How long should a qist plan run?

Set the length by three things: how long the item will still be worth taking back, what the household can truly spare from a month, and how long you can leave your own money outside the shop. Never by whatever makes the payment sound small. The plan price is fixed on day one and does not grow.

The length is a decision of its own

Most shopkeepers never really decide it. A customer picks up a fan, asks how much a month, and the answer gets worked backwards from whatever figure will not scare him off. Six months quietly becomes twelve because twelve sounds gentler.

Three separate things go into a qist plan: the price, agreed once before anything starts; how often a payment falls; and how many payments there are. Three levers, three different jobs.

Here is the part that gets muddled at the counter. The plan price is agreed at the start and does not grow with the calendar. The markup a shopkeeper adds is a one-time amount, decided on the day the plan is made, and it stays exactly the same whether the plan runs six months or eighteen. A longer plan does not collect more. It collects the same total, in smaller pieces, spread across more time.

So the length is not a price question at all. It is a question about risk, and about the goods you just handed over.

One machine, one agreed price, three lengths

Cash price of the machineRs 24,000

One-time markup, fixed the day the plan is madeRs 3,000

Plan price, frozen from day oneRs 27,000

Split over 6 monthsRs 4,500 a month

Split over 12 monthsRs 2,250 a month

Split over 18 monthsRs 1,500 a month

Total you collect, in all three casesRs 27,000

If pricing is the part you are unsure of, how to build a qist plan that stays fair walks through the markup, the down payment and the due date.

What each length buys, and what it costs

A short plan means a bigger payment, and there is no way around that. Rs 4,500 a month is real weight on a working household, and a miss on any one date is likelier than on Rs 1,500. What it buys is speed. Your money comes back while you still remember the sale, the goods are barely used if anything goes wrong, and there are six dates to watch instead of eighteen.

A long plan is the opposite trade, and a tempting one. The payment slips into a household budget without a fight, so more customers say yes and more goods leave the shop. What it costs is time, and time is where everything happens. A job ends. A family shifts town. A brother gets married and every spare rupee goes there for four months. Six months of a life is a short stretch to bet on. Eighteen is a different bet entirely, made on a person and not on a number.

The same Rs 27,000 machine, six months against eighteen

6-month plan18-month plan

Each payment6-month planRs 4,50018-month planRs 1,500

Total you collect6-month planRs 27,00018-month planRs 27,000

Dates that can be missed6-month plan618-month plan18

Your money fully back in6-month planHalf a year18-month planA year and a half

Months in which a life can change6-month plan618-month plan18

Machine worth at the halfway mark6-month planStill near the balance owed18-month planWell below the balance owed

The first test: the plan must not outlive the item

This rule decides more plans than any other, and hardly anybody says it out loud. When a plan goes wrong, your last piece of security is the item itself. Not the paper. Not the guarantor's phone number. The thing sitting in his house, still worth something to somebody. The plan should finish while the item is still worth close to the balance standing on it. Once the balance is larger than what the item would fetch, you are holding nothing.

A safe ceiling: no plan runs longer than half the item's working life, and shorter when it loses value quickly. Worked through a few kinds of goods:

• A phone. Two or three years of real service, and the price of a used one drops hard early. Six months is right, ten to twelve is the outside edge, and eighteen finishes long after the phone stopped being worth taking back.
• A ceiling fan, a cycle, a small water pump. Five to eight years of work, and they hold value quietly. Twelve months sits comfortably here.
• A sewing machine, a fridge, a cooler. Long life and a steady second-hand price. Twelve months is easy, eighteen is fine for someone you have known for years.
• Clothes, crockery, a mattress, anything that wears. Worth almost nothing the morning after it leaves your dukan. Three months with a heavier down payment, or plain udhaar instead.

Shahid sells cycles and small electronics on a market road. At nine in the morning, before the road fills up, Nasir came in for a phone for his son and asked for eighteen months. Shahid did the arithmetic out loud. By the fifteenth payment that phone would be scratched and tired, worth maybe a quarter of what was still owed. So he offered two doors instead: the same phone over ten months with Rs 4,000 on the first day, or the cheaper model over six. Nasir took the cheaper model and came back for a fan once it was finished.

The second test: what the household can actually spare

The second test is about a figure, not a promise. Every customer means it when he says he will manage, and meaning it is not what pays you on the tenth. So ask about his month instead of asking about the plan. What comes in, and on which days. What is already spoken for before anything else moves: rent, school fees, electricity, the ration, whatever goes home to his parents. What is left after all that is a small number, and it is the only honest one in the conversation.

Let him say it himself. If you name the figure he agrees out of good manners, and good manners do not pay. Set the payment below that number, not level with it. A plan built to the edge of a good month falls over in the first ordinary one.

Then turn the arithmetic around. Take what he owes after the down payment, divide by the payment he can carry without strain, and the months come out on their own. That is the length his life allows. Hold it against the first test. If those months are longer than the item can survive, the item is too expensive for him and no schedule repairs that. Offer the smaller model, or ask for more on day one. Udhaar or qist on a big item is worth reading before you settle the shape at all.

The third test: how long your own money can sit outside

Every running plan is your money sitting in somebody else's house. The length decides how long it stays there, and that decides how many plans your shop can carry at once.

Say you can stand Rs 90,000 of your own money outside the dukan at any moment, and each machine goes out with Rs 18,000 left on its plan. Five plans and you are full.

On six-month plans, each of those five returns Rs 3,000 a month, so Rs 15,000 comes home every month. Across a year that is Rs 180,000, which is another ten machines you could put on plan without borrowing a rupee.

Stretch the same five plans to eighteen months and each returns Rs 1,000 a month. Rs 5,000 monthly, Rs 60,000 across a year, roughly three more machines. Same shop, same Rs 90,000, same total on every plan. Only the length changed, and the shop became a third as busy.

Rukhsana sells and repairs sewing machines beside a cloth market. At seven in the evening, before she pulls the shutter, she counts the plans still running, because that count decides what she can say yes to in the morning. Her limit is six. When a seventh customer wants a machine she does not refuse, she offers four months with a heavier first payment, and if he cannot carry that she takes his number and calls the day a plan closes.

The trap: stretching the plan so the payment sounds easy

A customer flinches at Rs 4,500. You say the kind thing, that it can be Rs 1,500 if you make it eighteen months, and he relaxes. Watch what you actually did.

You gave him eighteen dates instead of six, and eighteen chances for a bad month to land on a due date. You also gave yourself a conversation in the ninth month about a machine he stopped feeling proud of around the fourth. Nothing in his life got easier. The plan just got longer.

The honest arithmetic underneath: a household that cannot find Rs 4,500 in a good month will not find Rs 1,500 in a bad one. Tight months are the problem, not the size of the payment, and adding months only adds more of them.

When the payment sounds too heavy at the counter

✓Say this

• Six months at Rs 4,500. The total is Rs 27,000 and it never changes.
• If Rs 4,500 is heavy, bring more on the first day and the payment comes down without adding a single month.
• The smaller model finishes in six months. You will own it outright while it is still new.
• Tell me what is left in your month after rent and school fees. We will size it under that.

✕Not this

• Take eighteen months, it is only Rs 1,500 a month.
• Pay whenever you can manage, there is no fixed date.
• We will sort out the last few payments later on.
• You look like a good customer, do not worry about the down payment.

Better doors when the payment is too heavy: ask for more on the first day, offer the model one step down, or hold the item and take an advance until he has enough. Taking an advance on a big order is the least painful of the three. And when a date does go by unpaid, the answer is never a charge on top, it is a phone call the same evening. When a qist payment is missed covers what to say.

The down payment shortens the plan for nothing

The cheapest safety a plan has is money in your hand on the first day. Every rupee taken then is a rupee nobody has to collect on a date.

Take that Rs 27,000 plan. With nothing on day one, twelve months of Rs 2,250. Take Rs 5,400 first and Rs 21,600 is left, which is twelve months of Rs 1,800, or nine months of Rs 2,400. The second is the useful trick: roughly the payment he asked for, on a plan three months shorter. Nobody argued and nobody paid more.

It does a second thing that has nothing to do with arithmetic. A man who put his own Rs 5,400 into a machine behaves like a man who owns a machine. Somebody who put in nothing is still half deciding. And when a long plan genuinely is the right answer, a heavier first payment makes it safe, alongside knowing when to ask for a guarantor.

Write the length down and it is never argued about

An agreement that lives in two memories is not an agreement. It is two different stories waiting for a bad month.

Write it twice, one copy each, with the same seven things on both. Then read the last date out loud in front of him. The day his final payment lands is the sentence that ends every argument that has not happened yet.

Settle the length on paper before the first payment

• The item and its model, written out in full
• The cash price, so he never learns it from another shop
• The one-time markup in rupees, and the plan price it makes
• What he handed over on day one
• How many payments there are, and the size of each
• Every due date, with the final one circled
• One copy for him, one for you, both matching

This is where a phone beats a register, because a plan is a list of dates and a register cannot count. In Wasoolo a qist khata carries its own schedule, every date and every amount, the paid ones and the missed ones marked as they happen. Open the plan and you can see exactly how many months of somebody else's life you are still holding. A statement prints with your own shop name on it, so the two copies never drift apart.

That is also what makes the third test usable. With every plan in one place, what is still outside your shop is a figure Wasoolo shows you, not one you guess at.

Common questions

What is the longest a qist plan should run?

Twelve months covers most shop goods. Eighteen is only for something with a long working life, sold to a customer you have known for years. Past that the item wears out while the balance still stands.

If the plan runs longer, should the price be higher?

No. The markup is a one-time amount set when the plan is made, and it does not move with the calendar. Eighteen months collects what six months collects. Length changes your risk, never the price.

The customer wants a smaller payment. Should I add months?

Ask for more on the first day, or offer the model one step down. Adding months keeps the strain in his pocket far longer and doubles the number of dates where something can go wrong.

Can I shorten a plan that has already started?

Only if he agrees and his money has genuinely improved. Never re-cut a schedule to squeeze somebody. If he offers to finish early, take it and close on the total you both wrote down.

How long should a first plan be for a customer new to my street?

Short, with more taken on day one. Six months and a third down tells you everything by the second payment. If he turns out well, his next plan can run longer.

What if the item lasts for years but his month is tight?

Then the goods are fine and the length is the only problem. Take a heavier first payment, or hold the item until he can bring more. A plan he cannot carry loses money and customer together.