Founder & CEO, Innobrains Technologies
Arshad Ali is the founder and CEO of Innobrains Technologies, the company that is building MartPOS: point-of-sale, stock and khata software for kiryana stores, general stores and mini marts in Pakistan.
Many customers read Urdu more easily than English, and the names they ask for are Urdu names. What a receipt can show in Urdu, how a thermal printer prints Nastaliq, how to choose between Urdu, English or both, and what to test before relying on it.
A bag of sugar does not cost what the mandi bill says. The truck, the loaders and the toll are part of its cost, and if they are not counted, every kilo looks more profitable than it is. What landed cost is, two ways to share it, and how MartPOS adds it to a purchase.
Loose daal, rice and spices come without a maker's barcode, and so do the 1 kg packets you fill yourself. Two ways to make them scan at the till in MartPOS, which to use when, and why you should never make up an EAN-13 number.
Kiryana ya general store ka hisaab barson se register, khata copy aur Excel mein chal raha ho to software par aana mushkil lagta hai. Saat qadam mein poora tareeqa, Roman Urdu mein, aur har qadam par MartPOS ki screen ka naam.
Many kiryana and general stores sell thok and parchoon from the same shelves. How to give every unit a retail and a wholesale price, decide who pays which, keep the switch out of the wrong hands, and see what wholesale really sells, with the way MartPOS does it.
A kiryana store's hisaab comes down to six questions: what was sold, whether the drawer is right, who owes you, whom you owe, what the shop spent and what it earned. A daily routine that answers them, and how MartPOS keeps each figure as the counter works.
Half a kilo of daal, a pao of haldi, Rs 100 of sugar, a whole bag of atta. How a cashier bills loose goods by weight or by the rupee in MartPOS, why Rs 50 of sugar can come to Rs 50.08, and what the till checks on every line.
Packed milk, yoghurt, bread and biscuits go off; soap and matches do not. How a grocery or general store can keep track of dates only where they matter, find what to move before it expires, and deal with what has, with the way MartPOS does it and its limits.
Sugar by the kilo and by the 50 kg bag, oil by the bottle and by the carton, eggs by the dozen and by the tray. How to set up units and packs so that every sale, whatever the size, comes out of one stock figure that stays right.
A practical plan for moving a kiryana or general store from a register or an Excel sheet onto POS software: when to switch, cleaning the item list, one closing date, the import, the checks before the first bill, the first day and the first week.
Bring in items with their packs, Urdu names and opening stock, customers with what they owe and suppliers with what you owe them, from a CSV file, with every row checked before anything is saved.
Khata keeps a neighbourhood shop's regulars coming back, and quietly eats its cash if nobody watches it. How to set credit limits, sell on khata, take payments, read a statement and chase what is overdue, with the way MartPOS keeps each account.
A general store rarely gets a day off to count. How to count a shelf, a category or the godown while the till keeps selling, weigh loose goods, and post only the real differences, with a routine that keeps the count small enough to finish.
What FBR's POS reporting through PRAL involves for a retailer: who has to report, what changes on the receipt, offline invoices, returns and the Re 1 fee, what to ask any software vendor, and how MartPOS's optional FBR POS integration handles each, switched off until you need it.
Let a second computer bill against the same stock: allow tills on the shop network, create a one-time code on the store PC, and connect the new till. Also how to remove one, and what happens when the store PC is off.
The last digit of every EAN-13, UPC-A and EAN-8 barcode is worked out from the others. Here is how that check digit is calculated, with worked examples, what it catches, and why MartPOS refuses a wrong barcode instead of guessing.