Geeta's Wedding Sweet Order

Track which customer ordered which sweets and for which day, so no box is made on the wrong date.

Who this is for

Geeta Kumbhare runs a sweet shop off the main road in Amravati with her son Nikhil and two helpers at the kadhai. Wedding season brings her forty to fifty orders, some booked four months ahead. It is 4 am on a Tuesday in November, the milk is on the fire, and she needs to know whether the Rathod family's five kilo of kaju katli is for today or for Thursday.

How the job is done today

There is a long register near the cash box. Names, phone numbers, kilos, dates, advance taken. Some orders come on WhatsApp and never reach the register because it was busy that evening. Nikhil keeps a few on his phone in a note. When a customer rings to change the date, whoever picks up the phone writes it on a loose slip and puts it under the weighing scale. Twice last season a family arrived for boxes that had not been started, and once six kilos of pedha were made two days early and went slack.

The screens, in order

1. Tomorrow — The first thing Geeta sees when she opens the phone at 4 am, showing only the orders that have to be ready by tomorrow evening.
2. Take an order — Lets her put down a customer's name, phone, sweets, kilos, the pickup day and the advance in the time it takes them to finish speaking.
3. Order card — Holds everything about one family's order in one place so a date change or an extra kilo can be added without hunting.
4. All bookings — Shows the whole season laid out by day so she can see which mornings are already overloaded before she says yes to another order.
5. Follow-ups — Gathers the customers who still owe a balance or have not confirmed their final quantity, so somebody actually calls them.

What it keeps track of

• Customer — name, phone number, which family or which wedding, where they usually collect from
• Order — who ordered, which sweets and how many kilos each, the day and time they need it, advance paid, balance due, collected or not
• Changes — what was changed, from what to what, who changed it, when
• Day — the date, how many kilos of each sweet are due that day, marked full or still open

The one decision that matters

The real choice is whether the phone must be online to save an order. One way, the order goes to a central place the moment it is written, and the shop needs signal. The other way, the phone saves it on itself first and sends it up whenever signal returns. It should go the second way. The kitchen is at the back behind a concrete wall and the phone shows nothing there, and that is exactly where Geeta stands when a customer calls. An order she cannot write down at 4 am is an order that ends up on a slip under the weighing scale. When two phones have both changed the same order, keep both versions on the order card and let her see which is later, rather than quietly picking one.

What to leave out of the first version

Leave out printed bills, stock of khoya and dry fruit, staff wages and any counting of profit. Geeta is not losing money on arithmetic, she is losing it on a family arriving for boxes nobody started. Add the money side later, once the dates are trustworthy. Also leave out automatic WhatsApp messages to customers for now, because the first version must earn her trust before it is allowed to talk to her customers in her name.

How you would know it worked

A full wedding season passes and not one family arrives to find their boxes unmade, and nothing is made two days early and left to go slack. Geeta stops checking the register to confirm what the phone told her.

Build it

Paste this in and let it run.

I run a sweet shop and during wedding season I take forty or fifty orders, some booked months ahead, and I keep losing track of which family needs what on which day. Build me a phone app where I can write down a customer's name and number, the sweets and kilos they want, the day they will collect, and how much advance they gave, all in about twenty seconds while they are still talking to me. When I open it in the morning it should show me only what has to be ready by tomorrow, nothing else. My kitchen has no signal at all so it must save everything on the phone straight away and send it up later when signal comes back, and my son should be able to add orders from his phone too. Let me see the whole season by day so I know when a morning is already too full, and keep a list of who still owes a balance.