How to Automate Sintel Systems

A candy shop prices almost everything by weight

Sintel Systems sells point of sale the way it used to be sold, as one thing: pre-configured hardware, the software already installed on it, and the company that made the sale answering the phone afterwards. It calls that direct and single-source, and for a shop with nobody doing IT, that is the whole pitch.

The systems come by trade rather than as one product to configure yourself, with separate builds for candy and chocolate shops, bakeries, frozen yogurt counters, coffee shops, restaurants and retail.

For a chocolatier the part that matters is the scale. Sintel integrates the counter scale into the terminal itself, so bulk bins, broken chocolate and anything else sold loose is weighed and rung up in one motion instead of weighed, read off a display and typed in again. The Model 5i does that alongside items sold singly, with an employee time clock and access control on the same terminal, which matters in a shop that doubles its staff in December.

The corporate order never starts at the register

What the terminal never sees is what happens before the chocolate reaches the case, and what happens after a box leaves the shop.

Couverture, nuts, fruit, foil and boxes come from suppliers with their own dealer portals, and the cost of chocolate moves in a way a shop selling at a fixed price per pound only feels months later. Somebody logs in to find what a case is going for now, and whether the packaging ordered in September shipped.

Then the gift side, which in this trade is a great deal of the money. An email asks for eighty boxes with a company logo. A wedding wants favours in one specific colour. Both need a quote, a deposit and a date, and none of that begins at the counter.

Every shipped box has weather inside it. Three warm days in transit becomes a claim, a refund, and a customer who does not order next year.

Sintel Systems

Ingredient costs read against a fixed shelf price This week's couverture, nut and packaging prices pulled from each supplier's portal and set against what a pound of truffles sells for.

Every gift order tracked from the email that started it Quote sent, deposit paid, date promised and the boxes and ribbon actually on order, held together instead of scattered across an inbox.

Warm shipments flagged before they melt Courier tracking read with the forecast along the route beside it, so a box heading into a hot week is known about in advance.

Sintel arrives as one system with the scale included

Sintel puts a lot in the box, and the reason to buy it that way is that none of it needs assembling.

Weight-based selling is the piece a candy shop genuinely runs on, and the counter scale comes as part of the system rather than being sourced separately and made to talk to it. Back Office Software covers the management end, with item entry meant to be done in an afternoon rather than a fortnight. Mobile Online Ordering opens a web channel, Kiosk POS adds a self-serve lane, and the Gift Loyalty Card Mobile App puts gift cards and loyalty on a phone. SintelMerchant handles the merchant account side, a Kitchen Display System is there for shops that run a counter kitchen, and cloud services make it reachable from outside the back room.

Everything on that list works from what crossed the shop's own counter or arrived through its own ordering page.

It does not work from the couverture supplier's portal, where this week's case price and the backorder date sit. Nor from the corporate buyer's purchase order system, the courier's tracking pages, or the marketplace where three other makers list the same gift box. Those figures decide what a season is worth, and each waits behind a login of its own.

A season can be bought on September's numbers

A shop that reads those sites every morning buys differently in the autumn.

This week's couverture, nut and packaging costs pulled from each supplier's portal and set against what a pound of truffles sells for, so a shelf price that quietly stopped working is caught during the season rather than in the accounts after.

Every corporate and wedding order followed from the email that started it: quote sent, deposit paid, date promised, and whether the boxes and ribbon it needs are on order.

Shipments followed on the courier's own pages with the forecast along the route beside them, so a box heading into a hot week is known about before it arrives soft rather than after the photograph does. Bulk bin counts set against what the register sold by weight, which is the only way shrinkage in a shop full of loose confectionery ever gets found.

Gathering all of that runs on its own overnight. Quoting a wedding does not.

Tempering is not a job to hand over

The supplier, the courier and the payment account each hold one piece of the answer, and nothing joins them up. In a shop where the owner is also the chocolatier, joining them up costs an hour out of the tempering room.

WebRun is an agent that works a real Chrome browser, signed in as you. It opens a supplier's dealer site, a courier's tracking page, a payment dashboard or a marketplace listing, reads what is on the screen, and sets it beside the sales, weight and item figures out of Sintel Systems.

Runs happen on a schedule you set, in your own private environment, and you can watch one and halt it. Sending a quote, taking a deposit or answering a corporate buyer is drafted and left for you.

The workflows further down set out what each run reads.