Business Suite
The products that run the business itself: customers, stock, orders, production, people and the books. Each one sells on its own; the reason to buy two is that they share a record rather than an export.
· 3 min read
Ten films of the Rutba Suite at work, each run by an invented business
Ten short films now show the Rutba Suite doing a day’s work: a corner shop, a wholesaler, a takeaway, a garden centre, a furniture workshop and a building firm, all invented, each using the apps for what that business actually needs.
· 3 min read
Rutba Commerce on film: a corner shop’s website, its catalogue and its till
A three and a half minute film follows Larkspur Corner Store, an invented shop, from its website through the CMS behind it to a cash sale at the till and the day’s takings. Every price and stock figure on the way comes from one catalogue.
· 2 min read
Rutba Inventory on film: a warehouse from goods in to buying again
A three minute film follows Northbank Trading, an invented wholesaler, through its stock, a warehouse laid out to the bin, a delivery received against its order, a draft purchase for what has run out, and the stock valued at cost.
· 2 min read
Rutba Orders on film: a takeaway’s order from the board to the customer’s door
A three minute film follows one order at Saffron Lane, an invented takeaway that delivers its own food: across the order board, packed in Dispatch, onto a rider’s run, signed for at the door, and followed by the customer on a tracking page with no account.
· 2 min read
Rutba CRM on film: leads, calls and a late delivery on one customer record
A three minute film follows the sales team of Northbank Trading, an invented wholesaler, from a board of leads to a logged call, then a customer’s question about a late order answered in Helpdesk, with every step landing on the same contact page.
· 2 min read
Rutba People on film: leave, the time clock, the pay run and the hiring board
A four minute film follows Wrenmoor Garden Centre, an invented business with a nursery and a cafe, through a leave approval, a tablet paired as the staff clock, a clock-in that reaches HR at once, the payroll, a payslip and a Christmas vacancy.
· 2 min read
Rutba Books on film: an invoice paid, the suppliers settled and the year so far
A four and a half minute film follows the books of Northbank Trading, an invented wholesaler: what is owed both ways, a payment recorded against an invoice, supplier bills settled, cash flow weeks ahead, and an income statement read from the ledger.
· 3 min read
Rutba Facilities on film: a workshop’s assets, its lease and a contractor turned away
A four minute film follows Granite and Grain, an invented furniture workshop: one register of everything it owns, the cover on each thing, the lease and its dates, and a fault that cannot go to an electrician whose insurance has lapsed.
· 2 min read
Rutba Fleet on film: which vans may go out, and the lorry the wrong licence cannot take
A three and a half minute film follows Kilnside Builders, an invented building firm with seven vehicles: a board of what is legal to go out, a tipper kept in by lapsed insurance, and a lorry check-out refused because the licence does not cover it.
· 2 min read
Rutba Manufacturing on film: a walnut table released to the floor, and what it costs
A five minute film follows Granite and Grain, an invented furniture maker, as a work order is released with its bill pinned and its standard cost known, Planning shows the finishing room over its hours, and Quality and Maintenance keep the line honest.
· 4 min read
What a second round of production testing found, and what changed in the apps because of it
On 11 October two testers used the live apps as staff and customers do. They found two blockers and over a dozen serious faults, from a till that misread refunds to a cash-on-delivery order shown as paid. Nearly all were fixed and released on 13 October.
· 4 min read
How the Rutba products fit together for a small business
A shop that sells at a counter and online, delivers some orders itself and has a bookkeeper uses five Rutba products. They work as one business because they share one product list, one stock number, one order and one customer.
· 6 min read
Every app in the suite now opens at rutba.io
Since 6 October all 46 apps in the Rutba suite run in production, each at its own address under rutba.io, such as pos.rutba.io or books.rutba.io. Your sign-in says whose data you see, so no business needs addresses of its own.
· 14 min read
A shop’s affiliate programme now pays the people who promote it
The Affiliate Program’s money half was built on 8 October. Codes and referral links work at the web checkout and at the till. A manager signs off each earning after the return window, and an administrator approves each payout. No shop has switched it on yet.
· 6 min read
Which apps your organisation can install, and how the launcher finds out
From the next release, Rutba tells each organisation’s instance which apps it may install. The launcher in every app follows that list, and the console’s Modules page says, app by app, whether it is installed and who decided.
· 8 min read
The server prices the refund, not the till
A till that adds up its own refund can pay out more than the sale took. Returns and exchanges are now priced on the server from the original sale, and at the order desk the person who collected the cash no longer confirms it.
· 6 min read
Rutba Assistant has no account of its own, and that is the design
Rutba Assistant answers questions about your business from inside whichever app you are in. It signs in as nobody: every call it makes carries your sign-in and meets the checks the screen would, so it never sees or does more than you.
· 4 min read
Every answer lists the calls it made, taken from what ran
An answer with a source can be checked; an answer without one can only be trusted. Under every Rutba Assistant answer are the API calls it made, assembled from what actually ran, never from what the model says it did.
· 4 min read
No model typed the numbers in this report
Press Report instead of Ask and Rutba Assistant writes a spreadsheet into your own Drive, with a native chart and a Sources sheet. The model chooses the layout; every figure is carried across from the recorded responses.
· 4 min read
Three different noes, and who each one sends you to
“Your organization is not licensed for Payroll” is a question for whoever buys. “You do not have access” is one for an administrator. A route that is not there is a bug for us. Rutba Assistant keeps those apart.
· 5 min read
Work that outlasts a reply runs as a plan a person approved
The panel only reads. When you want Rutba Assistant to do something, it becomes a plan: every step written out with the exact request it will send, approved by a person, run by a worker, and stopped the moment a step fails.
· 3 min read
Bring your own assistant, through the same door as everyone else
If your team already works with an AI assistant, it can work with Rutba through the Model Context Protocol, on your organization’s own key. It gets six tools, meets the same three checks, and can propose a change but never make one.
· 5 min read
Asking the books who is behind on paying, and whether Friday is covered
A credit controller wants the worst debts first. A finance lead wants to know whether Friday’s supplier run leaves enough in the bank. What Rutba Assistant reads in Rutba Books to answer each, and where it stops.
· 4 min read
What runs out before the next delivery? Asking the stock room
A store manager asks what will run out before the supplier comes, what expires this month, and whether the last order was billed at the contract price. What Rutba Assistant reads to answer, and why a cashier asking the same gets less.
· 4 min read
Who is close to overtime, and which leaver still has access?
A supervisor, an HR manager and an employee ask about people. Rutba Assistant answers each from the calls the People screens make, and because it asks as the person, one question returns a team, a company or one person’s own record.
· 4 min read
Who to call back first, and why a ticket reached nobody
A salesperson asks whose follow-up is most overdue, a support lead asks why a ticket was never picked up, and a shop manager asks why a till was short at close. What Rutba Assistant reads to answer each one.
· 3 min read
Which vans may leave the yard, and which deliveries will be late?
A dispatcher at six in the morning needs three answers before the first van goes: what is due and unassigned, which vehicles are legal to drive, and which drivers are near their hours. What Rutba Assistant reads to answer each.
· 4 min read
Which bench is losing the most time, and where did a bad lot go?
A production manager, a planner and a quality lead ask the factory three hard questions: where the time is going, whether next week’s plan will hold, and which finished goods contain a supplier’s bad lot. What Rutba Assistant reads to answer.
· 3 min read
Why did the campaign underdeliver, and who did it actually reach?
A marketing manager asks what went wrong with last week’s send, how many real people a segment contains, and what the catalogue gained this month. What Rutba Assistant reads to answer, and why pressing send stays with a person.
· 3 min read
Every lease break, licence renewal and unreturned laptop, in one question
An operations manager asks what falls due in the next ninety days, which software licences are over-allocated, and what a leaver has not handed back. What Rutba Assistant reads across Facilities and Assets to answer, including what it cannot count yet.
· 3 min read
A page of zeroes is a worse claim than nothing at all
The promoter’s page on the storefront is deliberately thin: it says where you stand, and nothing else. A dashboard of zero earnings would tell an approved promoter they have earned nothing, a different and much worse statement than "this does not exist yet".
· 3 min read
A page for every Rutba app, drawn from the app itself
A product page named its apps in a sentence each, which cannot tell you whether a till handles returns. Forty apps now have a page of their own, listing every screen in them (read from each app’s own menu) with screenshots of it running.
· 3 min read
Four kinds of promoter, and why one agreement cannot bind them all
An individual, a creator with an audience, a registered business and a member of the shop’s own staff carry different obligations. A company accepting an individual’s terms is not bound by them, so the affiliate programme keeps one agreement per kind.
· 3 min read
The merchant owns consent. We ship defaults that are careful about it
A Rutba storefront used to fire analytics and the Meta pixel on the first page view, in every country, with no notice. Now it asks first where the law expects it, and a shop that runs its own consent tool can take the whole decision over.
· 3 min read
An affiliate programme is a ledger with a sign-up form
A shop paying people who send it customers looks like a marketing feature. It is really money owed to outsiders, cleared against returns and posted to the books. So we built the sign-up first, and the money half waits on three decisions rather than on guesses.
· 3 min read
Share a product, and send the brand’s own post instead of a catalogue photo
A bare product link previews as a catalogue picture and a line of copy. So when a shopper shares a product from a Rutba storefront, it shares the brand’s latest post about it (campaign photography, caption and all) with the product one tap below.
· 3 min read
The till renders a total. It does not choose one
A point of sale that trusts the total its screen sends is fine until a discount means money owed to somebody else. Our till now asks for a sale to exist, and the server says what it costs, the rule the web checkout has always followed.
· 4 min read
The CRM is not the pipeline. It is the record everything else hangs off
Pipeline stages are the easy half of a CRM and every product has them. The half that decides whether anyone can answer the phone is whether the call, the mail, the ticket and the order hang off the same customer.
· 3 min read
Bookkeeping is mostly re-typing things the business already knows
A till sale, a pay run and a stock revaluation are all journal entries that somebody currently types twice. We made each of them post its own, and what is left is the work actually worth doing.
· 2 min read
Stock is the number a business argues about most
The argument always starts the same way: two systems each keeping their own copy. The fix is not better syncing. It is deciding, once, which one is allowed to hold the number.
· 4 min read
HR and payroll fail in the same place every time
Not in the employee record and not in the pay calculation. In the gap between them, where somebody types hours from one system into another. We removed the gap, and left the biometrics out on purpose.
· 3 min read
Orders arrive from everywhere and get fulfilled in one place
So that place should not be three separate queues. Web, marketplace and phone orders are the same object the moment they exist, which is the decision that makes a picking list, a driver app and a return all work the same way.
· 3 min read
The plan, the stockroom and the floor should not be three systems
Most production planning goes wrong in the gap between them. An MRP run that reads today’s stock, plans against a pinned bill version, and hands the dispatch list to the bench closes that gap, and works offline when the bench has no signal.
· 3 min read
The shop floor and the website should not be able to disagree
Running a site on one system and a till on another means two product lists, two price changes, and a stock number that is wrong in at least one place. Web and counter are two channels of one business, so we built them that way.
· 3 min read
Most companies have three asset registers and none of them agree
The HR list of issued kit, the fixed-asset register in accounting, and whatever the plant keeps for machines. They describe the same laptops and the same machines, and the auditor asks all three.
· 3 min read
A campaign tool that cannot see your customers sends the same email to everybody
A prospect and a ten-year client get identical copy, because the segment was built from a CSV somebody exported in March. Segments from live records are not a nicer feature. They are a different product.
· 3 min read
A fleet manager’s questions are compliance and cost, not today’s parcels
What is due, what is off the road, what did fuel cost per kilometre. Those are asset questions, so the vehicle goes on the asset register rather than in a fleet system’s own copy of it. We published the design first; the app has since been built.
