The Credit Book for Shops in Sri Lanka: Move Your Kadey Pothe Onto Your Phone

Credit is not carelessness. For many small shops, it is how you win the customer who could buy from a bigger place, and how you look after neighbours between pay days. A shop that never gives credit may lose its best regulars to one that does.

The aim, then, is not to stop credit. It is to make sure that every credit sale is recorded at the time, that the customer's balance is always known, and that payments are recorded just as carefully as purchases. That is where the trouble starts with paper: credit sales are written in a hurry during busy times, and payments are sometimes forgotten.

Four things happen in almost every shop that relies on one.

• Missing entries. A sale is made while the book is on the other side of the counter, and it is never written down.
• Arithmetic slips. Running totals are added by hand. One wrong carry and the balance is off for months.
• Disputed amounts. A customer remembers paying; the book says they did not. Without a clear record, it is one memory against another.
• Only one reader. The owner knows the book. A helper at the counter does not, so decisions about extending more credit are made without the facts.

Each of these problems is small by itself. Together, they can quietly cost a shop a meaningful part of its income.

PlanzEvo Biz includes a credit book as part of the point of sale. When you ring up a sale, you choose credit as the payment type and attach it to a customer. The amount goes onto that customer's balance straight away, as part of the same sale, so there is no second step to forget.

When the customer pays, in cash, by LankaQR or by bank transfer, you record the payment against their balance. Partial payments are fine: the balance reduces by exactly what was paid. The record always shows what was bought, what was paid and what remains.

Because credit sales are part of the till, they also appear in your end-of-day totals, so your Z-report separates what came in as money from what went onto the book. You can see at a glance how much of today's sales were on credit.

The biggest relief for most owners is the list of outstanding balances. Instead of paging through the book, you open one view and see every customer with an amount owing. You can see who has a large balance, who has not paid for a long time and who is a small, steady account.

This changes decisions at the counter. When a customer with a large unpaid balance asks for more on credit, you can see the figure and have a kind, clear conversation. When a reliable customer asks, you can say yes without hesitation. The helper at the counter has the same information, so the policy does not live only in your head.

Few things are harder than asking a neighbour for money. A precise figure makes it gentler. "Your balance is 4,250 rupees, and the last payment was at the start of the month" is a very different sentence from "you owe us quite a bit".

Some practical habits help:

• Agree a limit with each regular customer, and keep it friendly and consistent.
• Settle on a rhythm, such as month-end, and mention it at the time of the sale.
• Record every payment immediately, even small ones, so the customer sees their balance reduce.
• If someone is struggling, agree on small regular payments rather than letting the balance sit.

PlanzEvo Biz does not promise automatic reminder messages as a standard feature, so these conversations remain personal. What the system gives you is the correct figure before you speak.

A credit book on its own is useful, but it is more useful alongside the rest of your shop's records. The till also handles returns, so you are not leaving yourself notes on loose paper when goods come back. Your expenses and purchases sit in the same place, so when you ask "how is the shop really doing?" the answer includes money that is owed to you as well as money in the drawer.

Keeping that picture in one place helps you spot trouble early, for example if credit sales are growing faster than cash sales, which can be a sign to tighten limits before cash gets tight.

You do not need to enter years of history. A sensible approach is to enter each customer who currently owes money with their present balance, starting from today. Keep the paper book safely for reference but stop writing new entries in it. Within a month, the digital record will be the one you trust.

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The credit book is a promise between you and your customers. A clear record makes that promise easier to keep for both sides. When you are ready, create your PlanzEvo Biz account and record your first credit sale.