Kanchani uses Zoho Flow to cut farmer billing from 15 minutes to seconds

About the company

Kanchani Farmer Producer Company Limited (Kanchani FPC LTD) is a farmer producer collective based in Warora, in the Vidarbha region of Maharashtra, India. It procures agricultural produce from local farmers, including cotton, soybean, and pulses, and manages the full process from grading and ginning to storage and sale. Kanchani serves around 6,500 farmers across the Chandrapur and Yavatmal districts.

The challenge: Keeping farmers’ bills accurate and their wait short

When farmers brought their produce to Kanchani, they first had their vehicle weighed before collecting their bill. Kanchani had five to six counters to handle processing and billing, where staff recorded details using pen and paper. Farmers waited while staff entered the information and worked out their bills.

During the peak season, which lasts around eight months, Kanchani processes an average of 180 farmers per day. Creating each bill manually took an average of 15 minutes per farmer; the farmers were paid their dues after the entire process was completed. This became more complicated when a farmer brought in more than one type of produce. With so many bills to work through, manual errors and data discrepancies were a regular occurrence.

"Our farmers work so hard, and we wanted to give them an experience that acknowledges their hard work. We didn’t want their income getting impacted due to human error and data discrepancies."

Nitin Murlidhar Tonge,Director,Kanchani FPC LTD

Kanchani adopted Zoho Books with the help of their implementation partner, InsurValue, to maintain its financial records digitally. But the team still had a challenge—manual data entry. They were entering details from the weigh slip, which was generated after weighing the transportation vehicle with full load and no load.

The weigh slip has important details, such as the farmer’s name, vehicle details, multiple commodities, and gross and net weights. Keeping digital records addressed part of the problem, while the work of moving data from the weighing bridge into Zoho Books remained. Kanchani needed a connection that could bring weighing data into Zoho Books automatically.

The solution: Automating the billing process

Working with InsurValue, a Zoho Partner, Kanchani connected their Mettler Toledo weighing scale to Zoho Books through Zoho WorkDrive and Zoho Flow. Now, the data from the scale is saved as a file in Zoho WorkDrive. Zoho Flow picks up each updated record and automatically creates a draft bill in Zoho Books, capturing the farmer’s name, vehicle details, multiple commodities, and gross and net weights.

The flow also creates a vendor credit record for loading charges, calculates variations based on weight, and applies the credit against the bill in Zoho Books. The final bill includes the bank details and the net amount payable to the farmer.

Bill creation, the vendor credit, and applying that credit all happen in seconds.

Benefits and ROI

“Zoho Flow has helped us save over 8,000 hours of manual work, eliminating data errors and manipulation and ensuring reliable, timely payments to farmers.”

Nitin Murlidhar Tonge, Director, Kanchani FPC LTD

Before automation, the entire process took around 30 minutes, with bill creation alone taking 15 minutes. Bills are now created in seconds. Now, Kanchani can process over 6,500 farmers across two districts through just two processing counters while utilizing the staff from remaining counters on other productive work.

Weighing data goes directly into the billing system, preventing manual errors and data discrepancies and ensuring farmers receive the correct payment. With an average of 180 farmers processed daily during peak season, automation is saving Kanchani over 8000 hours of manual work annually.