Meridian

Four brake pads left, says the spreadsheet, while the shelf is empty and the customer is waiting. Meridian runs the warehouse and the till from the same Windows program, so a sale at the cash desk takes the item off the stock count at once. The data is kept in a PostgreSQL database that the business runs itself, in the office or in a cloud account it controls.

The cash desk is built around a barcode scanner, which types into the program like a keyboard. Every step of a sale stays on one screen without pop-ups, and function keys handle payment and closing the receipt. All discounts come from a shared rule table that covers loyalty cards tied to a phone number, coupons, timed promotions and buy-N-get-one offers.

Car service and spare-parts counters can store a customer's vehicles on the client card and look up parts by vehicle, with cross-references to equivalents. Ready-made roles set a new employee's rights for every screen in one step. The interface comes in English and Russian, and tax filing and bookkeeping stay with a separate accounting program.