Products and stock
Per-shop stock levels, purchase entry, and a stock adjustment that records who changed what and why.
CASE STUDY
Example buildCustom SoftwareInventory & Billing for Retail
Stock that matches the shelf, GST-ready bills in seconds, and an alert before a fast seller runs out.
- Type
- Custom software
- Build time
- About 7 weeks
- Platforms
- Counter desktop, phone for stock
- Starts at
- ₹20,000*
This is an example build. HumansOfCoding is a new studio with no client work to show yet. This page describes how the project would be scoped and built — the same thinking you would get on a real one. Nothing here is a past client, and no number on this page is a result.
THE SITUATION
What's actually broken.
A retailer with two shops tracks stock in a register and bills by hand. Nobody knows what is genuinely in stock until someone counts it, and the count is wrong by the time it is finished.
The temptation is to buy an off-the-shelf POS. Sometimes that is the right answer and I will say so. It stops being the right answer when the business has a real quirk — loose quantities, custom bundles, credit for regulars — that the packaged product refuses to model.
Stock on paper never matches stock on the shelf
Fast-selling items run out before anyone notices
Bills are handwritten and GST is reconciled monthly by hand
No idea which products actually make money
VERSION ONE
What we'd build first.
Every item here earns its place by being something a real user would miss on day one.
Billing at the counter
Fast enough to use with a customer waiting: barcode or search, quantity, discount, GST-compliant invoice, print or WhatsApp.
Low-stock alerts
Per product, based on how fast it actually sells rather than a number someone guessed once.
Day-end summary
Sales, payment modes, and what left the shelf. One screen the owner reads on the way home.
Simple margins
Purchase price against selling price, so the products that look busy but earn nothing become visible.
DELIBERATELY NOT IN V1
What we'd leave out.
Not because these are bad ideas. Because each one is designed better once the first version has told you something.
- Full accounting. Export to whatever the accountant already uses instead of rebuilding Tally badly.
- E-commerce and online ordering — a separate project once the stock data is trustworthy.
- Loyalty schemes, until there is purchase history to base one on.
UNDER THE HOOD
How it's put together.
- Counter app
- A web app that works offline for billing, because a shop cannot stop selling when the internet drops
- Stock app
- The same app on a phone, for counting on the shelf
- Backend
- Node with Postgres
- Printing
- Standard thermal printers over the browser
- Invoices
- GST-compliant numbering and formats from day one — retrofitting this later is genuinely painful
HOW IT RUNS
Week by week.
-
01
Week 1
Watch a real day at the counter. What gets typed, what gets skipped, where the queue builds.
-
02
Weeks 2–4
Products, stock and purchase entry.
-
03
Weeks 5–6
Billing, printing and GST formats.
-
04
Week 7
One shop runs it alongside the register for a week.
BEFORE YOU START
Worth knowing.
Getting the opening stock right is the hardest day of this project and it is your team's day, not mine. Budget a full count before go-live; every wrong number carries forward.
MVPs start at ₹20,000*. Final pricing depends on features and project scope. Third-party costs — cloud hosting, domains, external libraries, APIs, app-store fees and any other paid service — are billed separately and are not included.
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Read the case studyWant this built for your business?
Tell us what you're thinking. We'll figure out the next step together.
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