Mukesh's Bakery Supply

Set this week's rates, mark what is actually in the godown, and print one page carrying only what you can really deliver.

Who this is for

Mukesh Bansal supplies baking goods from a godown behind Basti Danishmandan in Jalandhar. Maida, butter, chocolate compound, essence, cake boxes, silver foil. About forty bakeries and confectionery shops buy from him. Four days a week he loads the tempo and does a loop through Kapurthala, Phagwara, Nakodar and Hoshiarpur. The moment this lands is Monday, six in the morning, when butter has moved up eighteen rupees a slab and he has to tell forty shops before Tuesday.

How the job is done today

Mukesh writes the week's rates in a red diary, then a boy at the photocopy shop types the same list into Word and prints fifty copies. By Wednesday the list is wrong. Chocolate compound is finished, cake boxes of the eight inch size are finished, but the page still shows them. So the baker at Nakodar orders four kilos, Mukesh reaches with nothing, and there is an argument at the counter. In between there are eleven WhatsApp voice notes he has not opened, and two shops ring at ten at night asking whether butter has come.

The screens, in order

1. Godown — Monday morning, Mukesh runs down his items and marks what is in and what is finished, so nothing he cannot deliver goes any further.
2. This week's rate — He puts the new rate against each item that is in, and the old rate stays visible beside it so he can see what moved.
3. The page — Shows exactly what will come out of the printer, with only the in-stock items and two blank columns, so he can check it before spending money on fifty copies.
4. Shops — The forty bakeries arranged by which day of the loop they fall on, so he knows whose page he is carrying today.
5. Take the order — Standing at the counter, he opens that shop and copies the numbers the baker has written on the page, in under a minute.
6. Load tomorrow — One total of everything ordered for the next day's route, so the tempo is loaded once and correctly.

What it keeps track of

• Items — what it is, pack size, this week's rate, last week's rate, in the godown or finished
• Shops — shop name, town, whose name to ask for, phone number, which day of the loop
• Orders — which shop, which items, how many, which week, given or still pending
• Printed pages — which week, which rates were on it, when it was printed

The one decision that matters

Is the printed page only a rate list, with ordering done on a phone the baker installs, or is the page itself the order form? Doing it on the baker's phone sounds cleaner and gives Mukesh the order before he arrives. But the man at the Nakodar shop is at the oven from four in the morning with flour on his hands, and he will not install anything. So the page is the order form. Two blank columns at the right, how many and a tick, printed on paper thin enough to fold into a shirt pocket. He fills it through the week as things run out. Mukesh copies it into his phone at the counter. The paper is the part that already works. Do not fight it.

What to leave out of the first version

Leave out money entirely. No udhaar balance, no payment marking, no receipts. Mukesh's accounts sit in a bound book that gets signed, and he will not move that for a long time, so pretending otherwise only means two records that disagree. Also leave out setting it up for other suppliers. Build it for one round in Jalandhar first. The paneer supplier in Ludhiana can be charged for it once the page has survived four weeks of real Mondays.

How you would know it worked

On the Thursday loop, Mukesh walks into three bakeries one after another and the page is already lying on the counter with numbers written on it in pencil. He does not have to ask anyone what they need. And the red diary stays in the tempo all day.

Build it

Paste this in and let it run.

I supply baking goods, maida and butter and chocolate compound and cake boxes, to about forty bakeries around Jalandhar, and I go out with the tempo four days a week. Make me a phone app where every Monday I mark what is in the godown and what is finished, put this week's rate against each item, and it makes one page I can print at the photocopy shop showing only the items I actually have, with pack size and rate, and two empty columns at the right for the baker to write how many he wants. The page should be small enough to fold into a shirt pocket. When I reach a shop I want to open that shop on my phone and put in the numbers from their page in under a minute. At night show me one total of everything ordered for the next day so I know what to load. No accounts and no payments in it, I keep that in my book.