhythms
A customer takes a sewing machine from you. Total price agreed at Rs 24,000, and he is paying it over four months.
There are three honest ways to collect exactly that: Rs 200 a day for a hundred and twenty days, Rs 1,400 a week for seventeen weeks, or Rs 6,000 a month for four months. Same money, same item, same customer.
They are not the same arrangement at all. One of them will be finished on time with almost no chasing. One of them will need three phone calls. One of them may quietly break in month three, and which one depends almost entirely on how the money reaches that man's pocket in the first place.
Say a sewing machine at Rs 24,000 over about four months
Nobody chooses this on purpose. Most shops offer whatever they have always offered, and then blame the customer when it does not work.
What each rhythm actually costs you to collect
Before comparing them on feel, compare them on work. Collection is not free, and the cost lands on you.
What the collecting itself costs you over one plan
A hundred and twenty daily collections is a hundred and twenty small interruptions, or one trip a day if you go to him. Even at two minutes each, that is four hours over the plan, plus the walking. Seventeen weekly collections is under an hour of total handling. Four monthly collections is almost nothing.
So on effort alone, monthly wins easily and daily is the most expensive thing you can do.
But effort is only half the arithmetic. The other half is what happens when a payment does not arrive, because a broken plan costs far more than any amount of collecting. That is the trade the whole decision turns on: small frequent asks are more work and less risk; large rare asks are less work and more risk.
Daily: the highest recovery, the highest effort
Daily instalments work because the amount is small enough to come out of what is in his pocket right now, before it turns into something else.
For a man who earns daily, a rickshaw driver, a labourer, a vegetable seller, a stall holder, Rs 200 is what he has on him at the end of the day. He never has to plan for it, save for it, or set it aside. That is why daily plans have the best record of finishing.
There is a second advantage that shopkeepers underestimate. You find out on day two, not in month three. A man who misses Monday and Tuesday is telling you something while the balance is still small, so you can talk to him early, and a missed qist payment is much easier to fix when it is Rs 400 behind rather than Rs 12,000 behind.
The cost is real, though. It is a hundred and twenty little transactions, all of which have to be recorded, or your record and his memory will drift apart within a fortnight. If somebody else collects, that is somebody else's honesty in the middle of your money.
There is one more thing daily does quietly, and it is worth naming. It builds a habit. After three weeks the payment is no longer a decision he makes each evening, it is simply part of walking past your shop, like buying tea. Habits survive bad weeks in a way intentions do not, and that is most of why these plans finish.
Daily suits: small amounts, short plans, customers who pass your shop every day anyway, and anybody whose income arrives daily.
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Weekly: where most shops end up, for good reasons
Weekly is the middle road, and it is the middle road because it fits how a lot of people actually live.
Many customers get money in weekly lumps: a weekly wage, a market day, a bazaar day, a delivery round that pays on Fridays. For them Rs 1,400 on Friday is easier than Rs 200 every single day, because they only have to be organised once.
It also cuts your work by about six times compared with daily, while still catching a problem within seven days rather than thirty. And it produces a natural rhythm at the counter: everybody on a weekly plan comes on the same one or two days, so collection becomes part of the week instead of a scattered nuisance.
The weakness is the day itself. If his money arrives on Friday and the payment is due on Wednesday, the plan will limp all year, and neither of you will name the reason. The day of the week matters as much as the amount.
Weekly suits: medium amounts, plans of three to six months, customers with a weekly income day, and shops that do not want a daily collection habit.
Monthly: least work, biggest single ask
Monthly is the cleanest to run and the most demanding for the customer, because he has to hold on to a large sum for four weeks without spending it.
For a salaried man that is easy: the money comes in one piece, he pays you within a day or two, and the plan almost runs itself. For anybody whose income is uneven, monthly is the hardest of the three, because he must save, and saving out of an irregular income is exactly what most people cannot do.
Monthly also hides trouble the longest. If a payment is missed you learn about it after thirty days, when the amount is large enough that the conversation is uncomfortable and the customer has already used the money for something else.
There is a middle version worth knowing: monthly with a mid month touch. He pays Rs 6,000 on the 3rd, and around the 18th you send a short, friendly message with the remaining plan. No collection, no pressure, just a reminder that a plan exists. That single message prevents a surprising number of missed months.
Monthly suits: salaried customers, larger amounts, longer plans, and customers who live far enough away that frequent collection is impractical.
Match the rhythm to how he earns
Here is the whole decision in one rule: the instalment should be due just after money reaches him, and small enough that it is not competing with the household's other needs.
Pick the rhythm from the customer's own income day
- Earns daily (rickshaw, labour, stall, hawker): daily instalments
- Paid weekly, or has one market day: weekly, on the day after
- Salaried on a fixed date: monthly, a day or two after payday
- Uneven income: the smallest rhythm he can manage, never monthly
- Lives far away: weekly or monthly, with a message instead of a visit
- Ask when his money arrives, not whether he can pay monthly
Ask the question directly when the plan is being made. Not "can you pay monthly?", which everybody answers yes to, but "when does money come to you, and on what day of the week or month?" People answer that honestly, because it is not a test.
Then set the date a day or two after the money arrives. Not the same day, because he has other things to do with it that day, and not a week later, when it is gone. This is the same logic that runs through collecting weekly or at month end for ordinary udhaar, and it matters more on a plan, because a plan has a schedule to protect.
One more thing that decides the rhythm: the size of the down payment. A plan that starts with a decent first payment has smaller instalments, which means a wider choice of rhythms and less pressure at every step. The full shape of a plan that stays fair is set out in how to build a qist plan.
Mixing them, and switching mid plan
You do not have to run one rhythm for every customer, and you do not have to keep the same rhythm for a whole plan.
One thing must not change when you switch, and it is worth being firm about: the item stays his, the total stays the total, and the change is only about the size and spacing of the payments. A customer who thinks that asking for an easier rhythm will cost him something will not ask, and you will find out about the trouble a month later than you needed to.
Mixing across customers is normal and sensible. Daily for the men who pass your shop every day, weekly for the market crowd, monthly for the salaried. The only rule is that each plan must be written down clearly, so nobody is arguing about what was agreed.
Switching mid plan is usually a rescue and it is often the right move. A monthly customer who missed twice is not going to catch up with a bigger monthly amount. Moving him to weekly instalments of a size he can genuinely manage will recover far more money than repeating the same monthly ask and being disappointed.
Do it properly when you do it. Say the remaining balance out loud, agree the new amount and the new days, write it in both records, and change nothing else about the total price. Nothing is ever added because a payment was late. The total he agreed at the start is the total he pays, whatever rhythm carries it.
There is a version of switching that goes the other way too. A daily customer who has paid faithfully for two months can be moved to weekly, which saves you effort and treats him like somebody who has earned a little trust. Say that out loud when you do it, because it is a compliment, and people repay compliments.
Running any rhythm without drowning in entries
A daily plan is a hundred and twenty entries. That is exactly where paper gives up, and where most shops quietly stop recording and start remembering.
In Wasoolo a qist plan carries its own schedule, so the plan knows what is due and when, whichever rhythm you chose. Each payment is recorded against that schedule with a date, so what has been paid and what is left is never a matter of memory, and a customer who wants to see it can be shown the whole plan in one screen.
Reminders come off the same schedule. The customer gets a notice on his own login if he uses the customer app, and there is a one-tap button that opens a WhatsApp chat with the amount ready, which you send yourself. On a weekly or monthly plan that message is what replaces standing outside somebody's house.
When the price includes a markup you set once at the start, it is part of the agreed total, recorded once. Nothing changes because a payment came late. And when the plan finishes, the printed statement shows every instalment on one sheet, which is the paper both of you will want on the day the last payment is made.
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Common questions
Which rhythm gets paid most reliably?
Daily, for people who earn daily, because the money is taken before it becomes something else. But it is also the most work for you, and if you cannot keep it up honestly every day, a weekly plan that you actually run well beats a daily plan you collect twice a week and record from memory.
My customer wants monthly because the amount sounds smaller in his head. Should I agree?
Ask when his money arrives. If it comes daily or weekly, monthly means he has to save, and saving is the thing that fails. Say it kindly: "Your money comes every week, so let us take it every week. It will be easier for you and neither of us will be chasing anything."
Is a daily plan worth it for a small item?
Often yes, because small items suit short plans and short plans suit daily amounts. A Rs 6,000 item at Rs 100 a day is finished in two months with almost no chasing. Just make sure you are recording every single day, or the record and his memory will drift apart within a fortnight.
Can I charge a little more for daily collection since it is more work?
Whatever the price is, it is set once when the plan is made and both of you agree it. It is not tied to how often you collect, it does not grow later, and nothing is ever added because a payment is late. If daily collection is genuinely too much work for a particular plan, offer weekly instead of pricing the effort in.
He has missed two monthly payments. Should I move him to weekly?
Usually yes, and it is a rescue rather than a punishment. Say the remaining balance out loud, agree a weekly amount he can genuinely manage, set the day just after his money arrives, and write the new schedule down. The total stays the total. You will recover much more this way than by repeating an ask that has already failed twice.
How do I keep track of a hundred daily payments without losing my mind?
Record each one the moment it happens, in a place where the plan already knows what is due. Do not save them up for the evening, because the ones you forget are always the ones that get argued about. If you are on paper, keep one page per plan with a box per day; if you are on a phone, let the plan's own schedule do the counting.