Customer Credit (Udhar) Management for Auto Parts Shops
Most spare parts shops sell on credit. Here is how to track udhar properly so it never turns into unrecoverable debt.
Walk into almost any auto parts shop and you will find a notebook, or a stack of them, tracking who owes what. It works — until a page goes missing, a regular customer disputes a balance, or you need to know your total receivables before extending more credit to someone new.
Credit sales, known as udhar across Pakistan and India, are not the problem. Untracked credit is. The shops that manage it well treat every credit sale the same way they treat a cash sale: recorded immediately, tied to a customer record, and reconciled against payments as they come in.
Record the sale, not just the promise
A credit sale should post to the customer ledger the moment it happens — same invoice, same stock deduction, same process as a cash sale. If credit sales live in a separate notebook while cash sales go through the register, your two records will drift apart within weeks.
Know the balance before you approve more credit
Before waving through another credit sale to a regular customer, staff should be able to see the current outstanding balance in seconds. Shops that cannot check this in real time tend to discover overdue accounts only when a customer stops coming in.
Reconcile payments as they land
Partial payments, cash-against-old-invoices, and bank transfers should all reduce the same balance — automatically. If reconciliation happens once a month by hand, small errors compound and nobody trusts the final number.
Review aging, not just totals
A single "total receivable" figure hides the real risk. Split balances by how long they have been outstanding — 30, 60, 90 days — and follow up on the oldest first. Customers who have owed money for three months behave differently than customers who bought yesterday.
How Hisaab handles this
Hisaab ties every credit sale directly to the customer ledger, so outstanding balances, payment history, and aging are visible instantly — no separate notebook, no month-end reconciliation scramble. Staff can check a customer balance before approving credit, and overdue alerts flag accounts that need a follow-up call.