--- title: "Festival season: the stock, the credit, and the week after" source: https://www.lskhata.com/blog/festival-season-stock-and-credit category: "Running a shop" language: en published: 2026-08-18 reading_time: 7 min --- # Festival season: the stock, the credit, and the week after _The busiest fortnight of your year is also when the most udhaar goes out. Planning the second half is what turns a good festival into a good quarter._ ## In short - Last year's festival numbers are the only forecast worth having. Look them up before you order. - A record sales week is not a record cash week if a third of it went out on credit. - Set credit terms before the rush, not during it. Nobody negotiates well with a queue waiting. - Plan the fortnight after: the leftover stock, and the collection round nobody enjoys. A festival week is the best trading a shop does all year and the point at which the most things go wrong at once. The reason is that three separate pressures land in the same fortnight: you have to hold more stock than usual, serve more people than usual, and decide about more credit than usual — all at the speed of a queue. _[Figure: The second hill is the one nobody plans for. It arrives a fortnight after the first, and it is made of money you have already spent on stock.]_ ### Before: order against last year, not against hope The most useful thing a year of records gives you is a specific answer to "how much of this did I actually sell last festival". Not a general sense that it was busy — a product-wise number. That number is a far better basis for an order than the supplier's enthusiasm or your memory of a good week. - Pull last year's sales for the same fortnight, product by product. - Separate the things that sold out early from the things you were still carrying in December. The first group is where to be brave. - Order the second group flat, or less. It did not sell last year and the festival will not change that. - If this is your first year with records, the job now is simply to have them next year. That alone makes next festival's order a different exercise. **Agree your supplier terms while you are ordering, not when the bill lands.** A festival order is larger than usual and it is the one time of year you have some leverage. Ask for a longer credit period on it. Record the agreed terms on the supplier's record so the date is not something you have to remember in six weeks. ### During: the credit decisions come faster than usual During an ordinary week you make a handful of credit decisions and each gets a moment's thought. During a festival you make dozens, with people waiting, in an atmosphere where refusing feels ungenerous. This is exactly the situation that produces balances nobody intended. The defence is not to be stricter. It is to have decided beforehand, so that during the rush you are applying a rule rather than making a judgement. Limits set on customer records, and a period attached to each, mean the answer at the counter is already known. **Record the credit at the moment of sale, not at the end of the day.** "I will enter it tonight" is the single most reliable way to lose a festival sale from the books entirely. At the end of a fourteen-hour day, four of the twelve will be missing and none of them will be the small ones you can afford to lose. ### After: the two jobs of the following fortnight 1. **Count what is left, within the first few days** — Festival stock has a short window in which it is still worth full price. Knowing on day three what you are carrying gives you the option of discounting to clear it. Knowing on day thirty does not. 2. **Start collecting while the purchase is recent** — A reminder a fortnight after a festival purchase lands very differently from one two months later. The customer still remembers buying it, and the amount still feels connected to something real. 3. **Compare the two numbers honestly** — Total sales for the fortnight, and total cash actually received. The gap between them is what went out on credit, and it is the number that tells you whether this was a good festival or only a busy one. 4. **Write down what you learned, for next year** — What sold out, what did not move, which customers took credit and did not clear it. This takes twenty minutes and it is the entire basis of next year's order. > A record sales week and a record cash week are two different weeks, and sometimes the second one never arrives. ## Common questions **How much extra stock should I order for a festival?** Start from what you actually sold in the same period last year rather than from a feeling. If you have last year's sales in an app, that is a product-wise number you can order against; if this is your first year with records, note it this time so next year is easier. Ordering on optimism is how shops end up carrying festival stock into February. **Why does a good festival sometimes leave me short of cash?** Because the sales figure and the cash figure are different numbers. If you sold a great deal but a large share went out as udhaar, you have converted stock — which you paid for — into promises. The supplier bill arrives on its own schedule regardless. **Should I give more credit during a festival?** Most shops do, and it is often the right call, because it is when your customers most want to buy and least want to be refused. The thing that separates it from a problem is deciding the terms in advance and recording each one against the customer as it happens, rather than trying to remember afterwards who was told what. **What should I do in the week after the festival?** Two things. Count what is left, so you know what you are carrying and can decide whether to discount it while it can still be sold. And start the collection round early, while the purchase is recent enough that people still feel the connection to it.