Mineral Water and Jar Water Distribution in Nepal: Circuits, Jar Balances and Small Collections

Packaged water looks like one trade but runs as two. Bottled mineral water moves like any packaged drink: cartons from the plant to distributors, shops, hotels and trekking lodges. Jar water is closer to a subscription: the same homes, offices and restaurants get a refill every few days, and the jar itself is a reusable asset that must come back. A plant or distributor that does both needs two different disciplines in one system. This guide puts the jar first, because that is where most businesses lose money without noticing.

Bottles and jars side by side

	Bottled mineral water	Jar water (refillable)
Customer	Shops, hotels, lodges, events	Homes, offices, restaurants, institutions
Buying pattern	Orders through a sales beat or dealer	Fixed refill days, standing customers
Key risk	Dated cartons left at the back	Jars that never come back
Credit	Dealer and shop terms	Many tiny monthly balances
Who handles it	Sales officers and dealers	Drivers on fixed circuits
Damage	Crushed bottles, leaking packs	Cracked or dirty jars

Both share the same backbone: reliable delivery, correct counts and quick collection. They differ in where the leak happens.

The jar ledger: out, back and held

A jar that does not come back is a cost you pay again. Across hundreds of customers, a few missing jars each week becomes a large number by the end of a season. The jar ledger answers three questions for every customer: how many went out, how many came back, how many they still hold.

gamitrack does not have a separate deposit module, so set it up by convention and apply it strictly:

• Create the jar as its own SKU, separate from the water refill.
• Record jars going out with each delivery and empties coming back on the same trip.
• Keep the deposit agreement, if you take one, in the customer's internal notes and ledger.
• Every evening, compare jars loaded, delivered and returned for each vehicle against the plant count.

Stock movements are append-only, so a correction is a new entry with a reason. Nobody can quietly change yesterday's jar count.

Customers to review every month

• Customers holding many jars but ordering rarely.
• Customers who have stopped ordering but still hold jars.
• Addresses where empties are repeatedly "not ready".

A friendly visit to collect idle jars costs far less than buying new ones.

Designing the delivery circuit

Jar customers value predictability over speed. A circuit that arrives on the same days, in the same order, beats a faster one that is different every week.

Fix delivery days per area. For example, one area on Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday, another on the other days. Customers learn when to put empties out.

Order the stops. In gamitrack, a route is a list of stops in order. Plan it to avoid backtracking, and put the heaviest drops early so the vehicle lightens through the day.

Load to orders. Load what was ordered plus a small buffer, not a full truck "just in case". Over-loading hides shortages and breakage.

Use the driver tab. Each order is assigned to a delivery person, whose tab shows the stops, the amount due, the location and directions. At each stop the driver records proof of delivery with GPS, a photo and the receiver's name. A delivery marked far from the customer's saved location is flagged, which helps catch wrong drops and mistaken addresses.

A week on one van: a worked scenario

Suppose a small plant runs one van on a circuit of office and household customers. All numbers here are hypothetical.

• Sunday: the van loads to confirmed orders. At each stop the driver records jars delivered and empties collected. One office has extra empties stacked; the driver notes it.
• Monday: the evening close shows the van returned two fewer empties than delivered full jars. The manager checks the stops and finds two households that kept a spare.
• Wednesday: the driver collects payment on delivery from most households. Offices are on monthly settlement and appear on the collection plan.
• Friday: the weekly review lists three customers who have not ordered in a month but still hold jars. Someone calls each one.

Nothing in that week is complicated. The value comes from recording it the same day instead of remembering it at month end.

Collecting many small amounts

A jar refill is a small bill, but many small unpaid refills become a real problem quickly. Set clear rules by customer type:

Customer	Sensible rule
Households	Pay on delivery, by cash or wallet
Small shops and restaurants	Weekly settlement
Offices and institutions	Monthly statement, with payment due days from dispatch

After delivery, the driver can collect by cash, eSewa, Khalti, Fonepay, bank or cheque. Payments are allocated to the oldest invoices first, and each customer's ledger statement and aging show exactly what is outstanding. A weekly collection plan gives each person a list and compares planned with actual. Orders, deliveries and payments need a mobile connection to save, so drivers on circuits with weak signal should confirm entries where the connection is good.

Summer, trekking and event peaks

Demand climbs in the hot months, during trekking seasons on lodge routes and around weddings and public programmes. Event orders are one-off bulk deliveries that need confirmed quantities, a delivery time and usually an advance. Record the advance against the party, book the order early and assign the delivery to a named driver so the event day does not pull a van off its regular circuit unannounced.

Bottled water: dates and dealers

Bottled water carries a best-before date, and cartons at the back of a godown are easy to forget, especially after the hot season ends. Receive each production run as a batch with its expiry, check the near-expiry view weekly and dispatch the oldest first. Low-stock alerts per branch help you position stock before summer, trekking and event peaks.

If you sell through dealers, the same tools apply as for any packaged drink: sales officers on routes with GPS-verified visits and photo proof, primary orders to dealers, secondary orders from shops, and a monthly dealer stock report that compares expected closing stock with the count. Damaged or rejected cartons come back as returns with a reason, reviewed before a credit note is issued.

Questions plant owners ask

Should vehicles be branches? Some businesses model each van as a branch so jars and cartons on board show as stock in that van. Loading becomes a transfer from the plant, and the evening return is a transfer back. It is more work per day, but it makes the vehicle count visible.

How do I handle cracked or dirty jars? Record them as a return with a reason. If one circuit returns more damaged jars than others, look at how jars are stacked and handled on that vehicle.

Can I see whether drivers actually followed the circuit? Yes. The day's location trail and the proof-of-delivery points show where the vehicle went and when each stop was marked.

Monthly review checklist

• Jars at the plant plus jars in vehicles plus jars at customers equals jars owned.
• Customers holding jars with no orders in the last month.
• Unpaid balances by age, by circuit.
• Deliveries completed against planned per vehicle.
• Cartons nearest expiry, by branch.
• Flagged deliveries that were far from the customer location.

Related reading and next step

Related reading: soft drinks distribution, a delivery person's day in gamitrack and the beverages industry page.

Start with one circuit and an honest jar count. When jars reconcile for a month, add the next circuit. See the plans and free trial on our pricing page, or contact us.