The arhti ledger: closing the books before you go home
Arrivals, auctions, deductions, grower payouts and buyer receivables all in one day, written by hand. The register works. It just cannot be checked by two people at once.
Product·3 September 2026·7 min read
A commission agent's day runs on a rhythm nobody outside the market fully appreciates. Trucks arrive through the night, lots are made, the auction runs at dawn, buyers take goods against credit that everyone understands and nobody has written down, and by afternoon the agent is reconciling with growers who want their money.
The register holds all of this, and it holds it well, until the day someone needs to check it while the agent is busy.
Where the day actually breaks
- Two people cannot read the register at the same time, so every query is a queue at the agent's desk.
- Deductions applied from memory drift, and the drift is what growers argue about.
- Buyer credit is remembered rather than tracked, so exposure to one buyer is only obvious after a loss.
- The daily close happens at night, which means errors are found long after the person who could explain them has gone.
- When the agent is away, the business stops.
Record at the point of transaction
The single change that matters is recording each lot sale as it happens, on a phone or a terminal at the auction, rather than writing slips and entering them later.
It sounds like extra work in the moment and it removes hours at the end of the day, because the ledger assembles itself from transactions instead of being rebuilt from slips.
Make deductions rules, not decisions
Commission percentage, labour, market fee, transport, packing: define them once per grower or per commodity, and apply them automatically.
Growers accept deductions they can see and predict. What damages the relationship is an unexplained difference between what they expected and what arrived, which is nearly always an inconsistently applied rule rather than an attempt to shortchange anyone.
Print the statement the grower can check
Lot by lot: weight, rate, gross, each deduction itemised, net. Then payments made and balance.
A grower who can follow the arithmetic on one page becomes a repeat supplier. This is the most underrated business development tool a commission agent has, and it costs a sheet of paper.
Close daily, not monthly
Sabzi Mandi Software is built around this daily close: commission agent ledgers, auction and lot records, daily rates, inventory, receivables, supplier accounts and reports, with the books balancing at the end of every day rather than at the end of a season.
- Total sales by lot and by commodity.
- Cash received against buyers, and outstanding by buyer.
- Payouts made to growers, and payable outstanding.
- Commission earned, which is the agent's actual revenue and is often the least visible number of the day.
The register is not wrong, it is single threaded. Record each lot as it sells, apply deductions as rules, hand the grower a statement they can follow, and close the day before you leave.
Frequently asked questions
What does a commission agent's ledger have to record?
For each consignment: the grower, the arrival date, the lots and their weights, what each lot sold for and to whom, the deductions applied including commission, labour, market fee and transport, the net payable to the grower, and what has actually been paid. The two ends of that chain, buyer receivable and grower payable, are what must balance daily.
Why do settlement disputes happen so often?
Because the grower sees a net figure and cannot see the workings. When the deductions are itemised on a printed statement with the lot level sale prices shown, most disputes disappear before they start. Disputes are usually about visibility rather than about honesty.
Can this work in a market where most transactions are cash?
Yes, and it must. Recording a cash transaction and settling in cash are different things. The system records what happened; the cash still moves the way the market works. What changes is that the record exists at the moment of the transaction rather than in someone's memory at nine at night.