Iron and steel dealers: keeping track of cheques and partial payments
Why cheques get lost in a steel business, and how a cheque register with partial settlements fixes it.
In the iron and steel trade a large share of payments arrive as post-dated cheques, often from the same party, sometimes partly cleared. Kept in a register or a spreadsheet, it only takes one bounced or forgotten cheque for a party balance to be wrong for months.
Where it usually goes wrong
- Post-dated cheques that nobody deposits on the right day
- A cheque that is only partly honoured, but marked "paid" in full
- Party balances that do not match because the cheque was entered twice or not at all
- No quick way to see which cheques are due this week
What a cheque register should do
Every cheque is entered once, against a party, with its number, bank, amount and date. Its status then moves from pending to deposited to cleared - or bounced. The party ledger updates from that status, not from someone remembering to adjust it.
Partial payment is the part most general software cannot handle: a Rs 320,000 cheque against which Rs 200,000 has settled, with the remaining Rs 120,000 still showing as owed against that same cheque. That is how the trade actually works, so the software has to follow it.
Billing by weight and rate
Steel is sold by weight, and rates move daily. Invoices need weight, rate per kg or ton, and sizes (girders, bars, sheets) - not just a quantity and a fixed price.
Common questions
Can I see all cheques due this week?
That is the main screen of a good cheque register: due today, due this week, overdue, bounced.
Does it work for importers as well as retailers?
Yes. Importers and dealers deal in larger cheques and more parties; retailers in more, smaller sales. The same register and ledger serve both.
Written by iPOS.NET Wazirabad · updated 2026-09-21