CodeBold
Commerce
000
Trades / Grocery & kirana

The queue
is the whole
problem.

A kirana counter lives or dies on how long a basket of twenty items takes. Everything else — the stockroom, the reports, the margins — matters, but not while somebody is standing there holding a basket.

01 / The day as it is

Reordering
from memory.

The lines that move every week are the ones nobody writes down, because everybody knows them. Then the van is late, the shelf is empty on a Saturday, and the thing everybody knew turns out to have been a guess about lead times.

What stops happening

  • Reordering the fast lines from memory on a Monday
  • Writing the day’s takings into a notebook and typing them in later
  • Finding out a supplier takes nine days, not four, on the day it matters
  • Two prices for the same tin because the last delivery cost more
  • Closing the till without knowing what should have been in the drawer
02 / What fits this trade

Keep the
queue moving.

01

Scanning that keeps up

A USB or Bluetooth scanner puts the line straight on the sale. Twenty items is twenty beeps, not twenty searches.

02

Cash, properly

Change calculated, cash in and out logged, safe drops recorded against the shift, and a Z report that says what should be in the drawer.

03

Suppliers with lead times

The lines you reorder every week carry how long that supplier actually takes, so the reorder point stops being folklore.

04

Weighted-average cost

When the same tin arrives at a new price, the cost moves to the weighted average of what you actually paid rather than to the newest invoice.

05

Sell through an outage

Prices are cached and receipt numbers are reserved in advance. The line dropping does not stop the queue.

06

Batches and expiry dates

Tell the setup wizard this is a grocery and the receiving screen grows perishable columns — a batch and an expiry date recorded against the stock as it comes in, rather than written on the box in marker pen.

07

Stock takes without a shutdown

Count a shelf or an aisle at a time, blind, and commit the variance. Nothing needs closing for a day.

Batch and expiry dates are recorded free. The report that tells you what is about to go out of date sits on the Valuation screen, which is part of the paid add-on.

03 / Questions

For this trade.

Does it work if the internet drops mid-queue?
Yes. The screen, the products and the prices are cached, and receipt numbers are reserved in advance so two tills selling through the same outage cannot print the same number. The sales queue on the device and sync when the line returns.
Can I sell loose goods by weight?
Weighed items depend on how the product is set up in WooCommerce and on the scale you use. TODO: confirm scale support and the weighted-barcode format
How fast is scanning, really?
The scanner behaves as a keyboard, so the line lands as fast as the device reads it. There is no round trip to a vendor cloud in the middle, because there is no vendor cloud.
Do I need a card machine?
Only if you take cards. The till records a card tender against the sale; the charge happens on your existing terminal. Cash is handled entirely in the till.

Twenty items, twenty beeps,
and the next customer.

The till is free on WordPress.org. Suppliers, purchase orders and shift reports are in the add-on.