Every dealer knows kharif is busy. Fewer plan for the fact that it is not one rush but a sequence of them, and that being fully stocked in June is a different thing from being fully stocked in August.

This is not a spray schedule — your extension officer and the companies' field staff know the crop better than software does. It is about the stocking decisions the season forces on you, and the numbers that make them less of a guess.

The season is three overlapping demands

Roughly, in most of Punjab and Sindh:

  • Cotton goes in from April into May, and the pressure that follows it — sucking pests first, then bollworm — runs through to picking. This is the long tail of the season and usually the biggest share of a dealer's kharif turnover.
  • Rice nursery and transplanting come later, May into July depending on the district, with its own weed and borer problems on a different clock.
  • Sugarcane ratoon and the spring crop want fertiliser and control measures on yet another schedule.

If your area grows two of these, your counter has two peaks and a trough between them. The trough is where the cash-flow trouble sits, because that is when the last consignment is still unpaid and the next one is being pushed.

The three mistakes that cost money

Buying the season in one go. A company offers a scheme in April and the whole kharif allocation lands at once. It looks like a discount. It is a discount and four months of your capital sitting on a shelf, plus every bottle ageing towards an expiry date while it waits.

Stocking on last year's memory. What sold last kharif is a fact, and it is in your bills. What you remember selling is a story, and it is usually weighted towards whatever caused you trouble.

Ignoring expiry when you buy. A consignment taken in April with fourteen months on it is fine. The same consignment with six months on it has to move this season or it does not move at all. That is a question to ask before you take the goods, not after.

What last season's numbers can tell you

If you billed through software last kharif, four questions are answerable rather than debatable:

  • What actually moved, by month. Not the season total — the month. That is what tells you when to hold stock rather than how much.
  • What earned, as against what turned over. A line you sold a lot of at a thin margin is not the same as one you sold less of at a fair one. Profit by product ranks by earnings, and the order is often not what a dealer expects.
  • What sat. Anything still on the shelf in September that arrived in April is a buying decision to revisit, not bad luck.
  • What went out of date. Expiry losses recorded honestly are the clearest argument you will ever have with a company's man about consignment size.

If last kharif was on paper, this one is the season to start counting — not to fix this year, but so next April is a decision.

Two things to check before the rush

Expiry across the shelf. Anything expiring inside four months either sells this season or comes back to the company while a return is still possible. Pull that list before the first spray window, not after.

Udhaar from rabi. Kharif credit gets extended on top of whatever wheat season left outstanding. A recovery list sorted by amount, worked through before the rush starts, is worth more than the same list in August when nobody has time.

Through the season

  • Watch stock against the fortnight, not the season. A low-stock alert three days before a spray window is useful; the same alert in the middle of it is a lost sale.
  • Keep the udhaar khata current daily. Credit given in a rush and recorded later is credit that gets disputed at harvest.
  • Note what farmers asked for and you did not have. That list is the only honest input into next year's allocation, and nobody keeps it.

Cotton and rice districts each run their own version of this. The pattern that matters is the same: buy in step with the windows rather than ahead of the whole season, and let last year's bills tell you what your memory cannot.

See how AgroPOS tracks stock, expiry and udhaar through a season, or read the rabi stocking guide.