User guide
Getting started
How BastraLekha is organised, how to sign in, and what you will see for your role.
How it is organised
A cooperative is one account in BastraLekha. It has branches — the head office, outlets, warehouses and exhibition sale points — and users, each holding a role. A role says what the user may do; its scope says where: at the branches they are assigned to, or at every branch.
| Branch type | What it is for |
|---|---|
| Head office | Accounts, purchasing, returns and reports for the whole cooperative |
| Outlet | A showroom with its own till, stock and invoice series |
| Warehouse | Stock that is not sold from directly |
| Exhibition | A stall at an expo or mela, stocked from an outlet — see Expos |
Signing in
- Open the address your administrator gave you and enter the cooperative's code, your username and password.
- On first sign-in you are asked to set your own password.
- If you work at more than one branch, choose the branch you are working at from the top of the screen. Bills and stock movements are recorded against it.
Signing out ends your session on the server, not just in the browser. Changing your password, or an administrator deactivating you, signs you out everywhere.
The menu
The menu shows only what your role allows — a screen you cannot use is not shown, and typing its address does not open it either.
| Menu | What is in it |
|---|---|
| Billing | New bill, bills, returns, day close, expos, GeM orders |
| Inventory | Stock, goods receipt, purchase bills, debit notes, transfers, stock take, catalogue, Handloom labels, markdowns, job work |
| Accounts | Vouchers, parties, day book, ledgers, trial balance, profit & loss, balance sheet, cash & bank book, period close, rebate claims, Marketing Incentive, weaver roll |
| GST | GSTR-1, GSTR-3B, HSN summary, GST TDS |
| Reports | Sales, branch comparison, stock ageing, outstanding, payables, rebates given |
| Audit | Audit trail, audit pack |
| Settings | Branches, users, roles & permissions, master data, rebate schemes, opening balances, import from Excel, licence |
Finding things in a long list
Every list that grows with the business can be typed into. A choice — a customer, a supplier, a branch, a bank ledger, a role, an HSN code, a design — is a plain dropdown while the list is short and becomes a box you type into once it is long: type any part of a name, a code, a SKU or a GSTIN, and the arrow keys and Enter pick from what is found. Short fixed lists, such as payment modes and GST rates, stay plain dropdowns.
Where several things are ticked — the branches a user works at, the branches a sale or a rebate scheme runs at, the categories it covers, the tagged pieces going on a challan — a long list grows the same box above the tick boxes, and whatever is already ticked stays in view while you narrow the rest. At a stock desk the tag can be scanned: the scanner types the code and presses Enter, which ticks that piece and clears the box for the next.
The long tables have it too. The count sheet, the chart of accounts, the trial balance and the outstanding report each take a search box that narrows what is shown; a statement's totals stay the totals of everything, whatever you are looking at.
What each role sees
A cooperative starts with six roles, and the administrator can reshape any of them. The roles page lists every permission.
- Billing operator — the till, bills, returns and day close at their own branch.
- Stock keeper — goods receipt, transfers, stock take, labels and job work at their branch.
- Outlet manager — everything at their branch, including approvals, expos and GeM orders.
- Head office accountant — the books, payments, GST, rebates and incentives for every branch.
- Head office administrator — users, branches, master data and the licence; approves markdowns.
- Auditor — reads and exports everything, changes nothing.
Trying the demo
The demo first asks who the demo is for — a small shop, a growing shop, or a cooperative or federation — and then lists the sign-ins that suit, one per role, with a note on what each is good for showing. The demo shows only what that kind of business would switch on. It holds invented data: two outlets, a head office, an exhibition stall at Dilli Haat, and six weeks of trading.