Pavitra's Payment Wheel

Tap the wheel to see who has paid, and when the last family settles the whole wheel clears and the month is finished.

Who this is for

Pavitra Kadam drives a school van in Sangli. Nineteen families, twenty-four children, two runs every morning to the Marathi-medium school off Harbhat Road, fourteen hundred rupees a family. The moment is the last week of the month, engine off outside a gate, a mother asking whether she paid in June or in July, and Pavitra holding an oily diary with no honest answer for her.

How the job is done today

There is a long notebook in the glove box, one page a month, names down the left and ticks where he remembered to tick. Some pages have four ticks and eleven blanks and he cannot say if the blanks are unpaid or just unwritten. Money comes by UPI at ten at night from names like Ashwini K, and he has to work out whose mother that is. Twice a month he types kindly clear the pending amount into the parents group and nobody replies. The arguments happen at the gate, in front of the children, and Pavitra usually gives up and lets the money go.

The screens, in order

1. Saying the names once — On the first day only, someone types the nineteen family names and what each one pays a month, and then the keyboard is never needed again.
2. The wheel — The whole month sits in one circle, a slice for every family, dark where the money has not come, and a tap on a slice is the only thing this app asks Pavitra to do.
3. The clearing — When the last dark slice is tapped the wheel drains pale and turns, which is the reward for finishing a month clean and the reason he keeps opening it.
4. The new month — On the first the wheel fills dark again, and anyone who did not settle last month comes back darker than the rest instead of quietly disappearing.
5. The wheels behind — Older months sit faded behind the current one with every family kept at the same angle, so a family that has been dark three months running reads as one stripe running back into the stack.

What it keeps track of

• Families — family name, the children who ride, which slice of the wheel is theirs, what they pay each month
• Months — which month, which slices went pale and on what date, which ones were left dark when the month ended
• Taps — which slice, when it was tapped, whether it was a settling tap or a tap that took one back

The one decision that matters

What does the one tap mean. Either the tap only clears a slice, one direction, clean and final, or the tap flips the slice both ways so a second tap makes it dark again. It should flip both ways. With no keyboard and no menus, the tap is the only correction Pavitra has, and he is using this on a phone with the engine running and a child pulling his sleeve. A one-way tap turns a fat thumb into a family marked paid for a month they never paid, and he would go back to the diary within a week. Flipping keeps the count at exactly one control and still gives him a way out of a wrong touch.

What to leave out of the first version

No part payments, no reminders to parents, no receipts, no collecting money inside the app. Also leave out editing after setup. If a price goes up or a child leaves the van, Pavitra starts a fresh list rather than hunting through screens for a pencil. This is worth saying plainly, because the moment you add a way to change an amount you have added a keyboard, a menu and a second control, and the wheel stops being a thing he enjoys opening.

How you would know it worked

The diary stays shut in the glove box for a whole month. And a father who has been avoiding him for three months looks at three dark slices lined up in one stripe, says nothing, and sends the money on UPI before the van reaches the corner.

Build it

Paste this in and let it run.

I run a school van in Sangli with nineteen families and I want a game on my phone instead of my payment diary. Make a wheel with one slice per family. My daughter types the names and the monthly amount once at setup, after that I only tap. Every slice starts dark on the first of the month, I tap a family's slice when they hand me the money and it goes pale, and tapping it again undoes it if I hit the wrong one. When the last slice goes pale the wheel should empty out and feel like I won something. Next month it fills again, and whoever did not pay stays dark and gets darker. Keep the last several months' wheels faded behind the current one, with each family always in the same spot on the circle, so three dark months show as one stripe going back. No keyboard after the first day, and changing names or amounts can wait for later.