Ashok's Daily Counter

Photograph the register page at closing time, type the day's count under it, and let the week add itself up.

Who this is for

Ashok Kulkarni designs menu cards, shop boards and wedding invitations from a room above a sari shop in Nashik. Twelve regular clients, most within a two kilometre stretch. On a Friday evening the canteen at the MIDC estate rings him about a new register cover, and while they talk the owner grumbles that he has scrolled through eleven photos on his phone and still cannot say how many plates went out last week. Ashok works out that he could sell that man a website for 300 rupees a month.

How the job is done today

At the canteen counter there is a ruled register. The supervisor writes the plate count at the bottom of the page each night and photographs it before pulling the shutter down. The photo goes into a WhatsApp group with the owner and his brother. Nobody adds anything up until Sunday, when the owner scrolls back, misses Wednesday because that photo came in sideways and blurred, and totals the rest on a calculator. He writes the figure on the back of the bill book. By next month the bill book has gone.

The screens, in order

1. Add a shop — Ashok sets up a new client in two minutes, naming what they count and which day they are closed, so the counter can start that same evening.
2. Tonight's page — The person at the counter photographs the register page and types the day's number underneath it.
3. The day — Shows the photo large beside the figure that was typed, so a wrong entry gets fixed before anybody argues about it.
4. This week — Holds the running total for the week and the number of days sent in a row, and nothing else.
5. The month — A strip of the whole month where the days nobody sent are the ones you notice first.
6. The owner's link — One plain link the owner can open on the road, showing the same figures with every day tappable back to its page.

What it keeps track of

• Shops — shop name, town, what they count, weekly off day, who sends the photo, what Ashok charges and from which month
• Days — which shop, which date, the photo of the page, the number typed, who typed it, whether it was corrected afterwards
• People at the counter — name, phone, which shop, whether they are allowed to change a number already sent
• Owner links — which shop, the link itself, when it was last opened

The one decision that matters

Should the site read the handwriting, or should a person type the number while the photo stays as the proof? Reading it by itself sounds right, and one day it will be. But a canteen register is pencil on damp paper, and a seven read as a one becomes a total nobody can defend in front of the owner. Have the person at the counter type the figure under the photo they just took. It takes three seconds and they already know the number. Keep every photo, so the owner can tap any day and see the page the figure came from, and so the reading can be added quietly later and checked against a year of typed numbers before anyone is asked to trust it.

What to leave out of the first version

Leave out charts, comparison between one shop and another, and any collection of money inside the site. Ashok has four clients. He can send a UPI request himself and remember who has paid. Leave out a password for the owner as well, because a plain link is enough for a man who wants one figure while riding to the estate. What must not be cut is the photo of the page. Take the photo away and this becomes another form somebody stops filling by the third week.

How you would know it worked

The Sunday phone call stops. The owner opens the link on his way to the estate, sees 2,140 plates for the week and a 44-day unbroken row, and the supervisor mentions it to the tyre shop next door, who then ask Ashok what it costs.

Build it

Paste this in and let it run.

I am a freelance designer in Nashik and I want a small website I can sell to four or five shops near me. Each of them keeps a headcount in a ruled register, plates served or patients seen or haircuts done. At closing time whoever is at the counter photographs the page, puts the photo up, and types that day's number under it. The site should then show that shop its running total for the week, how many days in a row they have sent a page, and a month strip where a missed day is obvious. The owner gets a plain link with no password that shows the same figures and lets him tap any day to see the actual page. I also need a page of my own where I add a new shop, set what they count and their weekly off day. Nothing about payments, I collect on UPI myself.