The paddy rate is the number everyone quotes, and it is never the cost. Outturn, by-product credit and milling cost decide what a quintal of rice really costs — and therefore the rate below which a sale loses money.
Everything here is per quintal of paddy, except the results, which are per quintal of rice. That conversion is the part most back-of-the-envelope sums get wrong.
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Net cost per qtl of paddy = paddy rate + milling + transport − by-product credit
Cost per qtl of rice = net cost per qtl of paddy ÷ (outturn ÷ 100)
That division is where the money is. At a 67% outturn every quintal of paddy yields roughly two-thirds of a quintal of rice, so every rupee of net paddy cost becomes about one and a half rupees of rice cost. It also means a single point of outturn is worth far more than it looks — losing one point does not cost you one percent, it raises your rice cost by roughly one and a half percent of itself, every single lot.
By-product credit works in the other direction and is routinely undercounted. Bran in particular carries a real price, and mills that sell it casually — without it ever appearing against the lot it came from — are giving away margin they have already earned.
Most rate decisions get made on the phone, against a memory of what paddy cost. Break-even is what actually protects a sale: below it you are converting working capital into losses at speed, and because rice moves in large lots, one badly-priced sale can undo a good month.
This calculator gives you the figure for one set of assumptions. MillSaathi keeps the same sum running on your real lots, every day, from the weights actually captured at the bridge — and it is free.
Add paddy rate, milling cost and transport per quintal of paddy, subtract the bran and husk credit, then divide by your outturn expressed as a fraction. Dividing by outturn is the step that is usually skipped, and it is the step that turns a paddy rate into a rice cost.
Because cost per quintal of rice is net paddy cost divided by outturn. At around two-thirds recovery, every rupee of paddy cost becomes roughly one and a half rupees of rice cost, so a point lost on recovery raises your cost by more than a point — on every lot, all season.
Either works arithmetically, as long as you do it consistently and actually record the sale. The real risk is not the accounting treatment — it is bran and husk leaving the mill without ever being tied to the lot that produced them, which makes your rice look more expensive than it is and hides a genuine leak.
Yes. This calculator needs no signup, and MillSaathi itself is free — all modules, unlimited users, no card. The difference is that the product runs this calculation on your real captured weights every day instead of on the assumptions you typed here.
No. MillSaathi captures what physically happens on the mill floor and reconciles every lot; Tally stays your accounting. The point is to feed Tally verified numbers instead of end-of-day re-entry from memory.
MillSaathi is free — every module, unlimited users, no card. Open the demo mill and click through a real day, or start your own mill in a few minutes.