Supplier ka hisab kaise rakhen: a khata for what you owe distributors

How do you keep a supplier ka hisab?

Keep one page per supplier. Every delivery adds its bill to what you owe. Every payment you make and every return the distributor accepts takes it off. Write the new balance after each line. Once a month, compare the page with the distributor's statement and settle any difference with a correction line that says why.

It works like the customer khata, except that here you are the one who owes.

What should each line in the supplier khata show?

Each line needs enough detail that you or the distributor can find the paper behind it a month later:

• Date: the day the goods arrived or the money left, not the day you wrote it down.
• What happened: delivery, payment, return or correction.
• The distributor's bill number, or the debit note number for a return.
• Amount: the full amount of that bill, payment or return.
• How you paid (cash, bank transfer, cheque, or a wallet such as JazzCash or Easypaisa), with the slip or transaction number.
• Balance after this line: what you owe now.

Most notebooks skip the balance column, and it is the one that matters. Without it, answering "kitna dena hai?" means adding up a whole page while the order booker waits.

What do you write when a delivery arrives?

On the day the goods arrive, write the bill's total as the distributor printed it. That includes the sales tax and any advance income tax on the bill, because you owe those to the distributor too. If part of the order did not come, write only what you received and note the short items, so the next bill does not charge you twice.

Check the cartons against the bill before you sign. Once you sign, you owe for the whole delivery, even if two cartons are missing.

How do returns and expired stock reduce what you owe?

When goods go back (expired, damaged or the wrong item), the distributor gives you a debit note or credit for them. Write it as its own line on the day the goods leave, with the note number, and take its amount off the balance. Keep the distributor's signed copy, because a return with no paper is easy to forget.

What about money you already owed before you started?

Don't try to rebuild a year of old bills. Ask the distributor for a current statement, agree the figure, and write it once as an opening balance on the first line. From then on, write every bill, payment and return as it happens.

If you had paid the distributor in advance instead, the opening balance is what the distributor owes you, so it goes the other way.

How do you match your book with the distributor's statement?

Once a month, ask each distributor for a statement and tick it against your page, line by line. When the closing figures differ, the cause is almost always one missing or different line. Find it, agree it with the distributor, and write a correction line with the reason.

1. 1Get the statement for the same dates as your page.
2. 2Tick every bill that appears on both. A bill on the statement but not on your page is a delivery you did not write down, or one you never received.
3. 3Tick every payment. A payment on your page but not on the statement has not reached the distributor's books yet, so send them the slip number.
4. 4Tick every return. A debit note the distributor has not credited is money still owed to you.
5. 5What is left is usually a rate difference or a scheme discount. Agree the figure and write one correction line with the reason.

Never cross out or overwrite an old line. If a line was wrong, add a correction line that says what was wrong. The page then shows both the mistake and the fix, and nobody can say the book was changed later.

Should a payment to a supplier go in the shop's expenses?

No. Paying a distributor clears money you already owe for goods. The cost of those goods is counted when they are sold, not when the bill is paid. If you also write supplier payments in the expense register, the same goods are counted twice and the shop looks less profitable than it is.

Rent, electricity and salaries are expenses. The distributor's bill is stock. Keep them on separate pages and the daily hisab in /blog/shop-hisab-kaise-kare comes out right.

Who doesn't need a separate supplier book?

A shop that buys from one or two suppliers and pays in full when the goods arrive owes nobody anything at the end of the day. For that shop, a folder of paid bills is enough.

The book is worth keeping when you buy on credit from several distributors and pay them weekly or monthly, which is how most kiryana stores and pharmacies buy.

Can a POS keep the supplier khata for you?

Yes, if your purchases go through it. In NexusTill, when you receive goods against a purchase, the amount owed for them (tax included) is added to that supplier's ledger automatically, and a purchase return lowers it. You record payments, a one-time opening balance, and corrections with a reason. Each payment records how it was paid and can carry the slip number.

• The Suppliers screen shows what you owe in total and against each supplier.
• Each supplier has a ledger page with every line and the balance after it.
• Lines can't be edited or deleted. A wrong line is answered by a correction, as above.
• A payment larger than what you owe is refused, so an extra zero typed by mistake can't throw the book out.
• Only the owner sees the balances. Staff who manage stock see the supplier list but not the money.

One limit: the ledger starts on the day you start using it. Old bills don't go into it. You type the opening balance from the distributor's statement, as you would in a notebook.

Purchases and the supplier ledger are on the Growth and Scale plans, not Starter. On Starter, keep the supplier book in a notebook as described above, and keep the customer side in NexusTill's khata (/blog/pos-with-udhaar-khata). Compare the plans on /pricing, and try it on your own shop for 7 days. No card is needed, and nothing is charged when the trial ends.

Written by NexusTill Team.