Small Business Operations Platform

Summary

This project is an ongoing learning focused build aimed at understanding how internal business systems are designed. Rather than a consumer facing application, the focus is on structured data, relational databases, and backend logic used in day to day business operations.

1. Designing normalized SQL schemas for staff, time tracking, inventory, and sales
2. Learning how business data connects across tables using primary and foreign keys
3. Writing real SQL queries to answer operational and reporting questions

Core Objectives

• Practical Learning: Focused on building something usable while learning SQL and backend fundamentals from the ground up
• Data First Design: Emphasis on relational thinking, normalization, and long term maintainability
• Real World Scenarios: Models common small business needs such as payroll calculation, inventory tracking, and sales reporting
• Incremental Development: Built step by step, with each feature added only after understanding the underlying concepts
• Transparent Learning Process: Schema decisions and queries are documented to show reasoning, not just results

Current Status

• Initial database schema designed for staff and time tracking
• Sample data inserted and queried using JOINs and aggregations
• Documentation added explaining schema and design decisions

Next Steps

• Expand schema to include menu items, inventory, and sales
• Add more advanced SQL queries for reporting and analysis
• Introduce a simple Go backend to interact with the database