Store Management System

A console-based store inventory and accounts management system written in C++, built to practice object-oriented programming (inheritance, polymorphism, operator overloading) and core data structures (vectors, priority queues, file-backed persistence).

Live demo / design overview: https://ims0.my.canva.site/

Overview

The system models a small store with two areas that a single running program switches between: an Accounts module (login, customers, sellers) and an Inventory module (products and stock). Data for both is persisted to disk as CSV, so state survives between runs.

Features

Accounts

• Base Account class with username/password authentication, extended by CustomerAccount (has a balance and running expenditure) and SellerAccount/MerchantAccount.
• Create customer and seller accounts, log in, and route to role-specific menus.
• Customers can top up/update their balance; sellers can view all customers' balances.
• Account credentials and balances are obfuscated on disk with a Caesar-cipher-based encrypt/decrypt before being written to users.csv.
• "Highest spending users" report, computed with a priority_queue ordered by expenditure.

Inventory

• Product class (id, name, category, price, quantity, sales) with operator< support so products can be ranked.
• Add, remove, find, and update products by ID.
• View the full product catalog.
• Save/load the catalog to/from inventory.csv.
• "Most selling products" report via a priority_queue ordered by total units sold.
• Automatic low-stock alert on login/menu access when a product's quantity drops to 4 or fewer.

Store / Checkout

• Store ties accounts and inventory together and drives the two text menus (run() for accounts, runInv() for inventory).
• Logged-in customers can make purchases: pick a product by ID, choose a quantity (validated against available stock), add multiple items to a running cart, and check out — the purchase decrements stock, deducts the customer's balance, and updates the product's sales counter and the customer's total expenditure.
• Insufficient balance is detected and blocks the purchase.

Tech stack

• Language: C++ (C++11 or later)
• Standard library only: <vector>, <queue> (std::priority_queue), <fstream>/<sstream> for CSV persistence, <string> — no external dependencies
• Persistence: plain CSV files (users.csv, inventory.csv) read/written next to the executable
• Build tooling: compiled directly with GCC/Clang (a VS Code tasks.json/launch.json is included for build-and-debug inside the editor)

Project layout

multifile/
├── main.cpp          # entry point, chooses Accounts or Inventory flow
├── store.hpp/.cpp     # Store: menus, login, purchases, CSV persistence
├── accounts.hpp/.cpp  # Account / CustomerAccount / MerchantAccount
├── inventory.hpp/.cpp # Inventory: CRUD over products
├── product.hpp/.cpp   # Product model
├── users.csv          # persisted accounts (encrypted)
├── inventory.csv      # persisted product catalog
├── TestAccounts/      # sample manual test transcripts for the accounts flow
├── TestInventory/     # sample manual test transcripts for the inventory flow
└── EdgeCasesStore/    # notes on known edge cases

Build & run

Requires a C++ compiler (g++ or clang++).

git clone https://github.com/asp616848/Store-Management-system.git
cd Store-Management-system/multifile

g++ main.cpp store.cpp inventory.cpp accounts.cpp product.cpp -o store
./store

On startup you'll be asked whether to enter the Accounts menu (1) or the Inventory menu (0); both stay in a loop until you quit (Q/E), at which point accounts and inventory are saved back to users.csv and inventory.csv.

Status

This is a learning/portfolio project and is functionally complete for its original scope (accounts + inventory + purchasing flow), but is not hardened for production use — passwords are obfuscated with a simple Caesar cipher rather than a real hashing scheme, and there is no automated test suite (see TestAccounts/ and TestInventory/ for manual test transcripts).

Contributing

Bug reports and pull requests are welcome — open an issue or PR with suggested improvements.