Free billing software for shops in Palanpur: a practical setup guide

In plenty of shops, in Palanpur as elsewhere, bills are still written by hand, totals are worked out on a calculator, and the day's sales are copied into a register. It works, but it is slow at a busy counter, mistakes are hard to spot, and nobody can tell you last month's sales without an evening of adding up.

Billing software fixes that, but most of it now charges a monthly fee and wants your data on its servers. This guide shows how a Palanpur shop can bill for free instead, with CrizaVoise, the open-source billing app we make at Criza Labs. It covers what you need, how to set it up, and where it falls short.

What is the simplest free way to bill in a Palanpur shop?

For a shop that bills every day, the simplest free option we know is a desktop billing app that works without the internet. CrizaVoise is one: it is free, with no trial, subscription, licence key or ads, and it runs on Windows 10 and 11, Ubuntu and Debian, other Linux systems and macOS.

It makes GST-ready invoices, quotations, receipts and credit or debit notes, prints on 58 mm and 80 mm thermal printers, and keeps track of customers, products, stock and payments. Everything is stored on your own computer.

If you only make a few invoices a month, you do not need to install anything. Our free online GST invoice generator works in a browser, on a phone or a computer, and saves the invoice as a PDF.

Why offline billing suits a town counter

There are three practical reasons we built CrizaVoise to work offline.

• The bill never waits for the network. A cloud app that cannot reach its server cannot make a bill. An offline app keeps working during a power cut on a laptop battery, or when the mobile data is slow.
• Your customer list stays with you. Your customers, prices and sales live on your computer, not on a company's server. Nobody else can read them, and nobody can switch them off if a subscription lapses.
• There is nothing to renew. A monthly fee looks small until you count it over five years. Free means the only costs are the computer, the printer and paper rolls.

The trade-off is that you look after your own backups, which we cover below.

What do you need before you start?

Most Palanpur shops already have most of this.

How to set it up, step by step

1. Download the app from the CrizaVoise download page. Choose the installer for your system. The Windows installer does not need admin rights.
2. Allow it the first time. The installers are not code-signed yet, so Windows SmartScreen asks you to choose More info and then Run anyway. On a Mac, you allow it once under Privacy and Security.
3. Create the owner account, then add a staff user with a quick PIN if someone else bills at the counter. Write down the recovery code and keep it somewhere safe.
4. Enter your business details in Settings: name, address, GSTIN and UPI ID. Pick Gujarati, Hindi or English as the language.
5. Add your products. Import a CSV or add them one by one, and give the products you sell most a short code such as R5, so you can type the code and press Enter at the counter.
6. Connect the printer and print a test bill. Check the width, the tax lines and the total. If you print in Gujarati, check that the letters join correctly.
7. Make one real bill and one backup. From Settings, Backup, save a copy to your pen drive. Then you are ready.

The CrizaVoise site has guides for the parts that cause the most questions: setting up a thermal receipt printer, sending an invoice on WhatsApp and backing up your billing data.

Getting paid faster with WhatsApp and UPI

In Palanpur, as almost everywhere in Gujarat, many customers pay by UPI and expect a bill on WhatsApp. CrizaVoise can put a UPI QR code on the invoice and share it on WhatsApp with a ready message that includes your UPI ID. For unpaid bills it can send a polite reminder.

Wholesale and repeat customers who settle at the end of the month are where this helps most, because the reminder goes with the invoice attached rather than as a phone call. If you also want a WhatsApp link for your shop's website or visiting card, our free WhatsApp link generator makes one.

What it cannot do yet

We would rather you knew before you install it.

• No e-invoicing. CrizaVoise does not connect to the government's Invoice Registration Portal. Businesses whose turnover brings them under e-invoicing must still generate the IRN there or through their accounting provider.
• One computer at a time. Your data lives on one machine. To move to a new computer, back up and restore.
• No paid support. Help comes from the guides and from GitHub. If you want someone to set it up for you or train your staff, ask us for a quote.
• Indian scripts in PDFs. Some Gujarati and Hindi conjuncts may not join correctly in PDFs, as mentioned above.

You also remain responsible for the tax rates and details on each bill. Our GST invoice format guide explains what a tax invoice must show under Rule 46.

Which Palanpur businesses does it suit?

It fits:

• Retail counters such as kirana, hardware, stationery, electrical and garment shops that want fast bills and printed receipts.
• Traders and wholesalers who need GST invoices with HSN codes and want to track who still owes them.
• Service businesses such as repair shops, tailors and coaching classes that send quotations and invoices as PDFs.

It suits less well a business with several branches that must share one live stock count, or one that needs its billing tied into accounting software. Those are real needs, but they call for a different setup, and we explain the options in our guide to custom or off-the-shelf software.

Who makes CrizaVoise?

Criza Labs is a two-founder software team based in Gujarat, and we work with businesses in Palanpur and across Banaskantha in Gujarati, Hindi or English. CrizaVoise began as a fork of Invoiso, an MIT-licensed app by Anoop P, which we rebuilt and extended for Indian shop counters. Its full code is on GitHub under the Apache License 2.0.

We give it away because a small shop should not need a subscription to make a bill, and because it is the most honest way to show how we build software. We wrote more about that in our introduction to CrizaVoise.

If your shop needs something the free app does not do, such as billing linked to your accounts, a version for several counters, or a website that shows your stock, see our custom software development service or tell us what you need.

Sources

All pages were accessed on 11 November 2026.

1. CrizaVoise download and documentation, voise.criza.dev
2. CrizaVoise source code, GitHub
3. Rule 46, tax invoice, CGST Rules, CBIC