Rice and Flour Mills in Nepal: A Season-by-Season Guide to Sacks, Sales and Credit

A rice or flour mill lives by the calendar. Paddy and wheat arrive in seasons, cash goes out to buy them in seasons, and buyers' habits change with festivals, weddings and the monsoon. Yet many mills run sales the same way all year: the same agents, the same credit, the same guesswork about which grade to push. The result is familiar: fast grades sold out while slow grades age in the godown, wholesalers whose balances keep growing, and wet sacks nobody wrote down. This guide follows the mill's year, then shows how to set up sack stock, sell to different buyers, handle damaged sacks and keep credit under control.

The mill calendar

Harvest timing varies between terai and hill districts and from year to year, so treat this as a typical pattern and adjust it to your own area and records.

Period (Bikram Sambat)	Raw material	Sales side	What to watch
Kartik to Poush	Paddy harvest and buying	New-season rice launches; wedding season begins	Cash tied up in paddy; keep collections strong
Magh to Falgun	Milling of stored paddy	Steady rice sales; wedding demand	Old-season stock must clear before new grades pile up
Chaitra to Jestha	Wheat harvest and buying	Atta and maida steady; bakeries busy	Wheat purchase cash; review wholesaler aging
Asar to Bhadra	Monsoon storage	Roads slow, deliveries harder	Damp in godowns, wet sacks in transit, route planning
Ashwin to Kartik	Pre-harvest	Dashain and Tihar peak for rice, atta, maida, suji	Stock up fast grades, agree festival schemes and credit limits

Two pressure points stand out. At harvest, the mill spends heavily on raw material, which is exactly when wholesaler credit hurts most. And in the monsoon, damp and broken roads raise the cost of every mistake. A sales and stock system should help you get through both.

gamitrack does not manage paddy or wheat buying. It starts when finished sacks enter the godown and follows them through to the buyer and the payment.

Setting up stock the way the godown thinks

Godown staff think in grades and sacks: "Mansuli 25 kg", "Sona 25 kg", "atta 10 kg", "maida 50 kg". Set up your products the same way.

• One SKU per grade and sack weight. Each pack size is its own SKU, so 25 kg and 50 kg sacks of the same grade are counted separately.
• Weight in kg on every product. Orders then show total weight, which matters for truck planning and for checking that what went out matches what was ordered.
• Batches for production lots. Record lots with a best-before date where relevant, especially for atta and maida.
• One branch per godown. The main mill godown and any depot in another town are separate branches, each with its own stock and low-stock levels.

Every receipt, dispatch, transfer and return is an append-only stock movement. Nobody can quietly adjust a figure; corrections show up as movements of their own, which makes the monthly physical count much easier to reconcile.

Who buys, and how to serve them

Buyer	How they buy	Price	Service
Wholesalers in towns	Truckloads, on credit	Wholesale price list	Weekly contact, credit limit, aging review
Retail shops	A few sacks at a time	Default list	Fortnightly route visits
Bakeries and sweet makers	Regular maida, atta, suji	Party override	Fixed delivery day, named officer
Hotels, hostels, institutions	Scheduled bulk rice	Negotiated override	Invoice with payment terms

Price lists in gamitrack resolve in order: party override, then party type, then default. A bakery with a negotiated rate gets it automatically on every order; nobody quotes from memory.

Field officers work routes with ordered stops. They start the day with GPS, visits are checked against each shop's geofence with a photo, and visits outside the geofence, very short or without a photo are flagged for the manager. Visit outcomes record the order or the reason for no order, and closing stock at the shop helps size the next order. Keep bakeries and institutions on their own route so they are not squeezed out by the retail beat.

Orders are priced from the lists, VAT is applied only to lines marked taxable, and invoices follow the IRD format with Bikram Sambat dates and numbering per fiscal year. Whether a particular grain product is taxable is a question for your accountant and the current IRD rules.

Wet sacks and short weight: a checklist

Damage in this trade has two forms: sacks that get wet or torn, and sacks that weigh less than the label says. Both turn into arguments if they are not recorded.

• Keep damaged or wet sacks physically apart in the godown and record them straight away, not at month end.
• At dispatch, check the total weight of the load against the order weight.
• Assign a delivery person, who sees the amount due and location in the driver tab and records proof of delivery with GPS, a photo and the receiver's name. A photo of a wet sack at handover settles most disputes.
• Ask buyers to report damage within an agreed number of days.
• Record each return with a reason (wet, torn, short weight, wrong grade). After review, approved returns go into a branch with a credit note.
• In the monsoon, check godown conditions weekly and plan routes around closed roads; see monsoon route and delivery planning.

Credit through the harvest squeeze

Wholesaler credit is normal in milling. The danger is that it grows fastest when the mill can least afford it.

• Due days from dispatch. The payment clock starts when the truck leaves.
• Oldest-first allocation. Every payment by cash, eSewa, Khalti, Fonepay, bank or cheque clears the oldest invoice first, so the aging report shows the true picture.
• Weekly collection plan. Each officer has a list of payments to chase this week, and the plan compares planned with actual.
• Before harvest. Two or three weeks before you start buying paddy or wheat, review aging for every wholesaler and agree a collection push.

Worked scenario: a Monday in Ashwin

Suppose it is the first Monday of Ashwin, three weeks before Dashain. The mill manager reviews stock, aging and visits and sees, in this hypothetical case:

• The fast 25 kg rice grade is below its low-stock level at the town depot, while the main godown has plenty.
• Two wholesalers have balances that moved into the 31 to 60 day bucket.
• A bakery on the institutional route has not been visited in three weeks.
• Last month's dealer stock report from one wholesaler showed actual stock well below expected, suggesting sales the mill did not see.

The week's plan follows: transfer rice from the main godown to the depot, add the two wholesalers to this week's collection plan before approving festival loads, schedule the bakery visit, and ask the wholesaler about the stock difference. Ten minutes of review, four decisions, all before the festival rush.

Habits that leak money

• Selling the easy grade first. Slow grades age while fast ones sell out. Review slow grades monthly and decide on a price or scheme.
• Mixing damaged sacks into saleable stock. Separate and record them on the day.
• Approving festival loads without checking aging. Agree limits before the orders arrive.
• Paying commission on sales not yet collected without a clear rule. Set the rule in writing; gamitrack lets you configure rates and review month-end pay before it is finalised.

Related reading

Pulses and grain traders in Nepal, Dashain and Tihar demand planning, physical stock count playbook, and the FMCG and packaged food and bakery and confectionery industry pages.

Begin with your godown stock by grade and sack, and your top wholesalers' balances. Plans are on the pricing page, or contact us to talk through your mill.