Almost every grocery shop in Bangladesh has one: a red-covered notebook where the owner writes who took goods on credit, how much, and what they have paid back since. The notebook works. But it also tears, gets tea spilled on it, and takes half an hour to total at the end of the month.
This guide shows how to move your due book (bakir khata) to your phone without giving up the habits that already work for you.
Where the paper book really fails
The notebook itself is fine. The trouble is in three places:
- You do all the arithmetic. A customer takes credit five times and pays back twice. What do they owe now? You work it out again every time.
- You cannot see how old a due is. A three-month-old due and yesterday's look exactly the same on the page.
- There is only one book. When your son or an employee runs the counter, they do not know who owes what, or they forget to write it down.
The rule for every credit sale: three things
Whatever app you use, every entry needs:
- The customer's name and mobile number. The number keeps two people with the same name apart, and lets you remind them later.
- What they took, and how much it cost. Not just the amount. If a customer asks "how did it get this high?", you can show them.
- The date. With a date you can see which dues are getting old.
Record part-payments properly
Most customers do not pay everything at once: 200 taka today, 300 next week. On paper this is where most mistakes happen.
On your phone, record each payment separately, on the day you receive it. The app keeps the remaining balance for you, and when a customer asks, you can show the full history on the spot.
A small habit that helps: when you take a payment, say out loud how much is still due. It prevents most arguments later.
Once a week, look at the oldest dues
Pick a quiet moment each week, for many shops that is Friday, and spend five minutes on the due list. Look for anyone whose due is more than a month old and send them a polite message. Most people are not avoiding you; they simply forgot.
How the due book works in Haatiq
We built Haatiq for exactly this. When you make a sale, you pick "due" and it goes into the book; there is nothing to copy over later.
- Each customer's total due, and since when, is visible at a glance.
- Part-payments are recorded and the balance goes down by itself.
- It works without internet. When the connection comes back everything is saved to the server, so losing the phone does not mean losing the book.
- The same account can be opened on another phone in the shop.
How to start
You do not need to copy the whole old notebook in one day. From today, write new credit sales on the phone. From the old book, add only the customers who still owe something, one entry each with their total. Within a week you will rarely need to open the paper book.
Collected dues are your shop's cash. When the accounts are clear, less money gets stuck, and your customers trust you more.
