The Retail Ecosystem
Running a shop as one system
Built and run by RG Servers
Buying, stock, billing, the books, GST and customers — built from nothing as one ecosystem, shipped as versioned releases, and in production use.
The situation
A shop needs half a dozen things that are usually half a dozen products: a till, a stock book, a purchase ledger, an accounts package, a GST tool and something to remember customers by. Bought separately, each keeps its own list of the same suppliers, products and customers — and somebody's week goes on keeping the lists in step instead of on running the shop.
What we assessed
- Where the work actually divides in a shop — goods arriving, goods being sold, and the customer relationship that produced the sale.
- Which records genuinely have to be shared between those three, and which are private to one of them.
- What has to keep working when the shop's internet does not.
What we deployed
- The counter and the books — purchase orders through goods receipt, stock, billing, double-entry accounts and GST returns.
- The godown — intake, racking, transfers, supplier returns and dispatch, across as many sites as the business runs.
- The customers — enquiries, orders, follow-ups and feedback, reading the bills the counter writes.
- One shared database holding the records all three need, with each application keeping its own private data separate.
- A print agent that lets a server outside the building drive a receipt printer inside it, over an outbound connection only — no port opened towards the shop.
What changed
- One product, supplier and customer list across the whole shop.
- Stock that is right because it moves when goods move.
- Books that follow from the bills automatically, and a GST return assembled from the same documents rather than re-entered.
- Every page a cashier uses works with no internet connection to anything outside the building.