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Sai Maa

Custom Ruby on Rails Development
Client: Sai Maa LLC

Client since 2011

Project Overview

Sai Maa LLC, a spiritual guidance and self-help organization, came to Foraker Labs with an urgent problem. They needed a robust online store complete with event registration, as well as a fully integrated point-of-sale (POS) system to support product sales at major events around the country.

The organization had begun work on this vision using Spree, a beta-version open-source Ruby on Rails ecommerce platform. However, with only 6 weeks until a major event, the Spree implementation was non-functional and the POS system had not yet been started.

Foraker Labs hit the ground running, and began work on a custom Ruby on Rails POS system that was fully integrated with Spree. It had to support cash, credit and check payments (including multiple payments per purchase), and use the established Spree product inventory, sales tax and reporting mechanisms. Financial transactions were handled by Authorize.net payment gateway. Within weeks, we delivered a fully functional POS system that included barcode scanning, receipt printing and administrative order management.

In the same timeframe, Foraker Labs also modified the Spree implementation to handle both online store purchases and online program registrations (via two distinct payment gateways). In the process, we developed workarounds for a number of bugs within the Spree platform itself, and created several custom financial reports. All of this work was done using tightly managed source control and full automated test coverage, which—combined with a continuous integration environment—make this work and future enhancements seamless and efficient.