Encoder Technologies

Web · 2024

EncoderPOS

A multi-tenant POS and business management platform: point of sale, live inventory, purchasing, multi-branch operations, accounting and analytics — with offline-capable billing.

Client
Encoder Technologies (own product)
Industry
Retail & wholesale
Category
Web
Year
2024
EncoderPOS — built by Encoder Technologies — view 1
EncoderPOS — built by Encoder Technologies — view 2
EncoderPOS — built by Encoder Technologies — view 3
EncoderPOS — built by Encoder Technologies — view 4
EncoderPOS — built by Encoder Technologies — view 5

Screenshots of the live product. Use the arrows to browse each view.

Overview

EncoderPOS is our own product and the clearest public statement of how we engineer software. It brings sales, inventory, purchases, branches, customers and business analytics into one platform, so a shop owner has a single place to run the day and a cashier has a till that never keeps the queue waiting.

The business challenge

Retailers were running a till, a spreadsheet and a separate ledger. The three never agreed, so stock did not match the shelf and the monthly figures were a reconstruction rather than a record.

Multi-branch businesses had no way to compare locations on one screen: each branch kept its own numbers and the group position was assembled by hand.

Most critically, billing stopped when the internet did. A connectivity problem became a trading problem, in businesses that cannot ask a queue to wait.

The solution

One platform where the counter, the warehouse and the accounts are the same system. Sales, purchases, returns and transfers write to a single inventory ledger, and every quantity on screen is a consequence of those movements rather than a separately maintained number.

Multi-tenant architecture with branch-scoped stock, pricing and permissions, so a second location is configuration rather than a second installation — and group reporting is a query rather than an exercise.

An offline-capable point of sale that keeps billing locally during an outage and reconciles when the connection returns, without creating duplicate sales.

Development process

  1. 01

    Discover

    Time spent behind counters watching how billing, returns and stock counts actually happen — including what staff do when the system is in the way.

  2. 02

    Define

    The movement ledger was fixed as the core model before any screen was designed, because everything downstream depends on it being right.

  3. 03

    Design

    Cashier screens designed keyboard- and barcode-first for speed; owner screens designed for scanning, not exploring.

  4. 04

    Engineer

    Laravel and MySQL for the operational core, React for the interactive surfaces, Redis for queues and caching.

  5. 05

    Test

    Concentrated on the paths that cost money: billing, stock movements, permissions and offline reconciliation.

  6. 06

    Launch

    Deployed as a multi-tenant SaaS with plan tiers, operator tooling and monitoring.

  7. 07

    Evolve

    Continuous development across modules, driven by what businesses running it actually ask for.

Architecture

  • Multi-tenant accounts with per-branch stock, pricing and staff permissions
  • Single inventory ledger written by sales, purchases, returns, transfers and adjustments
  • Offline-capable POS client that queues locally and reconciles on reconnect
  • Double-entry accounting posted automatically from operational documents
  • Role-based permissions enforced at the data layer for cashiers, managers and accountants
  • Redis-backed queues for reporting, sync and background processing

Results

  • A live commercial product at encoderpos.com with public feature, industry and pricing pages.
  • Configured for nine retail industries, from supermarkets and pharmacies to cafés and hardware.
  • Offline billing, sub-second counter response and role-based access shipped as product capabilities.
  • Customer-specific performance metrics are not published here: we only publish figures we can evidence.

Related work

All case studies

Have a product in mind?

Tell us what you're building, improving or automating. We'll help turn the idea into reliable software.

Start a ProjectTalk to Our Team