The words a shop runs on

An account kept for one customer or supplier, recording what they owe you and what they have paid.

In a shop, a khata is the running account for one person. Every credit sale adds to it, every payment reduces it, and the balance at any moment is what stands between you. The word is also used for the book that holds all of them together. It is the oldest and still the most common way credit is tracked in Indian and Nepali retail.

In Khata: Khata the app is named after it. Every customer has a khata with a dated history, and the dues list sorts by how long a balance has been outstanding.

Also called: khata book, khata meaning.

See also: Udhaar, Bahi khata, Party ledger, Ageing of receivables

Goods given now against payment later — a credit sale.

Udhaar is the everyday word for selling on credit. The customer takes the goods, you record the amount, and payment comes later — often at the end of the month, often in parts. It is not a formality in most shops but the ordinary way regular customers buy, and the reason a shopkeeper's biggest asset is frequently money that is not yet in the till.

In Khata: A bill can be marked unpaid or part-paid, and the balance goes against that customer's khata automatically.

Also called: udhar, udhaar meaning, credit sale.

See also: Khata, Ageing of receivables, Credit limit, Outstanding

The bound red cloth ledger traditionally used to keep a shop's accounts by hand.

A bahi is the physical book; the bahi khata is the set of accounts kept inside it. It is written by hand, usually with each party on their own page, and it remains in daily use across South Asia. Its weaknesses are the ones every shopkeeper already knows: it cannot be sorted, it cannot be in two places at once, and there is exactly one copy.

In Khata: Moving off one is what most Khata users are doing on day one, and it is the single change that makes a shop's credit sortable.

Guide: moving a paper bahi to a phone

Also called: bahi, bahi khata meaning, ledger book.

See also: Khata, Party ledger, Day book

The full dated transaction history for one customer or supplier, with a running balance.

A party is anyone you trade with on account — a customer who buys on credit, or a supplier you buy from on credit. The party ledger lists every bill, payment and adjustment against them in date order, so the balance can always be explained rather than merely asserted. It is the document you produce when someone disputes what they owe.

In Khata: Built in for both customers and suppliers, and it downloads as a file you can hand to a party or an accountant.

Also called: party account, customer ledger, supplier ledger.

See also: Khata, Outstanding, Day book

Sorting money owed to you by how long it has been outstanding, rather than by how large it is.

Two customers each owe you ₹10,000. One has owed it for a week; the other since March. They are not the same debt, and the second is far less likely to be paid in full. Ageing is simply the habit of ranking what you are owed by time rather than by amount — and it is the single view a paper book cannot produce, because reordering a bahi means rewriting it.

In Khata: The dues list sorts by age of balance, which is the whole reason it is worth having on a phone.

Guide: chasing udhaar without losing the customer

Also called: aging, ageing analysis, debtor ageing.

See also: Udhaar, Outstanding, Party ledger

The most you are willing to let one party owe you at any time, agreed in advance.

A credit limit turns an uncomfortable judgement into a rule you set once, when you are calm, rather than at the counter with a queue behind the customer. It usually sits alongside terms — the number of days you expect payment within. Neither is a legal instrument in most small shops; both are mainly a way of making your own policy visible to yourself.

In Khata: Limits and terms can be set per party.

Also called: credit terms.

See also: Udhaar, Ageing of receivables

Money billed but not yet received.

Outstanding is the total of everything sold and not yet paid for. It is worth separating from profit in your own mind: a strong month on paper can leave you short of cash if most of it went out on udhaar. Money you are owed is not money you have.

In Khata: Shown as a total and per party, sortable by age.

Also called: baki, bakaya, dues, receivables.

See also: Ageing of receivables, Udhaar, Cashflow

The document recording what was sold, to whom, at what price, and what tax applied.

An invoice is the record of a sale and, where tax applies, the document that carries it. What a compliant invoice must show differs by country and by whether you are registered for tax, so the format is not universal — but the purpose is: one unambiguous record that both sides can refer back to.

In Khata: GST and non-GST formats, and Nepali VAT invoices in NPR. Invoices can be shared as a link or printed.

Also called: bill, tax invoice.

See also: GST, VAT (Nepal), Cash memo, Credit note

A simple bill for a sale paid immediately, with no credit involved.

A cash memo records a completed transaction — goods handed over, money received, nothing left open. It is what most counter sales in a small shop actually are. The distinction from an invoice is mostly about credit and tax registration rather than about the paper itself.

Also called: cash bill, retail invoice.

See also: Invoice, Udhaar

The slip that tells the kitchen what to cook, printed separately from the customer's bill.

A KOT carries items and quantities and deliberately omits prices — the kitchen needs to know that two plates of biryani are due, not what they cost. Keeping it separate from the bill stops the two most common restaurant errors: the kitchen missing an order, and prices ending up where customers or staff should not see them.

In Khata: Kitchen order tickets print separately from the customer bill.

Also called: kitchen order ticket, kitchen slip.

See also: Invoice

A printed code identifying a product, read by a scanner or a phone camera to add it to a bill.

A barcode saves the two seconds of finding an item in a list, which matters only when it happens four hundred times a day — which is exactly when it matters most. Most packaged goods already carry one from the manufacturer, so for a grocery or a chemist there is usually nothing to print.

In Khata: The phone camera scans barcodes, so a separate scanner is optional rather than required.

Guide: barcode billing with a phone camera

Also called: bar code, scanning.

See also: SKU, Invoice

A small printer that burns an image onto heat-sensitive paper, with no ink or toner.

Thermal printers are what almost every counter receipt comes from. They are cheap, fast and have no consumable but the paper roll. The two common widths are 58mm and 80mm. The trade-off is permanence: a thermal receipt fades with heat and time, which is why a printed receipt is a poor long-term record on its own.

In Khata: Bluetooth thermal printers pair directly with the mobile app.

Also called: receipt printer, 58mm printer, 80mm printer.

See also: Invoice

A code identifying one exact sellable item, distinct from every other item you carry.

One product to a customer can be several SKUs to a shop: a 500ml bottle and a 1 litre bottle of the same drink are stocked, priced and counted separately. Deciding what counts as a distinct SKU is the first real decision when putting a shop's stock into software, and it is worth doing deliberately rather than by accident.

In Khata: Each product is one item with its own cost, price and unit. Size and colour variants of one product are not supported.

Also called: stock keeping unit, item code.

See also: Barcode, Reorder level, Stock take

The quantity at which you should order more, chosen so you do not run out while waiting for delivery.

The number that matters is not zero — it is how much you sell during the time it takes your supplier to deliver, plus a margin for a bad week. Set it too low and you lose sales you had already earned; too high and your cash sits on a shelf. It is worth setting per item rather than using one figure for the whole shop.

In Khata: Set per product, with a low-stock alert when the level is reached.

Also called: reorder point, minimum stock, low stock alert.

See also: SKU, Purchase order, Stock take

Your written order to a supplier, recording what you asked for before it arrives.

A purchase order matters most when the delivery is wrong. Without one, an argument about a short delivery is one person's memory against another's. With one, it is a document. Partial deliveries are the normal case rather than the exception, so a useful PO stays open for the balance rather than being closed on first receipt.

In Khata: Purchase orders support partial receipts — the outstanding quantity stays open until the rest arrives.

Also called: PO, supplier order.

See also: Reorder level, Party ledger

Counting what is physically on the shelf and comparing it with what the records say.

Recorded stock and real stock drift apart in every shop — breakage, theft, samples, miskeyed bills, goods taken for the house. A stock take finds the gap. Counting a few categories each week is far more sustainable than shutting for a day once a year, and it catches problems while they are still small enough to explain.

In Khata: Stock can be adjusted with a reason recorded, and inventory movement history keeps the trail.

Guide: why stock counts drift

Also called: cycle count, physical count, stock audit.

See also: SKU, Reorder level, Shrinkage

Stock that has gone without being sold — breakage, spoilage, theft or error.

Shrinkage is the difference a stock take exposes. It is rarely one cause, and treating it as purely a theft problem usually misdiagnoses it: miskeyed bills and unrecorded goods taken for personal use are ordinarily larger. The value of measuring it is knowing the size, so effort goes where the loss actually is.

Also called: stock loss, stock leakage.

See also: Stock take, Cost price

The record of everything that happened on one trading day, closed at the end of it.

A day book is where the day is settled: what was sold, how it was paid for, what was discounted, what came back, and what should therefore be in the drawer. Its value comes from being done daily. A discrepancy found on the day is usually explainable; the same discrepancy found three weeks later is simply a loss.

In Khata: Daily closing is one report, on the phone and the dashboard.

Guide: closing the day in five minutes

Also called: daybook, rozn amcha, daily closing.

See also: Cashflow, Opening balance, Party ledger

What a party already owed, or what was already in the drawer, at the moment you started keeping the record.

Every set of books begins mid-story. The opening balance is how you carry the existing position across without inventing history for it. Getting it right on day one matters more than it looks: an ignored opening balance means every total afterwards is wrong by the same amount, quietly and permanently.

In Khata: A customer or supplier can be created with the balance they already carry.

Also called: carry forward, brought forward.

See also: Party ledger, Day book

What an item cost you, against which its profit is measured.

Cost price is what you paid, and ideally what you paid to get it onto your shelf — freight and handling included, since a cheap item with expensive delivery is not a cheap item. It is also the number most shopkeepers do not want their counter staff to see, which is why access to it is usually a permission rather than a display setting.

In Khata: Held per product and hidden from staff whose role does not include it.

Guide: staff access without showing profit

Also called: purchase price, landed cost.

See also: Margin, Shrinkage

The difference between what you sold something for and what it cost you.

Margin and markup are not the same and mixing them up is expensive. Markup is the increase over cost; margin is the profit as a share of the selling price. An item bought at 100 and sold at 150 carries a 50% markup and a 33% margin. Discounting a percentage off the price cuts margin faster than most people expect.

In Khata: Profit is reported per product and per category, and a discount report shows what discounting cost.

Also called: profit margin, markup, munafa.

See also: Cost price, Day book

Money actually moving in and out, as distinct from profit earned on paper.

Profitable shops close because of cashflow. If sales go out on udhaar while suppliers, rent and salaries want paying now, the books can show a good month while the drawer cannot cover Friday. Watching cash separately from profit is what makes that visible before it becomes urgent.

In Khata: Cash and wallet balances are tracked separately from sales, with expenses recorded as money leaves.

Also called: cash flow.

See also: Outstanding, Day book, Margin

India's indirect tax on the supply of goods and services, charged on the invoice and reported to the authorities.

Registered businesses charge GST on sales, and the invoice must carry the required particulars including the registration number, GSTIN. Whether you must register, at what rate you charge, what you can claim and when you file all depend on your turnover, state and business type — and they change. Treat what follows as vocabulary, not as guidance: check the GST portal or your accountant for anything you will act on.

In Khata: Khata produces GST-format invoices and the reports an accountant needs. It does not file returns and there is no e-invoicing.

Also called: goods and services tax, GST number, GSTIN.

See also: Invoice, HSN code, E-way bill, VAT (Nepal)

An internationally standardised number identifying a category of goods for tax purposes.

HSN — Harmonised System of Nomenclature — is a global classification adopted for GST, so that the same kind of goods is described the same way everywhere. SAC is the equivalent for services. Which code applies to a specific product, and how many digits you must show, depends on the goods and on your turnover; your supplier's invoice and your accountant are the practical sources.

In Khata: A code can be recorded against a product using custom fields and carried onto invoices.

Also called: HSN, SAC code, harmonised system.

See also: GST, Invoice

An electronic document generated on the GST portal for the movement of goods above a set value.

It travels with the consignment and is generated on the government portal rather than in ordinary billing software. When it is required, and the value it applies from, are set by the rules in force and vary by state and by whether movement is within or between states.

In Khata: Khata does not generate e-way bills. That is done on the GST portal.

Also called: eway bill, e way bill.

See also: GST, Invoice

Nepal's value added tax, charged on the invoice by registered businesses and administered by the Inland Revenue Department.

Registered businesses in Nepal charge VAT and issue invoices carrying the required particulars, alongside the PAN that identifies the business. Registration thresholds, rates and filing intervals are set by the IRD and change; check with the IRD or your accountant rather than relying on any description, including this one.

In Khata: Khata bills in NPR and produces Nepali VAT-format invoices. It does not file returns, and it does not hold IRD approval.

Also called: value added tax, Nepal VAT, PAN Nepal.

See also: GST, Invoice

A document reducing what a customer owes, usually because goods came back or a bill was overstated.

A credit note corrects a sale after the invoice has been issued, without deleting the original — which is the point, since the original may already be in someone else's records. A debit note does the reverse. Keeping the correction as its own dated document is what lets a ledger be explained rather than merely balanced.

In Khata: Orders can be cancelled with a reason recorded, and returns adjust the party balance. There is no separate numbered credit-note document.

Also called: debit note, return note.

See also: Invoice, Party ledger