Getting a signature on a big udhaar

Take one for a large or unusual balance, not for the daily Rs 300 tea and bread. A slip with five lines on it, signed or thumbed in front of you, with the goods and the date written out. It is not distrust. It is the paper that lets both of you remember the same number a year later.

The Rs 40,000 with nothing behind it

A man buys sheets of tin, cement bags and a roll of wire for a room he is adding to his house. Rs 41,600. He has bought from you for three years, in small amounts, always paid. He asks for three months.

You write it in the register: date, name, amount. He walks out.

Fourteen months later he says the figure was Rs 30,000, that some of the wire went back, and that he paid you Rs 12,000 in cash one evening when your helper was alone at the counter. You have one line in a register in your own handwriting, which proves only that you wrote it.

Nobody in that story is a thief. Two men simply remembered a big number differently after a long time, and the one with no paper lost the argument. That is what a signature prevents, and it is the reason to take one on the large balances and let the small ones stay in the register where they belong.

When a signature is worth taking

Do not start asking every customer to sign. You would insult forty regulars to protect yourself from one, and most of them would buy their tea somewhere else.

Take one when at least one of these is true:

Take a signature when any one of these is true

• The amount is well above what that customer usually carries
• It is one big purchase, not the slow daily kind
• The payment is months away, or comes in parts
• Somebody else is standing behind the balance as guarantor
• The customer is new to you, whatever he was recommended as
• The goods can be returned or exchanged later
• Daily tea, bread and small credit: no slip, just write it the same day

Notice what these have in common. The amount is large enough that it will hurt, or the deal is unusual enough that neither of you will remember its shape in a year. Ordinary daily credit does not need paper, it needs a register you write in every single day, and the price of not doing that is set out in the udhaar you forget to write down.

There is also the customer you already know is slow. A signature does not make a slow payer fast. Decide the limit first, the way how much udhaar to give suggests, and only then think about paper. Paper on a bad decision is still a bad decision.

The five lines that make the slip worth having

A slip with a signature and nothing else is almost useless. It proves he signed something. Five short lines make it worth keeping.

The five lines that make a slip worth keeping

1. 1The date, written as a real dateNot "three months". The actual day it was taken.
2. 2What was takenItem by item if it is a mixed load, so nothing can be added or denied later.
3. 3The amount, in figures and in wordsRs 41,600, and "forty one thousand six hundred" beside it.
4. 4When it is due, and in how many partsA real date for each part, not "after the season".
5. 5Both names, both signaturesYours too, plus the guarantor's name, number and signature if there is one.

Write it in front of him, in whichever language he reads, in plain words. Two copies if he wants one, and he should want one. A customer who is given his own copy argues far less later, because he has the same paper you do.

The date matters more than people think. "Three months" written on an undated slip means nothing a year later. Write the actual day the payment is due, or the schedule if it is in parts.

If somebody is standing behind the balance, his name and number go on the same slip, and he signs it too. A guarantor who never signed anything is only a name you mentioned once, and when to ask for a guarantor is worth reading before you rely on one.

The thumb, and the customer who cannot read

Plenty of good customers cannot read what you have written. Handing such a man a paper and a pen is not proof of anything; it is a small humiliation, and it makes the paper weaker rather than stronger.

Do this instead. Read the whole slip out loud, slowly, with the figure said twice. Ask him to repeat the amount and the date back to you in his own words. Then take a thumb impression beside the amount, and if somebody he trusts is with him, let that person sign as a witness.

A thumb impression given after the paper was read aloud in front of a witness is worth more than a signature scribbled by a man who never read it. What you are building is not a legal weapon. It is a shared memory, with a date on it, that neither of you can quietly rewrite.

How to ask without it sounding like an insult

The words decide everything here. Most shopkeepers ask badly, in an apologetic voice, which tells the customer that the request is unusual and personal.

Make it the shop's rule, not your opinion of him. Say it flatly, while you are already writing: "Anything above Rs 20,000 I write on a slip and we both sign it. It saves us both remembering wrong."

Three things make that land well. Say it before the goods are packed, not after. Say the same sentence to everybody, including the man you trust most, so nobody is singled out. And sign it yourself first, in front of him, because a paper you have also signed is an agreement rather than a demand.

If a customer refuses outright to put his name to a large balance he has just agreed to, you have learned something useful, and you have learned it before the goods left the shop rather than a year afterwards.

What the paper actually does when there is an argument

Most disputes never reach anybody official. They are settled at your counter, between two annoyed men, and they are settled by whoever can show something.

Say the balance is Rs 41,600 and he remembers Rs 30,000

What your register says he tookRs 41,600

What he says he tookRs 30,000

With no paper: the number two tired men agree onRs 35,800

With a signed slip: the number stays the numberRs 41,600

What thirty seconds of writing was worthRs 5,800

Say the balance is Rs 41,600 and he insists it was Rs 30,000. Without paper you split the difference, because you want to keep the customer and the argument, and you carry Rs 11,600 of loss. With a signed slip, there is nothing to split. You show it, he reads his own signature, and the conversation moves to when he will pay instead of how much.

The other half of the same job is your record of payments. Every rupee he gives you gets an entry with a date, and he gets a receipt if he wants one. That is what stops the second half of the argument, the one where a customer insists he paid, which is exactly the fight described in when a customer says he already paid you.

Keeping the proof where you can find it in a year

A slip is only useful if it can be produced. In most shops it goes into a drawer, then under a pile of bills, and by the time it matters somebody has thrown out the pile.

So photograph it the moment it is signed and keep the picture with that customer's record, not in the general camera roll where it disappears among a thousand photos of stock. In Wasoolo you can attach that photo to the customer's own page, so the slip, the balance and every payment sit in one place with dates on them, and the phone's backup carries the picture off the phone.

The statement is the other half. When you print a customer's page, he gets every entry and every payment on one sheet with your shop's name on it. Put that beside the signed slip and there is very little left to argue about.

Keep the paper original too. A photo is for finding things quickly; the paper with the real thumb impression on it goes in one box, in date order, and stays there until the balance is settled.

Common questions

Will a signed slip stand up if I ever have to go further than my counter?

A dated paper naming the goods, the amount and the due date, signed or thumbed by the customer and witnessed, is far better than nothing, and it is what most people accept as proof. What it will do in front of anybody official depends on the rules where you live, so ask somebody who knows those rules before you count on it. Take it for the argument at the counter, which is where nearly every case is actually settled.

My customer got annoyed when I asked him to sign. Did I do it wrong?

Usually the timing was wrong, not the asking. Say it before the goods are packed and say it as the shop's flat rule, the same sentence you use with everybody. Sign it yourself first. Asking a man to sign after he is already holding the bag feels like an accusation, and he is right to feel it.

What amount should the slip start at?

Pick one number for your shop and keep it. Many small shops set it at whatever they could lose without it changing the month, which is often somewhere around a few days of sales. Below that, the register is enough. Announce the figure the same way to everybody so it never reads as a judgement about one man.

The customer wants to take goods now and sign when he comes back. What do I say?

Then the goods wait too. Say it kindly and without argument: "The slip and the goods go together." If he genuinely cannot sign now, give him a smaller amount on the ordinary register, at his ordinary limit, and hold the rest until he can. Goods gone and paper promised is the exact combination that turns into a long dispute.

He signed but now says he never understood what he was signing.

This is why the slip is read out loud, slowly, in his language, with the amount repeated, and why a witness is worth the thirty seconds. If he cannot read, use a thumb impression after reading it out, with somebody he trusts standing there. A paper somebody understood is stronger than a paper somebody merely marked.

Do I need a slip for a qist plan as well?

Yes, and it is the clearest place to use one, because a plan has more moving parts. Write the item, the total price agreed, the down payment, the amount of each instalment and the dates. Both sign, and the guarantor signs if there is one. Then give him his copy so the two of you are reading the same plan every month.