Jeweltimeco Camera-to-Cart App

The business problem

A consultant standing with a customer needs the item in the cart in seconds. The item is a particular physical piece with its own code, not just a model. Typing that code is slow and easy to get wrong. And the real question — is this exact piece still available, or has it been reserved or already invoiced — is one the WooCommerce stock field cannot answer at all.

What I delivered

• A scanner in the catalog and brand views of the PWA, on a floating button that stays reachable one-handed.
• Native BarcodeDetector where the browser provides it, with a ZXing fallback where it does not, so the flow works across the devices the team actually carries.
• Resolution from the scanned unique code to its order code and product, then an add with a reservation check rather than a bare stock check.
• Explicit handling for the states a real shop hits. The piece is already assigned to another customer, the scanned code does not match the expected product, or stock is short.
• A manual-without-code path for the case where every piece is reserved and the consultant confirms they are proceeding anyway.
• A product trace tool that takes a unique code and reports whether the piece is in stock, reserved or invoiced. Once a piece has been consumed, it also shows the linked invoice and customer.
• Inventory upload by CSV or XLSX, keyed on order code and unique code. It upserts active codes, deactivates missing ones, and marks a product out of stock once no active code remains.

Technical approach

• Inventory truth lives in a unique-code table, not in the WooCommerce stock field. That is what makes reservation state a real answer instead of a count.
• The scanner degrades rather than requiring a specific browser: BarcodeDetector when available, ZXing when not, and the manual path when neither helps.
• Every failure state is named and handled separately. In a shop, a scan that silently does nothing is worse than one that says the piece is already on someone else's invoice.
• Uploads produce a downloadable report of order codes that matched no product, so an import problem is visible instead of being absorbed.
• Scanning is scoped to the consultant and above in the role model; a guest or customer session never reaches it.

Result and evidence

Consultants add a specific physical item to an invoice by pointing a phone at it. The reservation check happens inside that action instead of surfacing later at fulfilment. Product trace answers the where-is-this-piece question directly, which was previously a conversation between three people.

Commercial value

Jewellery retail is per-item, not per-SKU, and the operational cost of losing track of which physical piece went where is high. Tying the camera to the unique-code table is what makes the rest of the invoicing workflow trustworthy.