Case study · A café in Jaffna
A Jaffna café's first 9 days: 230+ bills, daily takings up 25%
A small juice and tea café in Jaffna started billing on PepulBill in August 2026, with no machine and no printer. Every figure below comes from its own records, rounded down.
- bills paid in 9 trading days
- 230+bills paid in 9 trading days
- trading days
- 9trading days
- daily takings, first 3 days vs last 3
- +25%daily takings, first 3 days vs last 3
- of bills between 11 am and 3 pm
- 58%of bills between 11 am and 3 pm
- average from bill to payment
- < 2 minaverage from bill to payment
- of all sales from the top 5 items
- 40%of all sales from the top 5 items
The shop
A small café in Jaffna selling fresh juices, tea and hot drinks from one counter, with a menu of 32 items. Two people sign in to PepulBill: the owner and one more member of the team, each with their own PIN.
Sales grew as the counter settled in
Daily takings over the last three trading days were 25% higher than over the first three, and bills per day rose 11%. The café billed 26 customers a day on average, at 1.4 items per bill.
The rush, measured
58% of all bills came between 11 am and 3 pm, and the 1 pm hour alone took 20%. That is the hour a notebook falls behind — here each bill was paid under two minutes after it was made, on average, and fewer than 2 in 100 were cancelled.
What sells
Five items — passion fruit juice, tea, badam, pineapple juice and Milo — made up 40% of everything sold. Knowing that, a shop knows what never to run out of, and where a stamp card or a deal would pay.
Cash first, and the drawer counted
99% of bills were settled in cash. Because every bill records how it was paid, the day's cash total was ready at closing time — no pile of slips, no calculator.
What it did not need
No billing machine, no receipt printer and no paper rolls. The phone the café already had did the work.
What we cannot measure yet
Repeat customers: the café did not record customers' numbers on bills, so return visits cannot be counted honestly — the stamp card, which needs a number, will change that. Ease of use: the owner's System Usability Scale (SUS) score will be added here once they have answered it.
Figures are from the café's own PepulBill records, 22 August – 1 September 2026, rounded down. We have left out the café's name and its sales in rupees: PepulBill promises every shop that its records are its own.