Overview

Shelfer is a web and mobile platform that enables small businesses to manage inventory, track sales, monitor agent activity, and generate receipts in real time from a single system.

Problem

Many small and medium-sized businesses in Ghana rely on manual record-keeping or fragmented tools for inventory and sales management. This leads to stock inaccuracies, poor sales visibility, and delayed reporting. Shelfer was built to centralise these operations into a reliable, easy-to-use platform accessible on both web and mobile.

My Role

I am the sole engineer behind Shelfer, responsible for the entire product lifecycle, including:

• Product architecture and system design

• Web application development

• Backend API design and implementation

• Mobile application development

• Database modeling and performance considerations

Core Features

Reusable UI component system to support rapid feature development

• Responsive web application for inventory management, sales tracking, and receipt generation.
• Mobile application for field agents to log sales and activity in real time.
• Role-based access control for business owners and agents.
• Real-time data synchronisation between web and mobile clients.
• Reusable UI component system to support rapid future development.

Products page showing a business’s registered inventory.

Technical Stack

Web

• Next.js - Server-rendered frontend and dashboard UI.
• TypeScript - Type safety and maintainable application logic.
• Tailwind CSS - Rapid, consistent UI styling.

Backend

• Node.js - Backend runtinme
• Express - RESTful API design and routing
• Firebase - Authentication, media storage, and real-time services

Mobile

• Flutter - Cross-platform mobile application for agents

Database

• PostgreSQL - Relational data modeling for inventory, sales, and business entities

Tooling

• GitHub - Version control and collaboration
• Lighthouse - Performance and accessibility audits

Agent mobile dashboard showing activity and sales access.

Key Technical Decisions

• Designed a multi-tenant architecture to support multiple businesses, users, and agents within a single system
• Implemented shared UI patterns across web and mobile to ensure consistency and reduce development overhead
• Optimised database queries and frontend rendering to handle large inventory datasets without UI lag
• Applied performance best practices validated with Lighthouse, ensuring fast load times even on low-end devices

A generated receipt after a successful agent sale.

Challenges & Learnings

• Balancing feature velocity with maintainable architecture as a solo engineer
• Designing a flexible data model that supports inventory, sales, and agent workflows without over-complication
• Ensuring acceptable performance on mobile devices with limited hardware resources
• Managing full-stack ownership across web, backend, and mobile simultaneously

Outcome / Current Status

Shelfer is under active development, with both web and mobile applications nearing feature completeness. The platform is designed to scale across multiple businesses and provides real-time operational visibility for owners and field agents.

Private demo available on request.