Small exporters move invoices off paper ledgers

In Narayanganj and Gazipur a generation of small exporters is scanning what used to live in a red book. Banks asked for a file. Buyers asked for a file. The book could not email itself.

The software is rarely glamorous. A spreadsheet with rules. A phone that photographs a challan. An accountant who visits twice a month instead of twice a day.

Owners say the gain is not romance. It is the afternoon they do not spend in a queue because a stamp is faint. It is the shipment that does not wait for a cousin to find last Thursday’s page.

Digitising a shop does not invent a buyer. It only stops the paperwork from hiding the buyer you already have.