Shop Billing Counter

How it works

1. Answer a few questions once. Tap Set up step by step: it asks what kind of shop you run, what you sell and what each thing costs, and builds your menu from the answers.
2. Make a bill by tapping. Each tap on a tile adds one. The − and + beside a line change it, and tapping the quantity opens a number pad. Something sold by weight asks for the weight as soon as it is tapped.
3. Take the money. Tap Pay, then Cash, UPI or Credit. For cash, tap the note the customer hands over and the change is shown.
4. Print or send the receipt. On a 58 mm or 80 mm roll, on an ordinary printer, or to the customer by WhatsApp or e-mail.
5. Close the day. The Day book adds up the sales, splits them into cash, UPI and credit, lists what sold, and tells you what should be in the drawer. Reports shows the week or the month in figures and charts.

There is no “save” button and no account. Everything is kept as you go, in this browser on this device.

Setting up, step by step

On a device that has not used the counter before, the counter shows Set up step by step; in the installed app the setup opens by itself. It asks six things, one screen at a time, with a bar across the top showing how far you are:

1. What kind of shop it is. Seven kinds have a ready list of names; “Something else” starts with an empty menu.
2. The language of the receipt, from a list of 50. A box at the top finds one by name, and your device's own language is offered first.
3. Your shop's name, phone and address, for the top of the receipt. All three can be left empty.
4. What you sell. The ready list is shown in its sections, each name with its price and a switch. Switch off what you do not sell, or tap Remove all to take out a whole section at once; type each price in the box beside the name, where Enter moves on to the next one; and add anything that is missing in the box at the top of the list or the one at its foot.
5. Your prices. Anything you chose that still has no price is shown in turn with a number pad. Type the price and tap Next, or skip one and set it later. When every price was already typed on the list, this step is passed over.
6. Receipts and payment: the paper you print on, your UPI ID if you want a payment code, rounding to a whole rupee, and token numbers.

The last screen lists what was set, and Start billing opens the counter with your menu on it. Nothing is saved until that button is tapped. Later, at the top of every screen, leaves the setup without changing anything, and Run the setup again under Shop brings it back at any time. Run a second time, the setup adds to your menu and never removes from it.

Installing it as an app

The counter can be installed on a phone, a tablet or a computer, and then behaves like any other app: it has its own icon, opens in a window of its own with your shop's name at the top, starts at once, and works with no internet. Nothing comes from an app store.

• Android, and Chrome or Edge on a computer: tap Install app at the top of the page, or Install on this device under Shop. If neither shows, open the browser's menu and choose “Install app” or “Add to Home screen”.
• iPhone and iPad: open the page in Safari, tap Share, then “Add to Home Screen”.

Holding the app's icon on Android, or right-clicking it on a computer, offers three shortcuts: New bill, Day book and Reports.

On Android and on a computer the installed app uses the same saved data as the page in that browser, so a menu set up in the browser is there in the app. On an iPhone or iPad the app on the home screen keeps its data apart from Safari's: set the counter up in the app itself, or carry it across with a backup file.

Versions and updates

The app has a version number, shown under Shop in About this app with what changed in each version. When a new version is published, an installed app fetches it in the background the next time it is opened with a connection, and a bar says “Version … is ready”. Tap Update and the app restarts on the new version; leave it, and the new version is used the next time the app is closed and opened. Check for updates asks at once.

An update replaces the app's own files and nothing else. Your menu, prices, bills, credit accounts and settings are kept separately on the device and are exactly as they were afterwards.

Made for a touch screen

Everything a hand reaches for at a counter is large: the item tiles, the − and + beside each line, the Pay button, and the number pad. Prices, weights, discounts and the cash handed over are all typed on that pad on the screen, so the phone's own keyboard does not cover the bill. The keyboard appears only for words — an item's name, a customer's name, the shop's address.

On a phone the total and the Pay button stay at the bottom of the screen while you scroll the tiles. On a tablet or a touch-screen computer the bill stays beside the tiles.

The page is drawn the way a phone's own apps are: white cards on a grey background, switches, and sheets that rise from the foot of the screen for a quantity or a payment. It follows the device's light or dark setting, which is easier on the eyes at a counter that is open after dark.

The sums, worked through

A line is its quantity times its price. The lines add up to the subtotal. A discount comes off, a tax — only if you have switched one on — goes on, and the total can be rounded to a whole rupee.

The prices in this example are made up to show the arithmetic. A discount is typed as an amount, or chosen as 5%, 10%, 15% or 20%; it is never more than the bill. Rounding is on to begin with and can be switched off under Shop; the paise added or taken off are printed as “Round off”. If the customer gives ₹100 for this bill, the change shown is ₹8.

The tool multiplies and adds what you type. It does not know any price or any tax rate, and it does not work out GST for you. If you switch on “Add a tax to every bill”, you type the name and the rate yourself, and it is added on top of your prices. The receipt is a counter bill and is not a tax invoice; ask your accountant what your shop must issue.

Things sold by weight

An item can be sold each, by the kilogram, litre, dozen, bunch, plate or packet. Tapping something sold by the kilogram opens the weight pad: tap 250 g, 500 g, 750 g, 1 kg, 1.5 kg or 2 kg, or type it. A typed number of 50 or more with no point is read as grams — “250” is 250 g — and anything else as kilograms, so “1.5” is a kilo and a half. The pad shows what it understood before you tap Done.

When a customer asks for “twenty rupees of chillies”, tap For this much money and type 20: at ₹80 a kilo that is 250 g, and the bill shows the weight. On the bill, − and + move a weighed line by 250 g at a time.

Speaking the order

Tap Speak and say the order as you would say it across the counter: “two tea, one vada”, “tea two, vada one”, “tomato half kilo”, “250 gram green chilli”, “onion for 20 rupees”. A quantity may come before the thing or after it, and a thing with no quantity is one of it. The words for numbers and units are understood in English, Malayalam and Hindi. The microphone can be set to listen in the other languages too; in those, say each item by the name on your menu, and a number the browser writes in digits works the same way.

If a word is not on your menu it is shown under the microphone. Tap it, then tap the item it means: the tool adds that spelling to the item's “Also called” line and finds it the next time. An item answers to its name and to every name on that line, which is how a ready list lets “chai”, “chaya” and “tea” all find the same tile.

Listening is done by your browser's own speech service — Chrome, Edge and Safari have one; Firefox does not. In most browsers it sends the sound to that service over the internet, so speaking needs a connection even though the rest of the counter does not. Check the bill on the screen before taking the money: a noisy shop can be misheard.

Receipts and printers

Under Shop, choose the paper: a 58 mm roll (32 letters across), an 80 mm roll (48 letters across, with a column for the rate), or an ordinary A4 or A5 printer. The receipt carries the shop's name, address and phone, the bill number, date and time, each item with its quantity and amount, the total, and how it was paid. Its own words — bill, total, cash, change — can be printed in any of 50 languages, from Hindi, Tamil, Bengali and Urdu to Arabic, Spanish, Chinese and Swahili, and a language written from right to left has its receipt set out mirrored. Your item names are printed as you typed them. The ready lists of items are named in English, Malayalam and Hindi; in the other languages they start in English, and you rename what you like under Menu. A sample of your receipt is drawn on the Shop page as you change it.

Print works two ways. With nothing joined, it opens the device's own print window, set to the size of the roll, and works with any printer the phone or computer already knows. Or join a receipt printer under Shop — by Bluetooth, a USB cable or a serial port — and Print sends the receipt straight to it with no window in between. A receipt in plain English letters goes as text, which prints fastest; one in any other script, and every payment code, goes as a picture.

Joining a printer needs Chrome or Edge, on Android, Windows, Mac or Linux; an iPhone or iPad cannot do it and uses the print window instead. The tool speaks ESC/POS, the language of nearly every 58 mm and 80 mm thermal printer, and Bluetooth joining is for printers with Bluetooth Low Energy. Printers differ, so print a test receipt from the Shop page before a busy day.

Sending a bill by WhatsApp or e-mail

When a bill is saved, WhatsApp and Email appear beside it on the counter, and again whenever the bill is opened from the Day book. On a phone, the bar at the foot of the screen shows the saved bill; tap it to open the bill with the same buttons. Each one opens that app on your device with the bill already written in it: in WhatsApp as a block with the columns lined up, in an e-mail as plain sentences with the bill number as the subject. You choose who it goes to and press send in that app.

This page sends nothing itself, and it does not ask for or keep a phone number or an e-mail address for a bill. The one exception is a bill on the account of a credit customer whose phone number you have typed: for that bill WhatsApp opens on that customer's chat. Share picture hands a picture of the receipt to the phone's own share sheet instead, from where it can also go to WhatsApp or mail.

UPI and customers on credit

Type your UPI ID under Shop. When a bill is paid by UPI the screen shows a payment code with the total in it; the customer scans it with any UPI app and the amount is already filled in. The money goes from their bank to yours. This page takes no part in it and cannot see whether it arrived, so look at your own app before you tap “Paid — save”.

For a regular who settles later, choose Credit and pick or type their name. The bill is saved against their account, and the Day book shows what each customer owes. When they pay, open their name and tap “Paid back in cash” or “Paid back by UPI”. “Send what is owed” writes a WhatsApp message with the amount.

The day book and exporting the data

The Day book shows, for any day: sales, the number of bills, cash, UPI, credit, expenses, and the cash that should be in the drawer — the opening cash, plus cash sales, plus credit paid back in cash, less expenses. Below are what sold, every bill (tap one to print it again or cancel it), the expenses, the credit accounts, and the month day by day. A cancelled bill keeps its number and stays in the list, crossed out, but is left out of every total.

Under Export the data, choose the days and save a spreadsheet file: the bills, every item sold, totals by item, totals by day, or the expenses. Each is a CSV file that opens in Excel, Google Sheets and LibreOffice. Back up to a file saves everything — the menu, the shop's details, every bill and every account — in one file that can be brought back on this device or another.

Reports

The Reports part shows how the shop did over a stretch of days: today, the last 7 or 30 days, this month, last month, or any two dates you choose. One row of choices at the top scopes everything under it, so the figures always agree with one another.

First comes the sales figure for those days in large type, with how it compares with the same number of days just before — “12% more than the 7 days before”. Beside it are the number of bills, the average bill (sales divided by bills), the expenses, sales less expenses, the best day, the busiest hour, the discounts given, and what customers owe at this moment.

Four pictures follow. Sales by day has a column for each day — or for each week when more than 31 days are chosen, and each month when more than 182 are. Busiest hours adds up the same days by the hour of the day, which shows when the counter needs more hands. What sold most lists the eight items that brought in the most money, with how many were sold and their share of the sales. How customers paid shares the sales out between cash, UPI and credit. Touch a column to see its exact figure; See the numbers under a chart shows the same figures as a table.

“Sales less expenses” is the sales of those days minus the expenses typed into the Day book, and nothing more. It is not profit: the tool does not know what your stock cost. And a day that is not over is compared with whole days before it, so a morning's figure for today reads lower than yesterday's.

Where everything is kept

Nothing is uploaded. The menu and settings are in this browser's storage and the bills are in its database, on this device only. That has three consequences worth knowing. Two phones at the same counter do not share bills: use one device as the till. Clearing the browser's data, or removing the browser, removes the bills, so save a backup file regularly. And once the page has been opened with a connection, it opens again with none — bills can be made and printed with no internet, and nothing is lost when the network drops.