Introduction Gift cards are both a nice service for customers and valuable for your bookstore. A gift card is a great way to give someone the exact book they want. For a shop there are significant financial benefits but there are also some important accounting and tax implications that need to be understood. Why gift … Read More
In September we worked on:
New Features:
• Introduced a General Ledger feature for better tracking of customer transactions.
• Enhanced visual and usability aspects of the Web/Mobile POS system.
Improvements this month concentrated on:
• Enhanced visibility of item availability in Layby transactions.
• Improved matching of invoices with credit notes in the Xero webhook.
• Created a Recurrent Expense Config table for easier reporting.
• Upgraded the author filter in best seller reports for greater accuracy.
• Simplified login process for the Web/Mobile POS.
• Real-time recalculation of loyalty points during checkout.
Housekeeping & Updates included the upgrade of Sidekiq and the resolution of test failures in Rails 7.1 for improved performance, alongside the deletion of duplicated payment records during Xero migrations and enhancements to app reliability with Vue upgrades.
September brought a fresh wave of bestsellers to our independent bookstores, with all three of our top-selling books making their debut on the list. Leading the pack was Sally Rooney’s Intermezzo, which, with both its hardback special edition and paperback formats combined, sold an impressive 3,868 copies. Hot on its heels was Liane Moriarty’s novel Here One Moment, racking up 3,435 sales. Rounding out the top three was Richard Osborne’s We Solve Murders, securing its spot with 2,930 copies sold.
In August we worked on:
New Features:
• General Ledger: Added tests for sales, payments, and allocations, expanded loyalty reward tracking in the ledger, and improved loyalty management by preventing duplicates and ensuring accurate liability and store tracking.
• P&L: Created a new Profit & Loss interface with Vue 3, enhancing data display, API metrics, and adding a mobile view for easier financial data access and analysis.
• Web POS: Set up a workspace to organize apps and reuse packages, improving back-office system management.
Improvements this month concentrated on:
• Shipped Items: Improved data consistency across environments.
• Web Order: Cancelled pre-authenticated VII when order changes occur during checkout to prevent overspending.
• Quick Search: Added a 250ms debounce feature for better performance.
• Referral Program: Developed backend for store onboarding referral data and restarted self-onboarding/admin dashboard projects.
• Cash Up Report: Simplified page layout by removing the previous week’s column.
• Gift Card Payment: Removed the option to select “gift card” for manual payment to streamline the General Ledger.
• Loyalty Redemption: Improved data accuracy by preventing use of ‘Loyalty’ as a reference on invoices.
• P&L: Adjusted interface to display previous month’s data for easier financial analysis.
• Font Awesome: Updated to support new icons, including Twitter ‘X’.
• Checkout Loyalty: Enhanced checkout by dynamically updating loyalty points used in orders.
• Returns: Improved loading speed by displaying only recent data by default on the “Awaiting Credit Notes” page.
• Stock Take Scanner: Increased efficiency by removing unnecessary ‘info’ function.
Housekeeping & Upgrades concentrated primarily on Rails, Depreciate Feature Flags, Customer Orders and Vue 3 Upgrade
This month our runner-up from June came out on top. ‘Fourth Wing (#1 The Empyrean)’ sold 2,028 copies (+516). ‘All Fours’ also moved up a place to come second with 1,177 (-3) copies sold. Third place went to ‘Storm Child (#4 Cyrus Haven)’ by Michael Robotham with 1,155 sales.
In July we worked on:
New Features:
• The General Ledger now includes services to populate and validate basic accounts, improve payment accuracy, support gift card redemptions, and refine invoice translations
• A new filter was added to Best Sellers, allowing users to sort by author
• Additionally, a search endpoint for monthly stock cache was created to enhance the accuracy of profit and loss data
Improvements this month concentrated on:
• Elastic & Elastic Search: Enhanced stock log tracking, reporting, and quantity accuracy
• Sales Report: Refactored for accurate cost-price reporting
• Inbox Category: Ongoing item mapping improvements
• Pre-orders: Improved performance and user experience
• Circle Gift Card: Added pagination for better loading times
• Customer Orders: Developed a more efficient shipping API
• BackOffice: Enhanced community comparison feature
• General Ledger: Simplified ledger process by removing “undrop” feature
• MailGun: Updated email handling for better accuracy
Housekeeping & Upgrades concentrated primarily on Rails, Elastic Search and Vue 3
This month our runner-up from June came out on top. ‘Fourth Wing (#1 The Empyrean)’ sold 2,028 copies (+516). ‘All Fours’ also moved up a place to come second with 1,177 (-3) copies sold. Third place went to ‘Storm Child (#4 Cyrus Haven)’ by Michael Robotham with 1,155 sales.
More fabulous new titles in this month’s bestseller list, including Long Island by Colm Tóibín which sold 2,497 copies. Also new to the list was Table for Two by Amor Towles which sold 1,309 copies. Coming in third was Caledonian Road by Andrew O’Hagan with 1,269 copies.
In June we worked on:
New Features:
• In General Ledger we made significant progress by adding validations for ledger accuracy, implementing tax-exempt handling, and simplifying the process by removing the ability to un-drop payments and invoices.
• In Stock Valuation Cache we created a P&L cache database to track and analyse monthly stock values.
Housekeeping concentrated primarily on Rails, Vue 3 and Deadlocks
Improvements this month concentrated on:
• External Services
• Settings
• Pre orders
In May we worked on:
New Features:
• In General Ledger we progressed Layby and tax-exempt items
• The Gmail Mailer was improved and now complies with DMARC rules.
• We have enabled seamless integration and improved product visibility in the Google Merchant feature.
Housekeeping concentrated primarily on Rails and POS. We also addressed Flaky Specs, Feature Flags, Vue 3 and Ruby.
Improvements this month concentrated on:
• Stripe
• Pre Orders
• POS
• Spreadsheet Deals
• MailGun
• GiftCard Load
• SEO & Social Media