Aide documentation

What Aide is

Aide is an offline-first point of sale, inventory and reporting app for small businesses. It runs on Android, Windows and the browser, and it is built around one assumption: your connection will drop, and your business must not stop.

That assumption shapes everything. Every sale you ring up is written to the device first and synced to the server afterwards, so a busy Saturday with patchy mobile data does not cost you a day's takings.

New here? Start with the New user guide for a day-one walkthrough, or go straight to Set up your business.

How Aide is put together

Aide has three layers, and the documentation is organised around them.

The app

The customer-facing application: the point of sale, inventory, reports, receipts and settings. It runs on Android, Windows and as a progressive web app. The Installation page covers getting it onto a device.

Local storage

Before anything touches the network, it lands in a local IndexedDB database on the device. The app reads and writes there continuously, which is why the point of sale is instant and works with the radio off. How Aide stores your data explains this in full.

The API

A small JSON API that stores authoritative records, authenticates users and supports the sync protocol. You can read every endpoint in the API reference.

Where to go next

I want to start using Aide

1. Install the app on your phone or computer
2. Set up your business — categories and products
3. Make your first sale and print a receipt

I want to understand how it works

• How Aide stores your data — the offline-first model
• Sync and conflict resolution — what happens when two devices disagree
• Businesses, staff and permissions — tenant isolation

I want to run the day-to-day business

• Products and categories
• Point of sale
• Reports and analytics
• Notifications

I want to integrate with Aide

• API introduction — base URL and conventions
• Authentication — sessions and bearer tokens
• Sync — the endpoint the offline clients use

A note on this documentation

Every API page in these docs describes the routes that exist in this codebase, including their exact status codes and error shapes. Where a limit or behaviour is enforced, it is documented rather than assumed. If you find something incorrect, email us and we will correct the page.