Optical shop software in Kolkata
Kolkata optical retail runs on long-standing shops and long-standing customers. Many stores here have decades of history in a ledger, a card file or a stack of prescription slips, and the honest problem with moving to software is not the software — it is what happens to twenty years of records. The practical answer is that you do not have to move them all at once.
LensVerge is billing, inventory, prescriptions, lab jobs and WhatsApp bookings for Indian optical shops — the OS for optical retail. It runs in a browser, so there is nothing to install and no per-machine licence, and it is the same product whether your shop is in Kolkata or anywhere else in the country. What follows is what actually matters for a shop here.
What a Kolkata optical shop needs from its software
Start billing in LensVerge from the first of a month and the customer list builds itself: every bill, booking and repair creates the record, with the prescription attached. Where you do have a clean export from an old system, send us the file and we will load it. Old paper stays exactly where it is and stays readable — nothing about starting fresh invalidates it, and your filed returns are unaffected.
Gariahat, Park Street, New Market and Salt Lake between them cover most of the city's optical trade, from crowded pavement-facing shops to newer showrooms. The common thread is a customer base that comes back, which makes recall the highest-return thing a Kolkata shop can switch on: a list of everyone whose last eye test was about a year ago, with a WhatsApp message ready to send.
Areas like Gariahat, Park Street, New Market and Salt Lake are where most of that trade happens. LensVerge does not care which one you are in — but the way you bill, the printer on your counter and the promise you make about delivery all do, and those are settings, not rewrites.
GST for a Kolkata shop: West Bengal is state code 19
West Bengal is GST state code 19. A shop here bills CGST + SGST within the state, and IGST when the buyer's billing address is elsewhere — Bihar (10), Jharkhand (20), Odisha (21) and Assam (18) all being regular cases for a Kolkata trade counter.
You set your GSTIN and state once during setup. A counter sale then bills CGST + SGST at half the rate each; when the supply is inter-state — a buyer in Bihar (10), Jharkhand (20), Odisha (21), Assam (18), or goods you ship out of West Bengal — one tick on the bill switches it to IGST at the full rate, and the place of supply and the buyer's GSTIN print where they are required. Tax is always computed on the amount AFTER discount, which is the single most common hand-billing error.
If your shop is not GST-registered, or you are under the composition scheme, say so in Settings and the whole system changes with you: the document is titled “Bill of Supply” instead of “GST Tax Invoice”, there are no tax rows and no HSN column, the totals say “Net Amount” rather than “Taxable Amount”, and the GST reports disappear from the menu entirely. A composition dealer's own GSTIN and the prescribed declaration still print; an unregistered shop's do not. You are never shown a tax artefact that does not apply to you.
HSN codes an optical shop uses
| Item | HSN | GST |
|---|---|---|
| Spectacle frames | 9003 | 12% |
| Sunglasses | 9004 | 12% |
| Spectacle lenses | 9001 | 12% |
| Contact lenses | 9001 1000 | 12% |
| Repair / labour | 9987 | 18% |
| Eye test | 9993 | Exempt |
Rates as notified; confirm with your CA. LensVerge fills the HSN and rate for you by product category and lets you override either on the product. Full HSN guide →
Week one, without closing the shop
The hard part of moving a thirty-year-old Kolkata shop onto software is deciding what to type in, and the honest answer is: far less than you fear. Enter the stock that is physically on the wall — an afternoon with a laptop and one helper — print the barcode and price labels the same day, and start billing. Nothing else is urgent.
Customers arrive by themselves after that. Every bill, booking and repair creates the record, with the prescription attached to the person rather than to a slip, and within a few weeks the people who actually buy from you are in the system while the ones who have not been in for years are still in the card file, which is exactly where they can stay. Old paper stays valid and readable: nothing about starting in LensVerge invalidates a bill you have already raised, and your filed returns are untouched.
Two practical details. Raise your first LensVerge invoice on the first of a month so the numbering runs clean inside the financial year, and keep the old system readable — not necessarily running — until the returns for the earlier period are filed. If you do have an export in Excel or CSV, send it over during the trial and we will look at it with you.
The counter, the lab and the pickup
Lens fitting is usually outsourced and quoted in days rather than hours. What breaks trust is not the wait, it is the silence — a customer who was told Saturday and hears nothing assumes it is forgotten. The orders board carries the lab name and the expected date, and the pickup message goes out with one tap when it lands back.
Tick the job-order box while you are billing and the job appears on the orders board with the prescription, the frame, the lens, the lab name and an expected date. It moves through seven stages from received to delivered, and repairs get their own board beside it with the issue type, warranty status and charge. Nothing needs to be re-typed anywhere — the job card is built from the bill you already raised.
Printing: thermal roll or A4 tax invoice
Older customers still expect a printed bill in hand, so the thermal receipt does most of the work here, with the A4 tax invoice reserved for anyone claiming. Both carry your shop's name, address and GSTIN if you are registered.
Four formats come out of the same bill — 80 mm thermal, 58 mm thermal, A4 and A5 — and your default is a setting, so during a rush nobody is choosing from a dropdown. The PDF can be sent to the customer on WhatsApp or email instead of printed at all. More on the billing side →
It keeps billing when the power goes
A power cut or a dead internet connection is not a reason to stop selling, and it is the one thing that makes shopkeepers distrust cloud software. LensVerge bills offline: the app keeps working in the browser, the invoice is created and printed, stock is adjusted, and everything queues locally. When the connection returns it syncs on its own — no export, no re-typing, no duplicate bills, because each offline invoice carries its own id and can only ever land once.
That is also why it is a web app rather than an install on one machine. Your data is not sitting on a counter PC that can be stolen, dropped or wiped, and if that PC does die you carry on from a phone. On Growth and Pro your shop is backed up daily and you can download a backup yourself.
WhatsApp bookings, and timings that stay on IST
Kolkata shops commonly keep a fixed weekly off and open late morning. Configure it once and no booking can land on a closed day. Every time shown — slots, reminders, the day's sales — is IST.
Customers book eye tests by messaging your code on WhatsApp — the bot asks their name, offers the next open days from your actual hours, then a morning/afternoon/evening choice and a real free slot — or from your own booking page at lensverge.com/book/ with your code. Either way the booking lands on your appointments board and creates the customer record. Nothing to install for them, no charge per booking for you. How the booking bot works →
Dates and times are computed in IST throughout — appointment slots, reminders, recall due dates and the day's sales figures. It sounds like a detail until a late-evening bill lands on the wrong day's report, which is exactly what happens when software keeps time in UTC.
Getting the same customer back
Most optical revenue is repeat revenue, and most of it is lost quietly — the customer who tested with you last year and tested elsewhere this year. LensVerge builds a recall worklist from the date on each prescription, so you get a list of who is due rather than a reminder to think about it. Birthday and festival nudges work the same way, and every message is logged so the same person is not messaged twice.
Prescriptions are validated as they are typed — SPH, CYL and AXIS ranges, AXIS required whenever CYL is non-zero, a warning when the two eyes differ sharply — and can be printed, saved as a PDF or sent to the customer on WhatsApp with your review QR on the sheet.
What it costs
Starter is ₹499 a month (₹399 on annual) and covers 100 invoices a month with unused ones carried forward, and WhatsApp bookings are included. Growth is ₹1,999 (₹1,599 annual) for unlimited invoicing plus loyalty points, the flyer and review-QR kit and downloadable backups. Pro is ₹3,999 (₹3,199 annual) and adds multi-branch, which is what a Kolkata shop with a second location needs. Every plan starts with a 14-day free trial and no card.
See the full pricing or start your free trial — setup takes about ten minutes, and you can add your frames as you sell them rather than counting the whole wall on day one.
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