Record Rack in a nutshell

Chase the vision, not the money; the money will end up following you.
Tony Hsieh, Zappos CEO

Poem: Rack to the rescue

Inventory tracking by the books is such a pain;
For every sale I make, I have to calculate the gain.
But apps like Record Rack have saved the day, it's such a hack;
It solved my tracking issues and have shown me where I lack.
Even on vacation, I can keep up with my business,
Track goods with precision and know my profit any instant!

Record Rack is the first "big" project I've ever worked on. It would be the first application tailored towards solving actual (paying) customer needs. Before then, I just coded for a hobby and to solve my own problems. The Record Rack project would change all of that.

In this post, I'd like to talk about Record Rack: its purpose, its history, and its evolution.

The problem

Meet Jane Doe.

Jane owns a retail shop in Nigeria. She sells rice, beans, noodles, can tomatoes, pasta, flour, oil, garri, and a lot of other raw ingredients you would find in your kitchen.

From Monday to Saturday, Jane would drive to her shop to monitor all operations that took place. She paid a staff of 5 to sell goods, attend to customers and ensure that the items she had in stock were well accounted for.

As the years went by, the shop only got bigger and more profitable. She tried to open multiple shops in various locations but had to close them down because of theft from her very own staff in those shops. She had seemingly reached an impasse.

And though her business seemed to be at its peak since she's started, it was plagued with unspoken problems:

All transactions were written on paper, making transactions error-prone and slow. Customers also had to wait long times, leading to some leaving for other nearby shops.
Receipts were written by hand by her staff, making each transaction take longer. The copy of receipts were done by literal carbon copy.
At the end of the day, all money made and stock sold (or purchased by the business) had to be balanced. Balancing the accounts involved counting the stock to make sure the quantity is correct and ensuring the money made equals the money documented. Since this was done at the end of the day, workers had to leave late on days where miscalculations happened or a lot of money was made¹.
Jane was unaware when stock items were low or sold out, making it harder to satisfy customers reliably.
Jane had no way to measure what stock items sold well or which ones she made the most profit from without measuring it herself from the books.
Jane had to rely on staff to report the right numbers.
If any of the books used for taking records was lost, there was no backup.
Debtors and creditors were loosely tracked in a book. Looking up old records was hard.
Recurring customers were not tracked. If they were, the business can decide to offer discounts.

Record Rack to the rescue!

Out of all the pain mentioned above, Record Rack wore its cape and offered to save the day 🦸!

From hearing all these issues faced by Jane, my business partner and I rose to the challenge. We were laser-focused on making a software that could solve Jane's problems and the many local retailers that face similar issues.

This ultimately led to the creation of Record Rack.

Record Rack is an inventory management software made with the pain of the Nigerian retail entrepreneur in mind:

It tracked all the stock items sold and purchased.
Jane was kept up-to-date on all inventory changes and transactions through a mobile app we provided; she no longer was required to visit her shop to monitor operations.
Sale transactions were much faster and all receipts were printed by the software. Jane's revenue increased.
It tracked other income (i.e. income that was not made from stock items).
It tracked all business expenses.
It notified the user when a product was low in stock or sold out.
It allowed users to edit created transactions (useful for customers who needed changes).
It tracked debtors and creditors, along with each payment made, the deadline for payment and how much was left to pay.
It supported subunits, allowing users to track goods with multiple units. For example, a carton of noodles can be sold by the sachet instead of the full carton.
Recurring customers could be tracked and therefore rewarded.
It used a simple interface. This was important in getting her staff up to speed quickly.

If business is all about relieving pain 🤕, Record Rack was definitely the Tylenol 💊.

Gallery

The official Record Rack logo:

Background used in the main Record Rack application: The Record Rack application's background

Notifications showing items low in stock: The Record Rack application showing items that are low in stock

Newer version of the notifications showing items low in stock in red: The Record Rack application showing items low in stock in red

"Manage debtors/creditors" window: The "Manage debtors/creditors" window in the Record Rack application

"Manage users" window: The "Manage user" window in the Record Rack application

Multiple sale and purchase windows:

Multiple sale windows: Multiple sale windows open in the Record Rack application

First summary page:

Revised summary page:

Old "User Privileges" window: The old "User Privileges" window in the Record Rack application

Revised "User privileges" page: The new "User Privileges" window in the Record Rack application

Add a note to a new sale entry: Dialog in the Record Rack application that allows you to enter notes concerning a transaction

The notification widget:

Windows load independent of others:

Highlighted terms for quick search:

Alternate summary page: Alternate summary page in the Record Rack application, displaying the end-of-day report

Another alternate summary page:

Another alternate summary page: Alternate summary page in the Record Rack application, displaying the end-of-day report

Show detailed quantity breakdown using the subunits: The Record Rack application displaying of quantities in their subunits

List of sale entries for the day: The Record Rack application showing all sale entries made for the day

Miscellaneous details about the project

Date started: September 2013
Initial release date: ~ March 2014
Stable release date: ~ May 2014
Customers: 1
Used between: 2014 - 2022
Released as a desktop app and a mobile app

Tech stack used

SQLite (later changed to MySQL)
Qt C++

Record Rack Epsilon

After I left Nigeria, I worked in in-flight entertainment² for a couple years and I decided to work on a new version of Record Rack. This version was created to:

Address all the bugs of the previous version.
- There was a lot of rounding errors, since I stored floating point numbers for subunit quantities. (I know, rookie mistake 🙈).
- There were random crashes.
- Some days, the application wouldn't record some quantity changes.
Make the look-and-feel of the application more modern.
Update the UI code to use QML instead of C++, since QML was better for rapid application development.
Write better code. The last version's code was monstrous!³.

Unfortunately, this version was canned, but it did teach me a lot about C++/QML development and separating UI and logic.