An Automated Smart E-Cart System for Real-Time Billing and Inventory Control

Abstract

Conventional retail checkout systems depend on cashier-operated billing counters, which often cause delays, overcrowding, and inefficient stock management. With increasing customer volume, these systems become time-consuming and prone to manual errors. This paper introduces an automated Smart E-Cart system that integrates product scanning, billing computation, secure digital payment, and inventory tracking into a single platform. By enabling customers to manage purchases independently, the system minimizes checkout time and improves operational efficiency. The proposed solution leverages web-based technologies and a centralized backend to deliver a fast, reliable, and user-centric shopping experience, making it suitable for modern smart retail environments.

Introduction

This paper presents a Smart E-Cart system, a web-based automated retail solution designed to eliminate long checkout queues, reduce billing errors, and improve the overall shopping experience. Traditional cashier-based billing systems are time-consuming and prone to human errors, especially during peak shopping hours. To address these issues, the proposed system enables customers to scan product barcodes using their mobile devices or kiosks, automatically add items to a digital cart, calculate the total bill in real time, and complete payments without waiting at checkout counters.

The system uses Quagga2, an open-source JavaScript barcode scanning library, along with a React.js frontend, Spring Boot backend, and a PostgreSQL database. Product information is retrieved instantly from a centralized database, while inventory is automatically updated after successful purchases. The platform supports secure online payments through payment gateways such as Razorpay and also provides an admin-verified cash payment option. Digital receipts are automatically generated and sent to customers via email.

The literature survey reviews previous research on IoT-based shopping systems, smart trolleys, automated billing, and cloud-enabled retail platforms. While earlier systems improved retail automation, many required expensive hardware. The proposed Smart E-Cart overcomes these limitations by using standard smartphone cameras for barcode scanning, making the solution more affordable and scalable.

The system architecture consists of three layers: the User Layer for barcode scanning, cart management, and payment; the Application Layer for business logic, REST APIs, and administrative functions; and the Database Layer for product information, transaction records, and inventory management. The methodology includes requirement analysis, database design, frontend development, backend integration, secure payment processing, inventory synchronization, and performance testing.

Experimental results demonstrate that the Smart E-Cart provides fast barcode scanning, real-time cart updates, accurate billing, secure payment processing, automatic inventory management, and efficient administration. The system successfully generated digital receipts, updated stock automatically, and supported both online and cash payment verification. Overall, the proposed solution offers a cost-effective, scalable, and user-friendly smart retail platform that enhances customer convenience while improving retail operational efficiency.

Conclusion

The research presented in this paper successfully demonstrates the design and implementation of an Automated Smart E-Cart System, a paradigm shift in the digital transformation of the retail sector. By moving away from traditional, centralized checkout models that rely on manual human intervention, this system establishes a decentralized, user-centric shopping environment. The integration of the Quagga2 computer vision library for browser-based barcode decoding and a robust Spring Boot microservices architecture provides a seamless bridge between physical product interaction and digital inventory management. The experimental results confirm that the proposed framework significantly optimizes the \"Time-to-Checkout\" metric, thereby enhancing the overall consumer experience and operational throughput of the retail outlet. By utilizing a PostgreSQL/MySQL relational database for real-time synchronization, the system ensures high data integrity, effectively eliminating common discrepancies in stock levels and billing totals. Furthermore, the inclusion of multi-modal payment optionsranging from secure online gateways to verified cash requestsensures that the system is inclusive of diverse consumer preferences. In conclusion, the Smart E-Cart system offers a high-performance, cost-effective, and scalable alternative to expensive RFID-based hardware. It provides a strategic roadmap for small and medium-sized retail enterprises to adopt automation with minimal capital expenditure, ultimately paving the way for the next generation of frictionless \"Smart Retail\" environments.

References

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Copyright

Copyright © 2026 A. Sai Prasad, D. SriHarsha, V. Bhargava Naidu, B. Aparna , Vangala Lokesh. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.