Honey Batch Verification

Suresh records every drum of honey the moment it is extracted, and the buyer signs for it on the spot, whether there is signal or not.

Who this is for

Suresh Mahato keeps 180 boxes outside Musahri, near Muzaffarpur. In litchi season the boxes sit in the orchards, in winter they travel to mustard fields near Bharatpur. He extracts on a folding table under a tarpaulin, and there is no signal at that table. A trader's man arrives with a pickup around four, hangs each drum on a spring scale, calls out a rate, loads up and leaves. That five minutes at the scale is the whole argument for the next eight months.

How the job is done today

A diary with a rubber band around it. Drum numbers in chalk on the lid, which rubs off in the pickup. The moisture meter reading is called out to nobody and remembered by nobody. The trader writes weights in his own register and Suresh writes them in his, and the two do not match by two or three kilos, which is nine hundred rupees. At night, from the spot near the highway where two bars appear, Suresh sends a photo of the slip to a WhatsApp group with his brother and the Delhi packer's man in it. In November the packer asks which orchard batch fourteen came from. Nobody knows. The rate gets settled by whoever shouts longer.

The screens, in order

1. Drums on hand — Shows what is sitting under the tarpaulin unsold and what has already been signed for, so Suresh knows what is his and what is spoken for.
2. New batch — For writing down a day's extraction at the table itself, before the drums are closed and the chalk rubs off.
3. Batch card — The one screen Suresh turns around and holds towards the buyer, showing every drum, its weight and its moisture in large type.
4. Buyer signs — For the buyer to put his own name, mobile number and agreed rate, and draw his signature with a finger while both men are standing at the scale.
5. Not gone out yet — Tells Suresh plainly which sign-offs are still sitting on this phone alone and have not reached anyone else.
6. Find a drum — For answering, months later, where a particular drum came from, what it read, who took it and at what price.

What it keeps track of

• Batch — which site, which flower, day it was extracted, how many boxes it came off, drum numbers, kilos in each drum, moisture reading, who wrote it down
• Sign-off — which batch, buyer's name and mobile number, rate agreed per kilo, kilos accepted, anything sent back, time and place it was signed, the signature itself, whether his copy has reached him
• Buyer — name, firm he works for, mobile number, where he usually collects from
• Site — name of the apiary, village, whose land, when the boxes went there and when they came away

The one decision that matters

Somebody must say yes, and the real question is whose phone he says it on. One way: the buyer has his own login and receives a request, opens it, approves it. Clean on paper, useless at Suresh's table, because a request cannot travel from one phone to another when neither has signal. The other way: the buyer signs on Suresh's phone at the scale, typing his own name and mobile number himself. Go the second way. When the phone reaches the road and finds signal, the buyer gets his own copy on the number he typed, without installing anything. And because he entered that number with his own thumb, he cannot later say the slip is Suresh's invention.

What to leave out of the first version

Leave out money. No payments, no what is owed, no ledger. The moment it becomes an accounts app the trader stops touching it, and the fight that actually costs Suresh nine hundred rupees a drum is about weight and rate at the truck, not about who paid when. Also leave out codes printed on retail jars for the shopper, and lab certificates. Drum level is enough to settle every argument he currently loses.

How you would know it worked

In November the Delhi packer's man asks where drum 47 came from. Suresh opens it at the tea stall, reads out the orchard, the moisture and the rate, and forwards the signed card. The trader does not argue about the weight, because the mobile number on it is one he typed himself.

Build it

Paste this in and let it run.

I keep bees near Muzaffarpur and sell honey in drums to traders and to a packer in Delhi. I want a phone app where at the extraction table I enter a new batch with the date, the site, the flower, how many boxes, then each drum number with its weight and moisture reading, and then turn my phone around so the buyer can check the weights, put in his own name and mobile number and the rate we agreed, and sign on the screen with his finger. There is no signal at my table, so all of it must save on the phone and go out by itself later when I reach the road, and the buyer should get his copy on WhatsApp at that point. I also want to open any old drum number months afterwards and see who signed for it and at what price. Other beekeepers around here want the same thing, so let me give each of them their own login.