When a regular brings a friend to open a khata

Say yes to the person and no to the amount. Open the khata in the new man's own name, take his number and his area, and start him at a small limit you describe as your rule for everybody. Ask your regular plainly whether he is introducing his friend or paying for him, because those are very different promises.

Why this ask is harder than a stranger's

A stranger asking for credit is an easy decision. You do not know him, you have nothing to go on, and a polite no costs you nothing you had.

This is different, and every shopkeeper feels it. Refusing here means telling a customer of six years that his word is not good enough, in front of the friend he brought. That is not a small thing on a street where people talk, and it is why so many of these accounts are opened with no limit and no details at all.

There is a second pressure underneath it. Your regular is not asking for himself, so refusing feels ungenerous in a way that refusing him money for his own goods would not. He is doing somebody a favour and asking you to be part of it.

So the trap is set before anybody speaks. The answer is not to become harder; it is to have a rule that lets you say yes to the man and still keep the amount small, which is exactly what deciding how much udhaar to give is for.

What the introduction is actually worth

Before deciding anything, be clear about what is genuinely at stake, because it is not the amount on the counter.

Say a regular of six years brings a new name

What the regular buys from you in a yearRs 240,000

Your earnings on that, at 8%Rs 19,200

Credit the new name asks forRs 6,000

A safe first limit insteadRs 1,500

What a bad Rs 6,000 can cost youRs 6,000 and Rs 19,200 a year

The small number is the new man's credit. The large number is your existing customer, and that is the one nobody thinks about in the moment.

Here is how it goes wrong. The friend stops paying, you ask your regular about it, and now every visit has an awkwardness in it. He feels responsible, he starts avoiding the subject, and then he starts avoiding the shop, because nobody enjoys walking into a place where he owes an explanation.

You end up losing the six thousand and the customer who bought two hundred and forty thousand from you. That is the real cost, and it is why the small first limit matters far more here than the character of the new man. A limit that keeps the loss trivial keeps the friendship, the introduction and the regular all intact.

Seen that way, the introduction is still worth having. New customers who arrive through somebody who already trusts you are usually better than customers who walk in cold, and this is one of the honest ways a small shop grows.

The three kinds of introduction

They sound identical at the counter and they are not, so it is worth listening for which one you are getting.

The first is a simple introduction. "He is my friend, he is a decent man." Your regular is telling you the person is not a stranger to him, and nothing more. This is what most people mean, and it is genuinely useful information without being a promise about money.

The second is a soft guarantee. "Give it to him, I am here." He means it warmly and he has not thought about what it commits him to. If the friend disappears, he will probably help, and he will also feel trapped, which is where relationships get damaged.

The third is a real guarantee, where somebody knowingly accepts that he will pay if the other man does not. That is a serious arrangement with its own rules, and if that is what is being offered, it needs to be understood properly by both of you, as set out in when to ask for a guarantor and when not to.

Find out which one you have, in one gentle question, while everybody is still pleased with each other.

Settle four things before they leave

None of this needs a difficult conversation. It needs a minute and a habit.

Four things to settle before the two of them leave

1. 1Open the khata in the new name, not the old oneGoods bought by one person on another person's page is where every one of these arrangements eventually goes wrong. One name, one page, from the first packet.
2. 2Take his phone number and where he livesNot as a threat, as the ordinary thing you do for every new khata. A name with no way to reach it is not a customer, it is a hope with goods attached.
3. 3Set a small first limit and say it out loud"We start everybody at fifteen hundred and it grows." Said as a rule for all new names, it takes the sting out completely and nobody loses face.
4. 4Ask the regular exactly what he is promisingIntroducing somebody and paying for him are two very different things, and most people mean the first. Find out which one it is now, gently, while everybody is pleased.

The first step is the one that saves the most trouble later. Goods taken by one man written on another man's page is the single most reliable way to produce an argument nine months from now, when neither of them remembers which packets were whose. One name, one page, from the first sale.

The third step is where the skill is. Announced as a rule for all new names, a small limit is completely painless: "we start everybody at fifteen hundred and it grows on its own". Nobody is being doubted, because the rule existed before he walked in. Explained as caution about him specifically, the same limit is an insult, and it is remembered as one.

The fourth step protects your regular more than it protects you. Most people offering to vouch have not thought it through, and giving him a clear, low-stakes version to agree to is a kindness. He gets to do his friend the favour without quietly taking on a debt he never intended.

What to do when the new name stops paying

Sometimes it goes wrong anyway, and how you handle the first month decides whether you lose one customer or two.

Go to the new man first, always, and go early. Ask him directly, calmly, and about a small part rather than the whole. He is a new customer with a small balance, so treat him exactly as you would any other name at that stage, using the ordinary approach to recovering what you are owed.

Only mention it to your regular after you have tried properly, and when you do, be careful about the framing. Ask for help reaching him, not for his money: "I cannot get hold of him, do you know where he is working now?" That keeps your customer on your side of the problem instead of making him the defendant in it.

And if it does not come back, take the loss cleanly and tell your regular it is settled. That sentence is worth more than the amount. It ends the awkwardness, it keeps him coming to the shop, and it makes clear that you are not carrying a grievance he has to manage every time he sees you.

Stop new credit to the friend quietly, without an announcement, in the same way you would with a customer who has begun to disappear. The relationship you are protecting is the one that has been buying from you for six years.

When to say no, even to a good regular

There are situations where the honest answer is no, and a plain no now is far better than a slow disappointment later.

Say no when the amount asked for is large from the start. A first request for a big figure is not a credit question, it is somebody who has a problem, and a new khata is the wrong solution for it.

Say no when the friend will not give a number or an address. Everybody else does it, so a refusal at that step is telling you something important, whatever the reason offered.

Say no when your regular is himself behind on his account. Adding a second name to a situation that is already stuck helps nobody, and it is a fair thing to say quietly, on its own, at a different moment.

Deliver it in one sentence, out of earshot of the friend, and make it about your rule rather than about the man. Your regular will understand a rule. What he will not forgive is being made to look foolish in front of somebody he brought, which is also the underlying principle in keeping your regular customers.

Common questions

My regular says he will pay if his friend does not. Should I write that down?

Ask him first whether he means it as a promise or as a recommendation, because most people mean the second and would be startled to see it written. If he genuinely means it, write it as a plain line in the new man's khata saying who has accepted responsibility, and read it to both of them. What you should never do is treat a warm sentence at the counter as a written commitment months later, because that is how a six-year customer is lost in a single conversation.

Can I just put the new man's purchases on my regular's account?

It is the most tempting shortcut here and it causes more trouble than anything else on this page. Two people buying against one page means neither of them can check his own total, disputes become impossible to settle, and your regular ends up carrying a balance he did not create. Keep separate pages even when one man is genuinely paying for both, and record who took what.

How small should the first limit be?

Small enough that losing it entirely would not change anything about your week, which for most small shops means a few days of ordinary purchases rather than a month of them. The number matters less than the fact that it exists and that it grows on a visible schedule. Two clean cycles of paying on time and it can double, which turns the limit into something the customer works toward rather than something he resents.

Is it rude to ask a friend of my customer for his phone number?

Not at all, provided you ask everybody. It only feels rude when it is done selectively, because then it is obviously about suspicion. Make it part of opening any khata, mention it in the same breath as writing his name, and nobody thinks about it twice. The shops that find this awkward are usually the ones that only ask when they are already worried.

The friend paid well for months and now wants a much bigger limit. What now?

Raise it, but in steps rather than in one jump, and base the increase on what he actually buys rather than on what he asks for. A customer who has paid cleanly for a few cycles has earned more room, and refusing to give it is how you lose a good new name. What you should avoid is going straight from a small limit to a large one because the record has been good, since the whole point of a limit is that it moves at the speed of the evidence.

Should I tell my regular what his friend owes?

No, unless the friend has agreed to it or your regular formally accepted responsibility. A customer's balance is his own business, and sharing it, even with the man who introduced him, is the kind of thing that travels down a street and costs you other customers. If you need help reaching him, ask for that without naming a figure, and the request stays reasonable rather than becoming gossip.