What a small shop needs to record, and what it can skip
Search for a business tool and you will be offered software built for a factory: work orders, payroll runs, a dozen modules, and a setup that takes a week before the first sale is recorded. A pasal does not need that. The owner needs to answer five questions at the end of the day, in NPR, without opening five notebooks.
The five records
- What you have. Item, unit, quantity, selling price. This is the stock list. If you only do one thing this month, do this one. A short guide is a simple way for a small shop to track stock.
- What you sold. Each sale names the item, the quantity, the price, and whether the customer paid now or later. A counter sale and a written invoice are the same fact written in two places. Pick one place.
- What you bought. The supplier, the bill, the items, and what you have paid. Without this, the stock list drifts every time a delivery arrives, and you cannot tell a slow item from one you simply forgot to receive.
- Who still owes you. Udhaar is not a separate business. It is a sale the customer has not finished paying. Keep it on the customer, next to their name and phone, not on a loose page.
- What you owe. The same idea in the other direction: a supplier balance, fed by purchase bills and the payments you make against them.
If those five agree with each other, you can see whether the week made money. Sales minus the cost of what you sold, minus the expenses you actually paid, is enough. You do not need a separate "profit module" to start.
What a pasal can skip
Skip anything that does not change one of those five answers.
- Manufacturing and recipes, unless you actually make what you sell.
- A full chart of accounts on day one. Cash, the bank, sales, purchases, and VAT are enough until an accountant asks for more. You can add ledgers later. You cannot un-confuse a year of sales that were never written down.
- A different price for every customer, until a customer really has one. One selling price per item is the default. A price list is for the day that stops being true.
- Several companies inside one login. One shop, one set of books.
English or Nepali on the screen is a preference, not a second system. The numbers are the same either way. Bikram Sambat on a paper bill and a date in the software need to refer to the same day; write the date you mean, and do not keep a second calendar in a notebook "just in case."
How a team fits
If a spouse, a cashier, or a storekeeper also touches the books, give them their own login and only the jobs they do. The cashier records sales. The person who pays suppliers records purchase bills and payments. Sharing one password means you cannot tell a mistake from a theft, and you cannot turn someone off when they leave.
Where this sits in ERPesque
ERPesque is built around those five records: Inventory for stock, Point of Sale and sales invoices for what you sold, purchase bills for what you bought, and customer and vendor balances for who owes whom. Reports for sales, purchases, stock, and receivables read from the same entries, and you can export them to CSV or PDF. The app is in English and Nepali. You invite a teammate and give them a role instead of handing over your password.
It will not make the shop lighter by itself. It is light only if you refuse to fill in the parts you do not use yet.
Download ERPesque from Google Play and record the next sale in it. Leave the modules you do not need closed.