POS System for a Kiryana / General Store: Weights, Udhaar and Expiry

A kiryana shop is the hardest kind of shop to build software for, because it is really three shops at once. Some things are sold by weight and some by the piece. Half the regulars run a tab. And a fair slice of the shelf — milk powder, masala, biscuits — has a date on it that nobody is watching.

Most billing software handles the third of that and quietly makes the rest your problem. GOF POS ships a Kiryana / General store preset that turns on the parts a kiryana shop actually needs on day one.

What the kiryana preset switches on

Picking this business type turns on two capability flags:

• Sell by weight — quantities can carry decimals, so 1.5 kg is 1.5 kg and not "1" or "2".
• Batch & expiry — deliveries record a lot number and expiry date, the oldest stock sells first, and you get warned before anything goes out of date.

It also turns on the credit-sale (udhaar) button at the till, and sets the product screen to a tap-friendly grid rather than a search box — because a kiryana counter is fast and mostly regular items.

Selling by weight, without arguing with the till

With weight selling on, you can ring up 1.25 kg of daal or 0.5 litres of oil directly. If you have an electronic weighing scale that prints its own barcode label, GOF POS reads it: the scale's item code and the weight are both encoded in that barcode, and scanning it puts the right product on the bill at the right weight. You set each product's scale code once in the product form, and it matches what you programmed into the machine.

Shelf labels are handled too. An in-store label printed at zero weight is recognised as a label rather than being rung up as 0 kg — a small thing that saves an argument at the counter.

Udhaar that you can actually close out

The udhaar book is where kiryana money goes missing, so credit is a real part of the system rather than a note field. Every customer has a ledger: what they bought, what they paid, and what stands outstanding. You can set a credit limit per customer and the till will stop a sale that would push them past it.

One thing worth knowing, because it reads backwards: a credit limit of zero means no limit, not "no credit". Every customer starts at zero, so nothing changes until you deliberately set a cap on somebody. If you want a limit, type a number.

Payments against the tab are recorded against the customer, not just against a bill, so "how much does Bilal owe me" is one screen and not a walk back through the register.

Expiry, before it becomes a loss

With batch and expiry on, every delivery you book in records the lot number and the expiry date. Two things follow. First, sales draw from the oldest stock first automatically, so the packet nearest its date is the one that leaves — and the till never draws from an expired lot, even if somebody picks it deliberately. Second, an "expiring soon" screen shows you what to push before you have to write it off.

If a supplier recalls a batch, you can find which lot you took and when. That is the whole reason the lot number is recorded at delivery rather than remembered.

The bit that is easy to get wrong

A kiryana shop stocks plenty of things that have no expiry date at all — soap, brooms, matchboxes. GOF POS lets you turn batch tracking off per product, so the purchase form only asks for a lot number on the items that actually have one. The shop-level switch says your shop tracks lots; the product switch says which items it tracks. Both have to be on before you are asked.

And if you also sell mobile load

Plenty of kiryana shops do. The business type is a preset, not a lock — switch on Services & Mobile Load in settings and you get easy-load and bill-payment entry alongside the grocery side, without changing anything else.

Getting started

Setup takes about ten minutes. When you sign up you pick General store / Kiryana as your business type, and GOF POS switches on the features above for you — no configuration screens to hunt through, no consultant. If something in the preset does not suit you, every switch is yours to change afterwards in Settings → Business type.

The app runs on Windows, macOS and Linux for the counter, and on Android and iOS for stock checks and quick sales on the move. The desktop till keeps working when the internet does not, and syncs when it comes back.

See pricing or download GOF POS and try it on a real day's trading.