Distribution software, built for Pakistan.

The phone keeps its own encrypted database and works entirely from it. Each order goes into an outbox under a key the phone mints, sent one at a time, oldest first; a lost reply and a retry produce one order on the server, never two, because the key is checked inside the same transaction that writes the order. Kill the app mid-send and nothing is lost. Nothing leaves the phone until the booker taps Send. Every figure carries its own age — a rate is indicative, a scheme likely, the stock signal shows when it was downloaded — and the app warns at three days behind and stops taking orders at seven.

A shop may sit on more than one round, which is the normal case for a house holding several dealerships. The office sees, per round, which calls produced an order and which produced a reason there was none — the number behind “sixty calls made forty orders”. A round is never deleted while anything has used it; it is deactivated. There is deliberately no GPS trail, no check-in and no dwell time: the one place the app reads location is the pin it drops when a booker registers a shop that was not on the list.

This is deliberately not “the phone reserves stock”. A phone that has been offline for four hours cannot know what is on the shelf, so a booking carries no godown, no price and no hold; it carries a number, so the office can quote it back the same minute it lands. The hold is taken at accept, against a real godown, by the same availability check the counter uses. While nobody at the office has answered, the booker may change the whole cart or take the request back — after that, he rings the office, and the screen says so.

Twenty pieces coming off two lots become two lines, each carrying its own batch code, expiry date and trade price, because that is what the shop is actually handed. Price warnings fire against the batch’s own trade price, and a second, quieter warning against landed cost that only staff with the cost right ever see. A bill is immutable once posted: the correction is a void and a re-bill, which reverses the stock, credits the khata and leaves the original standing. Each firm bills under its own letters and its own number series. Bills print A4 with the firm’s own logo.

The dates are the status: there is no “activate” button to forget. A scheme’s rule freezes the moment a posted bill uses it, so changing the terms makes a new scheme rather than rewriting history. The free carton is drawn from the same stock queue the paid ones came from, never out of thin air. The counter man may take a scheme line off a bill with a reason, and can never change its quantity. When a shop returns cartons that earned free goods, the return claws them back unless a scheme manager waives it. A report then shows what each scheme gave, net of returns, and under it a “no scheme” row for the free goods nobody promised.

Money is taken the way shops actually pay — a round figure against no named bill — and the system spreads it over the open bills oldest first rather than asking the collector to tag one. Goods handed back settle a bill the same way money does. What the khata is debited is what the shop will actually hand over, which is not always the bill’s total: where a registered buyer withholds sales tax and deposits it himself, that comes off what he pays without changing what the bill is worth. Old balances from the paper register come in as line one of the book and freeze there. Statements print and export.

A party can be marked cash-only, and the sales side refuses credit for it until somebody with the right key changes that, with a reason. Due dates fall out of the bill’s date plus the party’s own credit days, with the house default filling in where a party has none. The receivables ladder — not due, 1–30, 31–60, 61–90, 90+ — is built from each bill’s own remainder, so a part-paid bill ages only what is left. A balance the house gives up on is written off through its own door, with its own permission and its own reason, and the loss lands in bad debts rather than quietly shrinking last quarter’s sales.

Each received lot keeps its own cost and its own trade price; the same product received twice is two batches, never averaged. Picking is oldest-received-first, which is Pakistani practice, while expiry is still tracked and expired stock stays unsellable. Godowns include the real ones — the main store, the damage room the principal’s man inspects — and transfers move goods between them as a document. A stock count freezes a snapshot, is counted blind, shows the variance, and posts adjustments on approval. Damaged goods can be re-graded onto the line of an adjustment note. Low-stock levels and expiry-warning windows are set per product, because medicine wants ninety days’ notice and a sack of rice wants seven.

Goods can arrive three ways and the system asks which: on the company’s account, with no bill yet (the goods wait in quarantine, counted and visible but unsellable until the bill arrives and costs them), or with no bill ever coming. Freight and unloading are allocated into cost by value, equally or by quantity. Where the total typed off the bottom of the paper disagrees with what the rows add up to, the gap is recorded and confirmed with a tick rather than blocked, and it moves the payable, never a carton’s cost. Goods sent back go against the exact lots the paper names, and are worth the company’s own price, not ours.

A cheque moves from received to deposited to cleared, or bounces with a reason; the shop’s khata is credited when it is taken, and the bounce is the scratch beside it, while the bank book counts it only when it clears. Expenses are recorded against a category the house manages, and the owner’s own withdrawals are equity rather than expense, so a withdrawal can never make the night’s profit read low. A day close is one cash point’s one day: opening float plus cash in minus cash out is the expectation, the cashier types what was counted, and the variance always needs a reason — above a threshold, a second person — and never blocks the close.

The chart of accounts is owned by the software and cannot be edited into a mess. Entries balance to exactly zero by construction, which is why the balance sheet balances. Fixed assets carry at cost less depreciation, charged by a document and never invented on a schedule nobody ran; a bank borrowing is one account split into current and long-term when it is read; what a bank charges is recorded when its advice arrives rather than accrued by guesswork. The statements print as A4 and download as a workbook, in the plain version and again in the shape a bank expects. A replay rebuilds the journal from the documents alone, so the books can be checked rather than trusted.

Two of them exist for the visitor nobody plans for. The principal statement is the page a company’s own man is handed instead of the owner’s register: per company, per period, opening plus received minus sold minus sent back, in cartons and in rupees — built from the stock ledger, because what he argues about is cartons. The credit list is what he gets when he says our money is lying in your market: one row per bill of the period that carried his goods, with what is still outstanding. Per-product reports answer the same questions at a grain the statements cannot: best and worst sellers by net sales, days of cover, what is expiring, sales by salesman.

One business can hold several firms — separate tax entities with their own NTN, invoice letters and bank accounts — reporting together and filing separately. Nobody can grant a permission they do not hold themselves. Staff sign in with a password, or with a phone number and a PIN on a shared machine, and switching user on that machine is a PIN away. What a batch cost, what the margin is and what the owner withdrew are each behind their own permission, so a counter clerk can bill all day without ever seeing what the carton cost. Users are suspended, never deleted, so their documents keep their author.