NodeDR POS: Retail point of sale and inventory

NodeDR POS is an offline-first, self-hosted point of sale and inventory system for Indian retail. It installs as a native program on Windows or Debian and Ubuntu, or runs from one Docker command.

Indian retail counters juggle billing, MRP pricing that already includes GST, customer dues, stock and loyalty across disconnected tools, usually behind a monthly fee and a hard internet dependency.

Shopkeepers and counter staff in small retail businesses.

Barcode-first checkout with a GST breakup on the receipt, returns that restock automatically, an udhaar ledger for customers who buy on credit, and loyalty points. A dashboard reports revenue trends, best sellers and top customers, with CSV export.

MRP in India already contains the tax, so the tax amount is calculated backwards from the shelf price and split into CGST and SGST. Getting rounding right across a whole bill matters because the receipt has to add up to what the customer actually pays.

This is a focused, single-shop system. A Next.js frontend is the only browser-facing port; it proxies API requests to an Express service on the internal network. Both processes run in containers for a Docker install or as supervised services in the Windows and Debian installers. I kept the product small rather than trying to make the retail till into a multi-tenant platform.

SQLite, accessed through Prisma, is the local system of record. That choice keeps a single-shop installation simple: no separate database server is needed to take a sale. Product, stock, sale, customer-credit and loyalty records live together so the counter does not depend on a network service outside the shop.

Express handles billing, stock and customer-credit operations, with Zod validation at the API edge. The external Stock API is documented separately for an e-commerce integration. Tax, rounding and receipt totals are calculated by the server rather than accepted as numbers from the browser.

The checkout is designed around a barcode scanner and a cashier's short attention span. A custom hook reads scanner input; the interface shows the cart, tax breakup, payment options and loyalty without asking the cashier to navigate several screens. Receipts can be printed or saved as PDF, and barcode labels are generated in the browser.

The product has admin and cashier roles, bcrypt-hashed passwords and an HttpOnly JWT cookie. The backend uses request validation, security headers and rate limiting. The database is local to the install rather than a public network endpoint.

Native Windows and Debian installers, a Microsoft Store listing, or one-command Docker, all running on the shop's local network with no cloud account.

The shop can keep billing when the internet is down because the application and database are on the local machine or LAN. That is different from promising continued checkout if the shop's own server is down; the operator still needs a backup and a recovery plan. The repository documents how to back up and update the data volume.

SQLite and a single-shop scope reduce installation and administration work. They also mean this is not the architecture for a chain that needs central inventory and simultaneous multi-branch writes. I kept that boundary explicit rather than stretching one product beyond its purpose.

I led its development, and its patterns for authentication, receipt rendering, ESC/POS printing and currency rounding became the base for OrderRestro.

Tax arithmetic and hardware integration deserve early tests. They are easy to wave away as details, but they are the parts a cashier notices at the very first sale. The GST-inclusive pricing lesson later shaped OrderRestro's server-authoritative money calculations.