Hot, warm or cold: grading leads at the stall
Clear definitions of hot, warm and cold leads, three questions that grade a visitor in a minute, and how to check your…
Trade fair or IndiaMART: where do your paying customers come from?
Hundreds of IndiaMART enquiries against a box of visiting cards tells you nothing. Here is how to compare the two by money…
Which of your team brought in the money from the stall?
The person who scanned the most visiting cards is not always the one who brought in the money. A fair way to…
Met a supplier at a trade fair? Check them before the first order
A good stand does not prove a reliable business. Five checks to run on a supplier you met at a fair, and…
What to write on the back of a visiting card (or say in 10 seconds)
By the next morning, twenty conversations blur into one. Here is the four-part note that keeps each person apart, with examples from…
Exhibitor’s checklist for CPHI and PMEC India 2026: venues, costs and a six-week plan
Exhibiting at CPHI or PMEC India in Delhi NCR this November? The dates, venues, stall rules and deadlines from the organiser, and…
No signal in the exhibition hall? How to capture leads offline
The hall has no signal and the queue at your stall is growing. Here is how to keep capturing visiting cards, and…
Why scanners misread Indian visiting cards, and what fixes each problem
Landlines saved as mobiles, split GSTINs, dark cards read as gibberish. Why scanners misread Indian visiting cards, what fixes each problem, and…
Scanning visiting cards and the DPDP Act: what consent you need
A visitor hands you their card at your stall. What the DPDP Act lets you do with it, what needs consent, what…
Visiting card scanner apps in India, compared on what each app publishes (2026)
CamCard is on India's 2020 app-blocking lists, and most scanner lists are written for the US. Here are eight scanners compared on…
What did your exhibition stall really earn? A rupee calculator
The stall invoice is easy to find. What the stall brought in is not. A method, a worked example in rupees and…
How to follow up exhibition leads: a 7‑day plan for Indian businesses
You came back from the fair with a box of visiting cards. Here is what to do with them, day by day,…
Write off an invoice you are never going to collect
The customer has gone quiet for eleven months. You need it out of receivables without pretending it was paid or that the…
Add the field your trade needs — and a rule that hides it the rest of the time
Every business needs two or three fields nobody else does. Add them without thought and the form becomes a wall of empty…
Read your GSTR-1 before you file it, section by section
Most people see their return for the first time on the portal, where a mistake costs an amendment.
From a name on a card to a purchase order, without skipping the check
Somebody met a supplier at an exhibition. Six weeks later there is an order out and nobody has seen a PAN.
Set your invoice numbering before you raise the first one
GST wants a consecutive series with no gaps. People discover this in month four, with three prefixes in play.
Invoice half a quotation now and the rest in June
Stage billing is normal in project work and almost no billing app tracks it. Two loose invoices later, nobody can say what…
Raise a credit note, then spend it on a different invoice
You over-billed in March. The customer wants it off April’s invoice, not back in their bank. Those are two different decisions.
Pay a bill, deduct the TDS, and have both land in the right place
The bill is ₹1,00,000, you are paying ₹98,000, and ₹2,000 is TDS. Two numbers, two destinations, one entry.
Ordered ten, they can send six — call off the rest without losing the record
Editing the quantity from ten down to six destroys the fact that ten were agreed, and when. There is a better move.
Convert a purchase order into a bill — including when the vendor sends half
The vendor delivered six of the ten you ordered and sent a bill for six. Re-typing it loses the link; this keeps…