Keeping a quotation current when the rate changes every morning

On Monday morning a buyer books ten tonnes against Friday's rate, and the market has gone up since. Traders in Guntur, Bhimavaram and Nellore know some version of that call. Treat each morning's rate as a new quotation. Send a numbered, dated message with the time on it, a line saying when it stops being valid, and one word that fixes the price. Then a buyer cannot confirm an old rate without both of you seeing that it is old.

Why the usual rate message causes trouble

Many rate messages in the market towns are a photograph of a handwritten slate, or a line like "Teja same as yesterday". Neither carries a date the buyer will notice. The message timestamp is there in the chat, but a forward loses it, and a screenshot sent on by a broker loses everything except the figures.

A rate without a validity line also reads, to the buyer, as a rate that holds until you say otherwise. So the buyer replies when it suits, which is when the market has moved in the buyer's favour.

And a buyer who replies "ok" has not told you which rate was accepted, which variety, or how much. You are left reading minds, on a day when the yard moved twice.

The morning rate message

Type it, do not photograph it. Number it so the next one replaces it by name. This is the layout, with invented figures.

RATE No. 214 | Guntur | Mon 12 Jan | 9.30 am

Teja, cold storage, with stalk ..... ₹14,200 per quintal
334, cold storage, stemless ........ ₹12,800 per quintal

Ex-godown Guntur. Loading included. Freight and GST extra.
Valid until 1 pm today, or until the lot is sold.

To book: reply BOOK 214 with variety and quantity.
The price is fixed only when we reply CONFIRMED 214.

The same frame works for shrimp in Bhimavaram, with count sizes on the lines, or rice in Nellore, with the variety, the crop and the bag weight. What matters is the number, the time, the validity line and the lock word. If your morning rate goes to a commission agent rather than to buyers, the agent also needs lot details that can be repeated, set out in the commission agent decides who you sell to.

Four rules that keep the rate honest

Never edit a rate you have sent. If the market moves, send a new message with a new number: "Rate 215, 2.15 pm. Teja up. Rate 214 is closed." Editing leaves buyers unsure which version they saw.

Give the validity as a clock time. "Valid today" means one thing to you and another to a buyer who reads it at nine at night. "Until 1 pm or until the lot is sold" leaves no room.

Lock only on your word, not the buyer's. A booking is fixed when you reply CONFIRMED with the rate number and the quantity you can actually supply. If a buyer replies to an old number, answer with today's rate and a polite line saying the old one closed at 1 pm.

Keep the numbers in a rate book. One line per message: number, time, varieties, rates and who received it. When a booking is disputed weeks later, the book settles it in a minute. At the end of the season it also shows which buyers book only on the mornings the market has risen.

For example: a Guntur trader and a grinder in Salem

This is an invented case. A cold-storage chilli trader in Guntur sells to spice grinders and wholesalers in Tamil Nadu and Karnataka. For years the trader sent a photograph of the slate outside the godown each morning, and a commission agent in Salem forwarded those photographs to the agent's own buyers.

The mistake surfaced on a Monday. A Salem grinder replied directly to the trader, "book ten tonnes, same rate", attaching Friday's photograph forwarded by the agent. The market had risen over the weekend. The trader could honour the old figure at a loss, about ₹1.4 lakh on ten tonnes, or argue and lose a buyer who had done nothing wrong by their own reading. The trader honoured it, grudgingly, and the grinder never knew how close it came.

From the next week the slate photographs stopped. The typed, numbered message above went out at the same time each morning instead. When a forwarded rate turned up again a fortnight later, it carried "Rate 187, valid until 1 pm Friday". The trader replied with Rate 192, the buyer booked at the new price, and nobody argued. The old message had said when it ended. Not every buyer fell in line: the Salem agent kept forwarding unnumbered photographs for another month.

When a daily rate message is the wrong tool

Large buyers on a season contract, such as exporters and branded spice companies, need a written contract with the price, quality and delivery schedule. A morning WhatsApp is no place for that.

Buyers who order twice a year will mute a daily message within a week. Quote them when they ask, with the same number and validity line.

And if you cannot send the rate at the same time every working morning, do not start. A missed morning reads to buyers as "no stock today" or as a trader who has gone quiet. Our Andhra Pradesh page covers the state's market towns.

Tomorrow morning's rate

Write tomorrow's rate in the layout above, number it, and send it to five regular buyers before you send it to the rest. Read how to follow up on a quotation for what to do when a booking goes quiet. If old rates keep coming back to bite you, quotation and proposal follow-up is the related service, and you can tell us what you need.