Managing Karigars: Rates, Job Sheets and Accounts

Most stitching shops in Pakistan do not stitch everything in house. Work goes out to karigars — some regular, some seasonal, some who work for four shops at once — and the quality of that relationship decides whether a shop can grow past one counter.

It is also the part of the business most likely to end in a bad argument, and almost always over the same three things: what was sent, what it was worth, and what has already been paid.

Send the work, not the bill

The common habit is to photograph the customer's bill and send it on WhatsApp. It is fast, and it costs more than it looks.

A bill carries your selling price. Send it and the karigar can see, on every order, the difference between what you charged and what you are paying him. Do that for a season and the rate conversation changes permanently — not because he is unreasonable, but because you showed him.

It also carries things he does not need and should not have: the customer's name and mobile number, your internal notes, the balance outstanding.

What he actually needs is short:

• The garment and the quantity.
• The measurements.
• The stitching and style choices.
• The date it has to be back.
• A reference number, so both of you can name the same job.

That is a job sheet. Everything else is either yours or the customer's.

Agree rates in writing, per garment

"Usual rate" is fine until it is not. It stops being fine the first time a job is unusual — a heavy sherwani, a rush order, a child's kameez that took as long as an adult's.

Write the list down once:

• A rate per garment type, not a single rate for everything.
• A separate line for urgent work, agreed in advance rather than negotiated at the moment you are desperate.
• What happens when the customer changes their mind halfway.
• Who pays for an alteration, and who pays when a garment is spoiled.

That last one is worth an actual conversation before it happens. Shops and karigars both tend to assume the answer is obvious, and they tend to assume different answers.

A rate list on a sheet of paper, signed by nobody, settles more disputes than any contract. It is not a legal document. It is a shared memory.

Keep an account, not a pile of chits

The single biggest cause of karigar disputes is that the shop records work per job and settles per lump sum, with nothing joining the two.

He does eleven pieces over three weeks. You pay him twenty thousand rupees on a Friday. Neither of you writes down which eleven that twenty thousand covered. Three weeks later, nobody can reconstruct it.

A proper karigar account has two sides and one number:

1. 1 Charged — every job sent to him, with its date and its agreed rate.
2. 2 Paid — every payment made, with its date and method.
3. 3 Balance — what is outstanding right now.

That is a ledger, and it is the same shape as any account. What makes it work is that both entries are made at the moment they happen, not reconstructed at the end of the month.

Settle weekly

Monthly settlement sounds tidier and works worse. A week's worth of work is something both people still remember; a month's worth is an argument between two imperfect memories, conducted when money is needed.

Weekly reconciliation takes ten minutes:

1. 1 Here is what came in this week.
2. 2 Here is the agreed rate on each.
3. 3 Here is the total, less what I have already paid.
4. 4 Agreed?

Do that fifty times a year and the Eid season settlement — the one that ruins relationships — simply does not happen, because there is nothing left to settle. There is more on this in surviving the Eid rush.

Track the state of the work, not just the money

Three states cover almost everything a shop needs to know:

• Sent — it is with the karigar.
• In progress — he has confirmed he is on it.
• Returned — it is back with you.

Anything more detailed will not be kept up to date, and a status that is not kept up to date is worse than none, because people trust it.

The point of tracking it at all is the morning question: a garment due on Thursday that is still marked "sent" on Tuesday is a phone call you can make on Tuesday instead of an apology you make on Thursday.

Build the relationship deliberately

Karigars are a scarcer resource than customers. A shop that treats them as interchangeable pays for it every Ramzan.

• Pay on the day you said you would. This is most of it. Reliability is rarer than a high rate, and it is what earns you priority when he is busy.
• Give steady work, not just peak work. A karigar who only hears from you in Ramzan will put you fourth in Ramzan.
• Tell him when work was good. Almost nobody does this, and it costs nothing.
• Raise problems immediately and privately. A fault mentioned the day it comes back gets fixed. The same fault raised three weeks later sounds like an excuse not to pay.

What good looks like

A shop with its karigar side in order can answer these four questions in seconds, and most shops cannot answer any of them:

• How many pieces is Akram holding right now?
• What do I owe Akram today?
• Which of his jobs are due this week?
• What did I pay him last month, and for what?

If those four are answerable, the arguments stop. Not because anyone became more honest, but because there is nothing left to disagree about.

How Silai Khata handles it

Karigars are not an afterthought in Silai Khata — they are one of the four things it is for.

• Job sheets go out on WhatsApp with the garment, the measurements, the stitching and the date. No price, no customer details, no internal notes. The link is signed, so a karigar holding it cannot reach the priced customer invoice by editing the address.
• A vendor account per karigar: everything charged, everything paid, and the balance outstanding — the ledger described above, kept as the work happens.
• Status on each job, so you know what is with whom.
• A statement you can send him at settlement, which turns a weekly reconciliation into reading one page together.

Read what belongs on a tailor's bill for the customer's side of the same order, or see what Silai Khata costs.