ProblemUdhaar
Giving udhaar again to a customer you once cut off
He stopped paying, you closed his page, and now he is back asking for credit. Here is how to restart small, keep the old balance separate, and stay safe.
Yes, but not on the old terms. Clear the old balance off the table first, then restart small, with a written amount and a named date. A customer you once cut off is not a new customer and not an old one. He is a man on trial, and the trial has to be visible to both of you.
He is standing at your counter again
Six or eight months ago you stopped giving Rafiq anything on credit. It was not a fight. He kept taking, kept promising, and one day you simply said the shop cannot carry it any more, and he went quiet and started buying elsewhere for cash.
Now he is back, with money in his hand for a small purchase, and after paying he says the sentence you knew was coming. "Put me back on the page. I am earning properly now."
Two wrong answers are waiting for you. The first is yes, because he is standing there and the words are awkward. The second is a flat no, because the last round hurt and you have decided he is that kind of man. Both are decisions taken by your feelings, and the shop pays for both.
There is a third answer, and it takes about two minutes at the counter.
First, work out what actually went wrong last time
A customer who stopped paying did it for one of a small number of reasons, and the reason decides whether he is worth restarting.
Some people never had the income for what they were taking. The udhaar was not too generous, it was simply larger than their month. Some people had the income and lost it, through a job ending, an illness, a business closing. Some people had the money the whole time and paid whoever pushed hardest, and you were the one who did not push. And some people were never going to pay anybody.
These four are not the same man and they do not deserve the same answer. The first can be restarted at a smaller size that fits his real month. The second can be restarted if the income has genuinely returned. The third can be restarted only with a much shorter leash and a firmer collection habit, because your softness was half the problem. The fourth should not be restarted at all, and if you are honest, you knew that before he opened his mouth.
Four reasons a customer stopped paying, and what each one deserves
- 1His income was never big enough for what he tookRestart at a size that fits his real week, not his hopes.
- 2He had the income and lost itRestart only once the earning has genuinely come back.
- 3He paid whoever pushed hardest, and you did not pushRestart on a short leash, with a fixed clearing day.
- 4He was never going to pay anybodyNo restart. Serve him for cash, politely, without a lecture.
Ask yourself which of the four he was. Not what he says he was. Your own record from that time will usually tell you, because the shape of a person's paying is written into it: steady small payments that stopped suddenly look nothing like eighteen months of promises, which is exactly the pattern described in the customer who promises every time and never pays.
The old balance decides most of it
If he still owes from the last round, that number is the whole conversation, and it comes before any talk of new credit.
There are three honest ways to handle it, and none of them is pretending it does not exist.
You can ask him to clear it before anything new starts. This is the cleanest and it is fair, because he had the goods. If the amount is old and large, this is often unrealistic, and an unrealistic condition is just a polite no.
You can freeze it and restart separately. The old amount sits on its own, agreed as a fixed sum with a small repayment attached, and the new buying runs on a fresh page beside it. This is the answer that works most often, and it is how an udhaar that has been sitting for a year is usually recovered at all.
Or you can settle it down to a number he can actually pay and close it. You lose something. What you buy with that loss is a clean start and a customer who comes back to your counter instead of walking past it. Decide this before he asks, not while he is standing there, and never announce a reduction as a favour you will bring up again later.
What you must not do is let the old amount and the new buying mix into one moving total. Within two months neither of you will be able to say what is old and what is new, and every payment he makes will start an argument about which part it touched.
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Restart small, and restart in writing
The restart is not the old arrangement switched back on. It is a smaller, tighter version, and the size is the first thing you decide.
Say he used to take Rs 900 of goods a week
Made-up figures, chosen to show the shape. The point is the gap between the two risk lines, not the amounts.
A restart limit that works is roughly one week of his ordinary buying, not one month. If he normally takes Rs 900 of goods a week, the limit is around Rs 1,000 and it does not move for the first two months, whatever he says. A limit that small feels almost insulting to write down, and that is exactly why it works: it cannot hurt you, and he can clear it without a struggle.
Attach a date to it, not just an amount. "Up to Rs 1,000, cleared every Friday" is a rule two people can check. "Whenever you can" is what you had last time.
Write both on the page in front of him, and say the words out loud as you write. You are not being suspicious. You are removing the exact thing that broke the arrangement last time, which was two different memories of what had been agreed. If you have never fixed a per-customer limit before, how much udhaar to give and to whom sets out the way to size one.
The words for yes, and the words for no
Say yes like this. "All right. The old amount stays where it is and you pay Rs 500 a month against it. For new buying, up to Rs 1,000 and it clears every Friday. If a Friday is missed we stop and talk before anything else goes on the page." Short, complete, and every part of it is checkable.
Say no like this. "I cannot put you back on the page, and I am not going to explain it in a way that sounds like an argument. You are welcome in the shop and I will serve you for cash any day. If the old amount comes down over the next few months, come back and we will talk again."
Notice what the second one does. It refuses the credit and keeps the customer, it names the one thing that would change your mind, and it does not accuse him of anything. A man refused that way still buys from you for cash, and cash from a difficult customer is a better outcome than credit to him.
The one thing to avoid in both cases is the soft maybe. "Let me see", "next time", "we will talk" are heard as yes and remembered as yes, and you will have the same conversation four more times.
Watch the first sixty days, then decide properly
A restart is a trial and a trial needs a fixed length. Sixty days is enough to see everything you need to see.
The first sixty days: what you are actually watching
- He clears on the agreed day without being reminded
- He asks before he goes over the limit, not after
- The old balance also comes down every month
- He pays only after you send word each time
- He asks for a bigger limit in week three
- A clearing day passes and nothing is said
In that time you are not watching whether he pays. You are watching how he pays. A man who clears every Friday without being asked has genuinely changed something. A man who clears every Friday but only after you send word each time has not changed at all, he has simply moved his problem onto your morning.
Watch for the request to raise the limit. It usually arrives in week three, wrapped in a good reason. The answer is no until the sixty days are finished, and saying so once, kindly and clearly, is what makes the number mean anything.
If he passes, raise the limit slowly and say that you are doing it because he kept his word. People behave the way they are described. If he fails, stop on the first missed date, not the third, because the whole point of a short leash is that it is short. Stopping early with a customer who is drifting is also how you avoid the far worse case of a customer who disappears with your udhaar altogether.
Keeping the two records apart without extra work
The practical difficulty in all of this is not the decision. It is holding an old frozen amount and a new small limit at the same time, for one man, for months, while you are also running a shop.
On paper the answer is two clearly named pages, one marked as the old balance with its agreed monthly payment, one for current buying, and a line on each saying the other exists. It works, as long as you are the only person writing.
This is also the ordinary case an app is built for. In Wasoolo the same customer can carry more than one khata, so the frozen amount and the fresh page sit apart while his overall balance still adds them up, and every entry carries its own date without you writing one. What matters is not which tool you use. What matters is that six months from now, when he says "I have paid you a lot since then", you can show him exactly what he has paid and what it went against, in the order it happened.
Should I ever restart a customer who never paid anything at all?
No. A restart is for a man whose paying broke down, not for a man whose paying never started. Serve him for cash, politely and without a lecture, and keep the counter friendly.
He wants the old amount forgiven before he starts again. Is that fair?
It can be, if the amount is old, small and unlikely to arrive any other way, and if closing it wins back a customer who buys regularly. Decide the number in advance, close it properly, and never raise it again in conversation.
How small is too small for a restart limit?
There is no such thing as too small. A limit of one week of his normal buying is right. If he treats a small limit as an insult, that reaction is itself useful information about the next few months.
What if his wife or son asks on his behalf?
The arrangement is with the person whose name is on the page, and the answer goes to that person. Take the request politely, and give your answer to him directly rather than through anybody else.
He kept his word for sixty days. How fast should I raise the limit?
Slowly, and in steps you would not mind losing. Doubling a small limit is fine. Going back to the size that failed the first time, because he has behaved for two months, is how shopkeepers repeat the same loss twice.
Do I have to tell him I am putting him on trial?
Not in those words. Give him the limit, the clearing day and the sentence about stopping if a date is missed. He will understand the shape of it, and stating it plainly is far less insulting than watching him without telling him.