System Updates

In October, we focused on:

• New Features:
Launched a dedicated account for Vii Gift Cards in the General Ledger to improve liability tracking.

• Improvements:
Enhanced P&L for recurring expense tracking.
Added TitlePage API key storage to support integration.

• Housekeeping & Updates:
Upgraded to Vue 3.5, streamlined ISBN requests in stock management, and improved loyalty data tracking.
Upgraded Redis and Sidekiq, handled deprecations, and fixed CI pipeline timeout issues.
Enhanced security, environment support, and resolved issues in Rails 7.1 for smoother system performance.

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.

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

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 April we worked on:
• Load Stock & Search & Update: Improved feedback during stock searches to reduce user confusion; locked the “Search & Update” button after clicking to ensure stability; automated updates to the “Reg Price” field for accurate pricing information.
• Core Code: Optimised the codebase to improve performance and maintainability.
• Association Portal: Added a flag to identify second-hand books for better categorisation.
• Deals Interface: Implemented a responsive design for better accessibility on smaller screens; added features for marking deals as done or in progress; supported timezones; improved pagination, filters, sorting, and deal product views.
• General Ledger: Implemented functionality to handle CREDIT & DEBIT special items; allowed for slight deviations in amounts when creating new transactions; developed handling for Non-Tracked Items and introduced a method to translate Shipping into the Ledger.
Housekeeping concentrated on: Flaky Tests; Deprecate Feature Flags; Switch to BETA; Rails; Ruby; Core Code; Gems & Vue 3

In March we worked on:
• Deals API and Deal Interface:  – We worked a lot on improving the functionality of discounted prices
• Website – We have upgraded to ES 8.0 (Elastic Search); this app is responsible for the quick search box and reports pages. Main benefits include speed, reduced memory usage) and security
• Self Onboarding – More improvements to to improve user experience to enhance the efficiency and accuracy of the onboarding process
• Housekeeping – Bug Fixes, Github CI, Vue, Site Settings, Rails, Ruby, Codecheck, Gem Deprecation, Vue 3 Cypress Integration, Webhooks,
• Upgrades – We have now completed the R6 upgrade rollout! This has been an enormous task that delivers improved security and performance. The rollout has been gradual so we do not expect too many issue but email support if you strike any. (Now we start on R7 🙂

In February we worked on:
• General Ledger – a new general ledger feature; gift card and credit note improvements
• Webhooks – We created a CRUD (Create, Read, Update, Delete) interface for managing webhook statuses using Vue
• Website – Pre-Order functionality added to group websites
• Self Onboarding – More improvements to to improve user experience
• Housekeeping – Rails 6 & 6.1, Vue3 Upgrade (& Ruby) – continuing upgrades, Ledger, Website SEO and Gems

In January we worked on:
• General Ledger – a new general ledger feature; gift card and credit note improvements
• Stripe – further enhancement of the refund process
• Website – SEO, Footer, Category and Click and Collect features
• Self Onboarding – We introduced a user-friendly dashboard on the sys-admin page to track user signups and progress, enabling sales teams to follow up on potential clients and reduce abandoned signups
• Housekeeping – Rails 6 & 6.1, Vue3 Upgrade (& Ruby) – continuing upgrades