ProblemShop money
When your helper takes goods against his salary
He takes tea, soap and oil off your shelf all month and nobody writes it down. Here is the rate to charge him and the page that ends the salary-day fight.
Open a second khata in his name and write every packet the moment it leaves the shelf. Charge him your buy rate, fixed once and applied to everyone, your own house included. Then salary day is a settlement instead of an argument, because both of you have been reading the same running total all month.
The evening the account went wrong
Twenty to nine on the last day of the month. The shutter is half down, the cash is counted, and Adnan is standing by the fridge with his hand out. His salary is Rs 22,000 and he has waited thirty days for it.
You read out what he took. Tea on the 3rd. Four bars of soap. A litre of oil. Five kilos of rice. Washing powder. He nods at all five. Then you keep going and he stops nodding. The cold drinks. The biscuits. The second bottle of oil for his sister.
"That is not mine," he says. Not angrily, not yet. "I took four or five things all month. You are telling me five thousand."
He believes his number, you believe yours, and neither of you is lying. He remembers what he carried home in his hand. You are looking at a shelf short by far more. He takes his money, says nothing, and watches your counter differently after that.
It is a stock problem before it is a salary problem
Look at those thirty days again. Eleven bottles left your fridge with no entry behind them. Fourteen packets left the biscuit rack the same way. Five kilos came out of a rice sack you are still selling from.
Your stock count knows none of that. It only knows the shelf holds less than the book says. So when you work out why the numbers keep drifting, you hunt for a thief who does not exist while the answer stands beside you making tea. This is one of the quietest reasons stock goes missing and nobody knows how.
A second problem hides under the first, and it starts the fight. The goods left at your selling rate. That litre of oil is a Rs 640 hole, because a customer would have paid Rs 640. Adnan took something that cost you Rs 570, and Rs 570 is what he believes he owes. You are both right about your own number, and it is not the same number.
Retail, your cost, or a rate you set once
Three answers, and only one is comfortable.
The shelf rate is the easy one. He is buying, you are selling, the rate is the rate. But he unpacks the cartons and knows what the soap cost you. Charging him Rs 130 for a bar he watched you buy at Rs 110 is a small unkindness.
Your buy rate is the honest one. He pays what the shelf cost you, so you earn nothing on him and lose nothing either. On the month below that costs you Rs 670, and Rs 670 to keep a helper who does not feel squeezed is cheap.
Something in between works too: buy rate plus ten in every hundred. What matters more than the choice is that you make it once, say it on his first day, and never move it. A rate that shifts with your mood is worse than one he thinks is high.
The same basket, two rates, and what each one really costs you
Now do the sum nobody does. Say the argument costs you a helper who has stopped caring. He no longer mentions that the top shelf is empty, and no longer watches the door when you step away. Money is the small half of this. Trust is the big half.
What a whole month actually looks like
Put a real month on paper and the argument shrinks to a size you can hold.
Say your helper earns Rs 22,000 and takes goods off the shelf all month
Made-up figures, chosen to show the shape. Put your own helper's month through the same eleven lines and the argument gets much smaller.
Two lines there are the whole quarrel. The eleven cold drinks and the fourteen packets of biscuits come to Rs 1,328 at your buy rate, and they are the two a helper never counts. Nobody remembers a bottle out of a fridge on a hot afternoon. Everybody remembers five kilos of rice, carried home on his shoulder.
He is honest and he is also wrong, by the size of everything drunk, eaten or used up inside the shop. Notice the shape of the sum too: salary, the advance he took on the 8th, and the goods off the shelf sit as three separate lines. Blend them into one figure and you can never explain it.
Give him his own khata, not a new rule
A rule says "tell me when you take something". It survives four days. A page survives. Open a khata in his name, the way you would for any regular customer, and every item goes in the moment it leaves the shelf. Not at closing time, not on salary day, but while the packet is still in his hand.
Six things every line of a staff page has to carry
- The date, written the day the item left the shelf, never later
- The item and the quantity, in plain words a stranger could read
- The rate you agreed, written beside the item every single time
- The running total after that line, so nobody is surprised later
- Who wrote it, if more than one person can write on the page
- Anything returned unopened, written as its own separate line
Ten past four on a Tuesday. Adnan pulls a bottle of oil off the shelf and puts it in his bag. Before he moves, he picks up the pad beside the till, writes "18th, oil 1 litre, Rs 570", and reads the new total out loud: "Six thousand one hundred and ten." Ten seconds, and one whole argument has left your month.
Let him write his own line. If you write it, you are a man keeping a list of what his helper takes, and every entry feels like an accusation. If he writes it, the page is his, he knows the total because his own hand put it there, and nobody can spring a figure on him at month end.
Then read it together once a week. A total nobody has looked at for twenty-nine days is a shock on the thirtieth. It is the same discipline that keeps a helper's salary and advance straight instead of tangled.
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Agree a ceiling before the month starts
Here is what still goes wrong when the writing is perfect. He writes everything, honestly, for thirty days. On the last day the page says Rs 9,400 against a Rs 22,000 salary, with a Rs 3,000 advance against him too. What lands in his hand is Rs 9,600, and he has a house to run on it. He is not angry, he is quietly desperate, and one month later he will not be there.
So set the ceiling before the month begins, as a share of the salary. A quarter is a sensible start: on Rs 22,000 that is Rs 5,500 of goods. Tell him the number on day one. When the page crosses it, the answer is one sentence: "That is the limit, so this one is cash." A ceiling you both agreed in advance is not a punishment; it is what stops salary day arriving with Rs 200 in it.
When the numbers disagree anyway
They will, once or twice, even with a page.
After it starts, the rule is simple. Whatever is written stands, whatever is not written does not. If a bag of sugar shows on your shelf record and not on his page, it does not go on his page. Say so plainly and let it go: you are buying the system's credibility for the price of a bag of sugar.
The old account is a different job. Do not try to rebuild the eleven months before any of this began. You cannot, he cannot, and every attempt is a fight about who remembers better, the same dead end as a customer who says he already paid you.
Close it once, in one sitting. Put your figure and his side by side, split the difference, write the agreed number and both of you sign it. If you say Rs 5,000 and he says Rs 3,100, the number is Rs 4,050. Then never mention it again.
The same rule has to cover your own house
The whole thing collapses the moment you become the exception.
You take a packet of tea upstairs. Your wife sends your son down for eggs and soap. Your brother takes rice home on his way past, and nobody writes anything, because it is your shop and your rice. Adnan sees all of it, and the page you asked him to keep gets smaller.
So the house gets a khata too, in your own name, at the same staff rate. Yours will be a bigger number than his, and seeing it written is good for you. Most owners have no idea how much profit walks upstairs, which is the argument for keeping shop money and house money apart.
If your helper is a cousin, the page matters more, not less. Family in a shop is where "we will settle it later" does the most damage, as a family helper or an outsider in your shop sets out.
A register behind the counter does this perfectly, as long as both of you read it. On a phone, Wasoolo lets you keep a helper as his own party with a running balance, so every entry carries the date, the item and the rate, and the total is the same on his screen and yours. Its employees section keeps salary, advance and attendance separate from the goods he took. Wasoolo is 100% free to download, and the notebook works too.
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Common questions
What rate should I charge my helper for goods he takes?
Your buy rate, fixed once and written where everyone can see it. You earn nothing on him and lose nothing, and he never feels charged like a stranger inside the shop where he works. Buy rate plus ten in every hundred is fair if you want a cushion for breakage.
He says he took five things and my shelf says fifteen. Who is right?
Both of you, which is why arguing cannot settle it. He remembers what he carried home; you are counting what left the shelf, including everything drunk and eaten inside the shop. Close the old account by splitting the difference, then record every item the day it leaves.
Should I simply stop letting my helper take goods?
No, and you would lose a good helper for nothing. Taking a bar of soap off a shelf he stands beside all day is normal and costs very little. Nobody wrote the items down, so the number arrived as a surprise on the day he can least afford one.
What if he refuses to write his own entries?
Ask him to try it for thirty days and read the total with him every week. Most refusals are shyness about handwriting rather than dishonesty, so offer to write while he watches and says the figure out loud.
How much should I let him take in a month?
Start at about a quarter of his salary and say the number on the first day. On Rs 22,000 that is Rs 5,500. A ceiling agreed in advance protects him more than it protects you.
Do I need an app for this, or is a register enough?
A register is enough, as long as it lives behind the counter and both of you read it every week. The page fails only when it sits somewhere he cannot reach, or when the entry waits until closing time. Wasoolo keeps the same running page on a phone.