🚀 Welcome to the Dutchie Point of Sale API
The Dutchie Point of Sale API provides comprehensive access to your retail cannabis data, enabling seamless integration with your business systems.
✨ Key Features
- Product Management - Access and update product catalogs
- Customer Data - Manage customer information and relationships
- Transaction History - Retrieve detailed sales and payment data
- Inventory Tracking - Monitor stock levels and movements
- Reporting & Analytics - Generate business insights and compliance reports
- Real-time Sync - Keep your systems updated with live data
🏗️ API Architecture
RESTful Design
Our API follows REST principles with predictable URLs, standard HTTP methods, and JSON responses. Each endpoint is designed for specific business operations.
Authentication
Secure API key-based authentication ensures your data remains protected. Each vendor integration requires separate, scoped API keys.
Response Format
All responses follow a consistent JSON structure with clear success/error indicators and descriptive messages.
🎯 Common Use Cases
- E-commerce Integration - Sync products and inventory with online stores
- Business Intelligence - Extract data for analytics and reporting tools
- Customer Relationship Management - Integrate customer data with CRM systems
- Compliance Reporting - Generate required regulatory reports
- Multi-location Management - Centralize data across multiple store locations
📊 Data Freshness
API data is updated as transactions occur in your point of sale system. Most endpoints reflect changes within a few minutes, ensuring your integrations work with current information. While the system processes updates quickly, you should expect a small delay (typically 1-5 minutes) rather than completely real-time data.
⚡ API Design & Expectations
🎯 Key Principle: This API is designed for data synchronization, not live transactional queries. Build your integrations accordingly.
✅ Recommended Usage Patterns
- Periodic Data Sync - Pull data at regular intervals (hourly, daily) to keep your systems updated
- Batch Processing - Process multiple records together rather than making individual calls
- Offline-First Architecture - Store data locally and sync periodically rather than querying live
- Incremental Updates - Use date/time filters to pull only changed data since your last sync
- Caching Strategy - Cache API responses and refresh them based on your business needs
❌ Patterns to Avoid
- Real-time Queries - Don't query the API for every user action or page load
- Excessive Polling - Avoid calling endpoints more frequently than your business logic requires
- Live Customer Lookups - Don't query customer data in real-time during checkout processes
- Transaction-by-transaction Sync - Avoid individual API calls for each business transaction
- Synchronous Dependencies - Don't make your user experience dependent on live API response times
🏗️ Integration Architecture Guidelines
Data Synchronization Pattern
1. Pull data from Dutchie API → Local database/cache
2. Serve your application from local data
3. Sync changes back to local data periodically
4. Handle API rate limits and retries gracefully
Example Sync Schedule
- Products & Inventory - Every 15-30 minutes
- Customer Data - Every 1-4 hours
- Transaction History - Every 1-6 hours
- Reports & Analytics - Daily or weekly
⚠️ Performance Note: This API serves data from a retail point of sale system optimized for in-store operations. Design your integration to complement this architecture rather than working against it.