Laundry Receipt App: How to Track By-the-Kilo and Per-Item Orders Without Mixing Them Up

Laundry · 2026-11-12 · 6 min read

How to record by-the-kilo and per-item laundry orders without bags getting swapped, payments forgotten, or customers waiting with no idea when their order is ready.

Why paper laundry receipts tend to fall apart

Laundry shops that take both by-the-kilo loads and per-item pieces (bed covers, rugs, shoes left for cleaning) at the same counter often write everything on one paper receipt. When a customer comes back asking "is mine dry yet", the cashier has to dig through a pile of receipts to find their name, because the receipts aren't sorted and the handwritten numbers are hard to search.

A second problem shows up when two customers share a similar name, or a receipt gets smudged by water. Bags get swapped, or one customer's clothes end up washed together with someone else's with no record of who left what. A customer complaining about a missing item is usually right — not because the shop was careless, but because the paper trail had no number that could be checked.

One order number, one QR label per bag

Sello records every order with its own number (format OK-0001 per outlet) and prints a QR label for each bag or item. If one order has three bags of by-the-kilo laundry, the labels print as "Bag 1/3", "2/3", "3/3" — so even if the bags get separated during washing or drying, none of them can end up mislabeled.

When a customer comes to collect, the cashier just scans the label with the phone camera to open the right order instantly, instead of typing a number or searching through receipts. If the label is lost, the order can still be found by the customer's name or phone number.

By-the-kilo and per-item work in the same order

One order can hold a by-the-kilo line (say, 5 kg wash-dry-iron) and a per-item line (2 bed covers, 1 stuffed toy) at the same time — no need for separate receipts for services billed differently. Each line has its own price for its own unit (per kg, per piece, per m², or per pair for shoes), so the total is calculated automatically from the lines instead of being written by hand and easy to miscalculate.

The order also tracks payment status: unpaid, partly paid with a deposit, or fully paid. If a customer leaves a deposit when dropping off laundry, the remaining balance is deducted automatically when they come back to pay and collect — so the cashier never has to remember who already paid part of the bill.

"Ready for pickup" sent over WhatsApp, not a phone call

As soon as an order's status moves to "Ready for pickup", a WhatsApp message to the customer opens automatically from the cashier's phone — with the order number, service, and remaining balance if any. Customers don't need to call repeatedly to ask when their laundry is done, and the cashier doesn't need to keep a separate list of who has and hasn't been notified.

For shops that offer pickup and delivery, the address and pickup or delivery time are recorded on the same order, not in a separate notebook that is easy to lose.

Limits

Sello records both by-the-kilo and per-item laundry in one Android app (phone and tablet); there is no iPhone version yet. QR labels print through a 58/80 mm receipt printer connected to the phone — without a printer, the receipt and labels can still be sent as text over WhatsApp. Customer money always goes straight to the laundry shop's own account or cash drawer, never held by Sello.