Case study · Nesh Kids Store

Building a complete retail operating system on top of Shopify

How we replaced spreadsheets and disconnected tools at a multi-location Sri Lankan retailer with a Shopify-native ERP, POS, procurement, finance and payroll platform — now in daily production.

20+operational modules in production
3languages at the till — English, Sinhala, Tamil
2Shopify stores synced from one stock pool
0live stock overwrites — relative adjustments only
Summary

A Sri Lankan baby and kids retailer with a showroom, warehouses and a Shopify store needed stock that matched the shelf, purchasing that didn’t live in spreadsheets, and one view of the business. We built a Shopify-native platform covering POS, inventory, procurement, finance, payroll and BI; it has run in production since July 2026 and became the Canopy ERP product.

The challenge

Nesh Kids Store sells baby items and kids toys in Sri Lanka through a Shopify storefront, a physical showroom and delivery apps (Uber Eats and PickMe), with stock held across a shop and warehouses. Purchasing, receiving, supplier invoices, payroll and reporting lived in spreadsheets and people’s heads. Online and in-store stock drifted apart, supplier invoices were re-typed by hand, and the owner had no single, trustworthy view of sales, stock value or cash.

Our approach

We mapped every workflow end to end, then built the platform module by module — each one shipped, used by staff, and refined before moving on. The key architectural decision: Shopify stays the source of truth for products and inventory. Every stock change is written to a ledger locally and pushed to Shopify as a relative adjustment, so a till sale and an online order at the same second never overwrite each other.

What we built

  • Offline-capable, trilingual POS with camera barcode scanning, split tender, gift cards, loyalty and till sessions with X/Z reports and cash-variance tracking
  • Multi-location inventory with a full ledger, transfers, stock-takes, batch/lot and FEFO expiry tracking, and demand-driven store replenishment
  • Procure-to-pay: purchase orders, per-variant goods receiving, AI OCR for supplier invoices with self-learning product matching, payment vouchers and a cheque register
  • Quotations and invoices with PDF output, discount engine synced from Shopify (including automatic discounts), payment-method pricing rules and tax/non-tax series
  • Returns, exchanges and credit notes that mint Shopify gift cards; supplier returns and credit notes applied against payables
  • Payroll with EPF/ETF/APIT, two-company salary splits, loans and advances, leave and lieu-day accrual, and printable payslips
  • Sales BI across POS, Shopify and delivery apps; inventory insights (ABC, dead stock, reorder); an owner net-worth dashboard; and a read-only AI data assistant
  • Courier label generation with COD, delivery tracking and handover status; back-in-stock waitlists and item reservations that hold real stock
  • Role-based permissions, audit log, 2FA, PIN lock at the till, PWA installation and a supplier self-service portal

The outcome

The platform went live in July 2026 and runs the business daily. Stock is reconciled against Shopify rather than guessed; supplier invoices are captured from photos instead of typed; payroll and statutory contributions are generated in minutes; and the owner sees sales, stock value, payables and cash in one place. The platform is now being productised as Canopy ERP for other Shopify retailers.

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