The customer who wants a slip every time

Give a slip whenever money changes hands on credit, whenever somebody else collects or delivers, and whenever the amount is large enough to mind losing. A cash sale of Rs 60 does not need one. What matters is that the slip carries the date, the goods, the amount and the running balance, and that you keep the second copy.

The customer who wants a slip every time

Some customers ask for one on a Rs 200 purchase. They wait while you write it, they fold it into a shirt pocket, and you know that piece of paper will be lost before he reaches the corner.

It is easy to read that as distrust. You have been serving his family for eleven years and now he wants a receipt for two hundred rupees.

The busy version is worse. Four people are waiting, the boy is asking for change, and one man is standing there with his hand out for a slip you have not written yet.

So the honest question is not whether slips are a good idea. It is which sales genuinely need one, and how to write those fast enough that the counter keeps moving.

Why he asks, and it is not about you

Almost nobody asks for a slip because he thinks the shopkeeper is dishonest. He asks because of something in his own life.

He is buying for somebody else and has to show what he spent. He is a helper sent by his employer with cash. He is settling his own household accounts at the end of the week. Or he simply cannot hold four purchases in his head and wants something to check the total against later.

There is one more reason, and it is the useful one. A customer with a credit balance is carrying a number he cannot verify, and every slip he holds is a piece of that number he no longer has to trust anybody about.

Read it that way and the request stops being an insult. A customer who collects slips is a customer who will not argue with you in six months, which is the expensive version of the same relationship described in when a customer says he already paid you.

What a slip has to carry to be worth writing

A slip that says only an amount is barely better than nothing, because it proves a number without proving what the number was for.

What has to be on a slip for it to be worth writing

• The date, written properly, not just the day of the week
• The customer's name, so the slip belongs to somebody
• The goods in ordinary words, never in a shop code
• The rate and the quantity, not only the total
• What was paid today and what is still running
• Your shop's name and phone number, stamped or printed

The running balance is the line most shops leave out and the one that does the most work. A slip showing that he paid Rs 2,000 and Rs 3,400 remains means the next conversation starts from an agreed figure instead of from two guesses.

Write the goods in ordinary words rather than codes. "Two bags cement" is readable by him, by his wife, and by you in four months. A code only your shop understands turns the slip into a receipt he cannot actually use.

And put your shop's name and number on it. It costs nothing, it makes the slip look like a document rather than a scrap, and it means that when he does have a question, he calls you instead of assuming.

The duplicate book is the cheap version

The single most useful thing on the counter of a credit shop is a duplicate receipt book, and most shops that need one do not have one.

You write once and the carbon does the rest. He takes the top copy, you keep the one underneath, and the two of you now hold the same record without you writing anything twice.

Say you buy one duplicate slip book for the counter

One duplicate book of 200 slipsRs 250

Slips a credit counter writes in a monthabout 120

So a full year of slips costs you roughlyRs 1,800

One disputed credit sale you could not proveRs 2,400

The first argument you settle has paid for the yearRs 600

That arithmetic is the whole argument. Slips are close to free, and a single settled dispute pays for years of them. The reason shops skip it is never the money, it is the twenty seconds, and the twenty seconds only feel expensive until the first time a slip saves you an afternoon.

If your records are on a phone the same thing happens automatically: the entry is made once and a receipt for it can be sent to the customer straight away, with the balance already on it. The mechanics of that are in the walkthrough on making invoices, receipts and statements.

When a slip is worth it and when it is not

Writing one for every sale in a busy shop is not realistic and pretending otherwise is how shops end up writing none at all.

Always write one when the sale is on credit, because that is a number that will be discussed again. Always write one when somebody other than the customer is paying or collecting, since that payment has to survive a journey through a third person. Always write one for a large amount, and let your own shop decide what large means.

Skip it for small cash sales where nothing is left open. Money handed over, goods handed over, nothing to remember, nobody to convince.

One shopkeeper kept a slip book only for deliveries, because a boy on a motorcycle was carrying goods to four houses every evening and coming back with cash. Within a month the pattern of short payments he had been quietly annoyed about for a year simply stopped, without a single conversation about it. Nothing had been said to anybody; the paper said it.

The middle case is a regular who asks every time on small amounts. Write them, and stop feeling anything about it. He is not accusing you of anything and the paper is costing you one rupee. What he is really doing is telling you what kind of record keeper he is, which is useful information about a man you extend credit to.

What the slip does for you, not for him

The reason to build the habit is not customer satisfaction. It is that the second copy is your own record, written at the moment of the sale, without you having to remember anything.

This is the part shopkeepers realise late. You start writing slips to satisfy customers and you keep writing them because of what they do for your own evening.

At closing, the copies in your book are what you count against. A drawer that is short by Rs 900 with a stack of slips beside it becomes a two-minute check rather than an evening of trying to reconstruct the day, which is exactly what counting the cash box every day is meant to give you.

It protects you from your own staff without any accusation being involved. Where every sale on credit has a slip, an entry that is missing has an obvious hole, and a helper knows the record exists before he decides anything.

And when a customer does dispute something, the tone changes completely. You are not defending your memory, you are looking something up, and a shop that can look things up is one people trust with bigger balances, which is quietly why regular customers stay.

Making it fast enough to survive a busy counter

None of this survives contact with a rush hour unless it is set up to be fast.

Keep the book open, not in a drawer. Keep a pen tied to it, since half the delay in writing a slip is finding a pen. Write while the goods are being bagged rather than after, so the twenty seconds happen inside time you were spending anyway.

Fill the shop's name once and only fill in what changes. If you have a rubber stamp for the name and number, one press does what five seconds of writing would.

And say the total out loud as you write it. He hears it, you write it, and both of you are agreeing to the same number at the same moment. That single habit removes more future arguments than the paper itself does.

Common questions

My customers never keep the slips I give them. Why bother?

Because the copy you keep is the one that matters, and it would be worth writing even if every customer threw his away at the door. The slip he takes is a courtesy; the slip you retain is your record of the sale, written at the moment it happened. If he loses his and later disputes something, you still hold the answer.

Is a phone photograph of my khata page the same thing?

It works well enough for one balance and badly as a habit, since a photograph of a page shows every other customer on it too. Send a slip or a statement for that one customer instead, or write his line on a separate piece of paper. Other people's balances are their business and a photograph that travels is a photograph you cannot take back.

A customer wants a slip for goods he took on credit. Should the slip show the whole balance?

Showing the running balance is the more useful version, and it is what turns a receipt into something that prevents arguments rather than just recording one sale. Write what he took today, then what the total now stands at. The only time to leave it off is when somebody else is collecting the goods and the balance is not their business.

Should I number my slips?

Numbering costs nothing and makes a missing slip visible, which is most of the value of keeping copies at all. Pre-numbered duplicate books do it for you. Once slips are numbered, a gap in the book is a question you can actually ask, and everybody who works at the counter knows that.

What if a customer refuses to take a slip?

Write it anyway and keep your copy, because the record was never really for him. Do not make a point of it and do not explain yourself, since the writing takes the same twenty seconds whether he wants the paper or not. Most people who refuse are simply in a hurry rather than making a statement.

Do slips replace the khata?

They support it and they cannot replace it, because a stack of slips is not a balance. The khata is where the running total lives and where you can see what a customer owes without adding anything up. Slips are the proof behind individual lines in it, and the two together are what let you answer any question without an argument.