Bakery and sweets POS in Multan

Sweets that leave Multan in tins

Multan's best-known sweet travels. Sohan halwa is a dense halwa made with milk, sugar and ghee and finished with almonds, pistachios and cardamom, and its Multani variety is among the most popular in Pakistani and especially Saraiki cooking. Traditional confectioners have produced it commercially for decades, usually as brittle discs or bite-size squares packed in decorated tin cylinders.

That packaging tells you how the trade works. A large share of what a Multan sweet shop sells is bought to be carried somewhere else: by families visiting relatives in Lahore or Karachi, by people travelling abroad, by offices sending boxes at the end of the year, and by wedding hosts who want a tin on every table. The same shop also sells fresh mithai, nimko and bakery items by weight across the counter, to people from the neighbourhood who come every few days.

So one counter handles three kinds of sale at once. Walk-in customers buy by the kilo or half kilo. Visitors buy ready boxes and tins in fixed sizes. Event customers place an order days or weeks in advance, pay part of it up front and expect a set quantity on a set date.

Behind the counter, the main costs are ghee, sugar, milk and dry fruit, and all four change price through the year. A rate that made sense in winter can leave little margin by the next wedding season if nobody recalculates it.

A working week at a Multan sweet shop

Every morning. Open the day's plan. It adds the orders due today to the counter sale you usually make on that weekday, then takes off what is already fresh on the shelf, and tells the karigars how much halwa, barfi and cake to make. Goods sold by weight can be planned in decimals, such as 12.5 kg.

At the counter. One product can carry more than one unit and rate: per kilo for loose sale, per box of a fixed weight, per tin for gift packs. The cashier picks the unit and the bill uses that unit's price, so nobody works out half-kilo rates in their head.

A wedding booking. Record the event date, the number of guests, what goes in each box, delivery and setup, and the advance. A booked order with no advance is flagged, which is the one most likely to be cancelled late.

Buying supplies. Ghee, sugar, flour, milk powder and dry fruit are kept as raw materials, apart from the sweets you sell. Record goods received, waste and counts, and print a shopping list for the supplier when something runs low.

Closing. Record what was sold off cheap at the end of the day and what was thrown away, with the reason and its cost. Over a month that list shows which items you make too much of.

Questions from Multan sweet and bakery shops

Can I sell the same halwa by the kilo and in a fixed tin?

Yes. Add the tin and the box as extra units of the item, each with its own price. Stock is kept in one place and goes down by the right weight.

A customer wants 300 boxes for a wedding next month. How do I keep track?

Make it a bulk order with the event date, guest count, contents, delivery and setup. Take the advance on the order; it sits on the customer's khata until the final bill.

We also bake cakes. Is that a separate system?

No. Custom cake orders sit next to mithai orders: size, flavour, cream, eggless or sugar-free, design photos and the message, with a slip for the customer and one for the kitchen.

Does it keep working during load-shedding?

Yes. Bills are made on the device without internet and sync later. See the bakery page, the guide to reducing bakery wastage and Multan for the other trades the same account covers.