Kharcha · Saaman · Hisab — a ledger for a small shop
Meri Dukan is a shop ledger for a small retailer — a kirana, a chai stall, a medical store, a seed and pesticide shop, a bhang shop, a hardware counter. It answers the only three questions that decide whether a small shop survives: what the shop costs to keep open, what each thing you sell actually earns after the goods are paid for, and what is left at the end of the day.
It is built for somebody standing behind a counter with one hand free. Every number is typed once. Nothing asks you to understand a word you would not use yourself. The whole thing is three screens — Kharcha, Saaman, Hisab — and a fourth screen would be a screen nobody opens.
KHARCHA is everything the shop costs whether or not a customer walks in: rent, electricity, a helper's wages, the licence, the loan on the fridge. Each one is entered the way it is actually paid — monthly, daily, or as a one-time purchase spread over the months it will last — and the app turns all of it into one number: what your shop costs per day before you sell anything. Most shopkeepers have never seen that number, and it is the number that explains a bad month.
SAAMAN is what you sell and what it costs you. For each item you record the price a customer pays and what the goods cost you to put on the shelf. From those two figures the app knows the real earning on every sale, which is the difference between a shop that looks busy and a shop that makes money. A shop that sells a hundred cups of tea a day at a four-rupee margin and pays three hundred rupees a day to stay open is not a good shop, and until you see both numbers together it feels like one.
HISAB is the day. Record what sold and the app works out the takings, what the goods cost, what the shop cost, what the business made, what you took home, and what is genuinely left. The same day can be opened again tomorrow to correct it, and any day in the last three months can be reached from a calendar. A month view totals it all, names your best day and your worst, and shows the daily average.
BIKRI is the counter. Tap a product, tap it again for two, see the total, type what the customer handed over, and the change or the outstanding amount is worked out for you. Save, and the next customer is ready. That sale lands in the day's hisab by itself — you stop adding up in your head at the counter and typing the day in from memory at closing time, which is where a day usually goes wrong.
If the customer pays less than the total, the difference is udhaar and it is saved against his name. A shortfall with nobody's name against it is not credit, it is a hole in the till, so the app will not record one without a name. You can see at any time who owes what, most owed first.
A shop carrying three hundred and fifty lines works the same as a shop carrying twenty. The things you have actually reached for recently come first, ranked from your own sales, and everything else is one search away. A pesticide shop and a chai stall get the same screen and both of them find what they need in one tap.
RETAILER OS is the screen you turn around on the counter: your items and your prices, in large type, readable at arm's length and upside down. It shows a customer the rate list and nothing else — never what the goods cost you, never your margin, never the day's takings, never anybody's udhaar. That is enforced on the server, not just hidden on the screen.
A customer's bill can be sent as a link that expires in seven days. It carries three things per line — what it was, how many, what he pays — and nothing else. A customer who can see the margin on his own chai is a customer you argue with tomorrow.
Reports come out as a PDF for the bank or the accountant, and as a plain WhatsApp line for you and your family tonight. Nobody opens a PDF standing at a bus stop, and a bank will not accept a WhatsApp message, so it does both.
Meri Dukan speaks the language the shop is run in. It ships in Hindi written in Roman letters, plain English, Hindi in Devanagari, Bengali and several more, and the day's summary is written in sentences rather than a table — the app tells you your shop costs Rs.310 a day and you kept Rs.640, rather than asking you to read a spreadsheet.
It is not sold separately. Meri Dukan is part of the one Laisha subscription — the same single price as everything else in Laisha, quoted at the foot of this page. Ten days are free with no card and no payment details asked for, and you use it with your own numbers from the first minute. Nothing about it is a trial version with features removed.
Your numbers stay yours. The shop ledger is not sold, not shared, and not used to advertise to you. A phone number is asked for once, at the door, for one reason only: when you change phones it is the thing that can put your shop back in your hands.
What it is. Shop accounts for a small retailer, written entirely in Hindi, that answer one question the shopkeeper cannot answer today: after everything, what did the shop actually make? It holds the rate list, a sales counter, credit by customer name, the running costs, a day-by-day record, a monthly report, and the break-even — how many pieces must sell before the day stops losing money.
When to open it. Every day the shop is open, at the counter, as sales happen. The month's report is only as true as the days that built it.
Have ready.
Step by step.
What it will not do. It records what you enter. It does not see your drawer, cannot know about a sale you did not ring up, and is not an accounting or tax filing. It gives a shopkeeper the two figures nobody gives him — his margin and his break-even — and it is only as honest as the cost prices he puts in.
A small shop: rent 6,000 a month, electricity about 900 a month, a fan bought once for 6,000 that will last five years. The main line sells at 60 and costs 24.
What goes in:
What comes out:
Seven pieces. That is the number the shopkeeper did not have, and it is the number that changes how the day feels by eleven in the morning. A busy-looking day that sold five pieces lost money; a quiet day that sold nine made some.
Add up all your monthly costs — rent, electricity, salaries, and one-time purchases divided by how many months they will last — and divide by the days you are open, to get a cost per day. Then divide that by the margin on one piece, price minus what it costs you, and round up. That is how many you must sell before the day stops losing money.
Divide it by how many months it will last. A 6,000 fan that lasts five years is 100 a month, not a 6,000 expense in the month you bought it. Entering it as a monthly cost makes that one month look like a disaster and every month afterwards look better than it really is — which is the most common mistake in small shop accounts.
Against a name, on the day, every time. Meri Dukan refuses to save credit without a customer's name for that reason — a credit with no name is not a debt, it is a gift you have not admitted to yet. The total owed is then visible by customer, separately from the money actually in the drawer.
Entirely. Every screen, every button, every error message. It was built for a shopkeeper who does not read English, not translated into Hindi afterwards, which is a different thing and reads differently.
The first ten days are free and need no card. After that it is a small monthly subscription — one price, everything included, no separate charges. The figures you have entered stay yours.
Yes to both. The shop name can be changed at any time in shop settings. A full reset is also available and it does exactly what it says — the shop comes back empty and nothing returns — so it asks you to confirm before doing it.
Yes. Each day has its own page, and a single day can be cleared without touching the rest of the month. That is for the day you entered something badly wrong, which is a different problem from wanting to start the whole shop again.