SmartSoft Inventory — Internal Engineering Documentation¶

Welcome. This site is the single reference for how the SmartSoft Inventory / POS system is built: the technology it runs on, how the code is organised, how stock and money flow through it, and how to build, deploy, and reason about it.

Who this is for

Everyone at SmartSoft who touches the product — new engineers finding their feet, support staff tracing a bug back to a screen, and managers who need the shape of the system without reading VB.NET. Start with Getting Started if you are new, or jump straight to Technology Stack.

What is SmartSoft Inventory?¶

SmartSoft Inventory is a Windows desktop application for retail inventory and point-of-sale management. It handles the item catalogue, stock across branches and warehouses, purchasing and receiving, stock counts and adjustments, the cashier, and a large family of printed reports. Its business vocabulary is Indonesian (see the Glossary).

It is a layered system: a thin WinForms application (smartsoft_inventory) sitting on top of a shared, reusable SmartSoft FrameWork (a set of VB.NET DLL assemblies in framework_smartsoft) that holds the real business and data-access logic. Everything is backed by a Microsoft SQL Server database.

flowchart TB
    subgraph Client["🖥️ Windows Desktop (per till / back-office PC)"]
        UI["Inventory App<br/><i>VB.NET WinForms</i>"]
        FW["SmartSoft FrameWork DLLs<br/><i>BLL · Data Access · GUI · Printing</i>"]
        UI --> FW
    end
    subgraph Server["🗄️ Store / HQ Server"]
        DB[("Microsoft SQL Server<br/><i>tbMaster_ · tbTr_ · tv_</i>")]
    end
    Peripherals["🧾 Receipt printer · barcode scanner · cash drawer"]
    FW -->|"ADO.NET / SQL"| DB
    UI --- Peripherals
    style Client fill:#e8eaf6,stroke:#3f51b5
    style Server fill:#e0f2f1,stroke:#00897b

Explore the docs¶

Technology Stack

Exactly what the system is built with — VB.NET, .NET Framework 3.5, WinForms, SQL Server, Crystal Reports — and why.
Architecture

The layers, the split between the app and the FrameWork, and how a click becomes a database write.
Database & Domain

Table conventions, the stock accumulator model, average costing, and how transactions post.
Product Modules

POS & sales, purchasing & approvals, promotions & loyalty, reporting, inter-branch sync, and service.
Security & Access

Users, per-form permissions, the audit trail, and the known weaknesses.
Build & Deploy

How to build with Visual Studio 2008 / MSBuild, the external DLL dependencies, and registry configuration.
Glossary

The Indonesian → English domain dictionary you will need on day one.

The system at a glance¶

Aspect	Summary
Type	Windows desktop POS / inventory management application
Language	VB.NET
Runtime	.NET Framework 3.5 (x86)
UI	WinForms + third-party skinning controls
Database	Microsoft SQL Server (2005 / 2014-era)
Reporting	Crystal Reports
Build tool	Visual Studio 2008 / MSBuild (Windows only)
Shared code	The SmartSoft FrameWork — external DLL assemblies
Domain language	Indonesian
Deployment	Installed per-PC via a VS setup project; config in the Windows Registry

This documents a legacy system as-is

The goal here is an accurate map of the system as it exists today — including its rough edges. Where a pattern is risky (unparameterized SQL, reversible-cipher passwords, MAX()+1 numbering), the docs call it out on the Known Issues page rather than pretending it away. That honesty is what makes the docs useful for support and for any future modernization.