Octopoda Distrib
Turnkey automated distribution and connected point of sale.
In brief
Distrib is everything needed for a machine to sell: self-service fridge, vending machine, drinks bar, coffee machine.
You manage the catalogue, the prices, the promotions, the consumers, the restocking rounds and the reports there. Taking payment is Octopoda Pay's domain.
One principle governs it all: the machine authorises, the cloud settles. The sale is decided on the spot, even with no network, then validated and charged by the cloud. Money only moves after validation, and a doubtful sale goes under review instead of being charged.
Two ways to connect a machine: an embedded box, or the payment terminal itself on an existing machine.
What it brings : You connect a machine that sells, including an existing one you would rather not replace.
In detail
A machine that sells — self-service fridge, vending machine, drinks bar, coffee machine — with its catalogue, its consumers, its rounds and its reports. Payment is taken by Octopoda Pay, it is managed from a portal, and it connects through an embedded box or through the payment terminal itself.
The boundary with Pay. Distrib is the selling journey, the logistics and the management: catalogue, offers, promotions, consumables, field work, operational reports. Octopoda Pay is everything to do with payment: the terminal, online payment methods, the till system, with its interface and its transaction portal. Distrib sells, Pay takes the money.
Who it is for
| Audience | What they find |
|---|---|
| Operator, manager | Catalogue, offers, real-time sales, review, stock, rounds, reports. |
| Consumer | Their account, their badge, their purchases, their top-ups, their claims — on the account's consumer site. |
| Customer organisation (employer, site) | Its consumers, its subsidies, its breakdown of sales. |
| Delivery driver, technician | Field session on the machine, round, technician application. |
| Management, finance, sustainability | Revenue, VAT, receipts, subsidies; usage and sustainability for recipe machines. |
The principle: the machine authorises, the cloud executes
The machine authorises and records the sale on the spot — badge, card, door, weight, pour — even offline, with the same pricing library as the cloud.
The cloud validates, prices and settles: money only moves after validation. A doubtful sale — a price discrepancy, an exceeded quota — goes under review instead of being charged. Sales are immutable facts: you cancel, you do not amend.
What the suite does
Catalogue, offers, publication
Products with their nature, VAT class, shelf life, allergens and supplier. Dated offers per machine or per site: validity window, assortment, price and where the price comes from, with a layout plan or a recipe menu. Publication is a signed snapshot that the machine downloads and verifies: if it is inconsistent, the machine refuses it and keeps the previous one. VAT is broken down at the date of sale, batches leave closest-to-expiry first, and the price can be computed by weight or by volume.
Sales
Identification happens by badge, visual code, card or account — and an anonymous sale remains possible. The price is computed on the machine with the same library as the cloud, which then prices and validates in turn. A doubtful sale goes under review, where the manager confirms, corrects or cancels it. A validated sale is settled by Octopoda Pay, in one or several parts.
Consumers and organisations
Named accounts, badges revocable in one click, and organisations that act as the breakdown axis: sales and subsidies per organisation and per period, exact to the cent — the operator invoices from their own figures. The consumer site gives access to purchases, rating or disputing, payment methods, top-up, debt alerts and unsubscription.
Field work
A driver's badge opens a field session: restocking, removal, stocktaking, assortment switch, closing photographs. A forced door is detected, and a product that is not delivered is refunded automatically.
Reports
Sales, VAT, receipts and subsidies — exact to the cent, read "as at" a chosen day, in the site's time zone. With export, printing, dashboard indicators compared with the previous year, and a breakdown by organisation.
Recipe machines
Drinks bar and coffee machine: a menu by category and size, consumables tracked against two thresholds with calibration — a drink whose flavouring has run out disappears from the screen — a pour measured and billed in proportion to the volume served, usage and sustainability reports, and scheduled maintenance.
Promotions and benefits
Discounts by tag or on the basket, product combinations, promotional codes with a quota, employer subsidies by time slot (flat, percentage or tiered), meal vouchers and automatic credits — with a basket simulator to check before publishing.
Marketplace and hybrid fleet
Several merchants can share one machine, each discount having its funder and each merchant their payout. And machines of other brands enter the same portal through a connector.
The point of sale
Its business identity is distinct from the box: changing the machine loses nothing. Its single record brings together the identity, the unified timeline — alerts, sales, logs, events — the telemetry, the inherited or overridden business configuration, and the actions on the device, all logged.
Two ways to connect
| Embedded box | Android payment terminal | |
|---|---|---|
| For | Machines you build or fit out: fridge, drinks bar, vending machine. | Any existing machine with a standard socket: coffee, vending, another brand's fridge. |
| It drives | The hardware — lock, weighing, valves, touch screen. | The machine through its standard protocol: it authorises, reads counters and faults. |
| It takes payment | Through a certified terminal or a companion terminal. | By itself: card, contactless, badge. |
| It reports | Sales, telemetry, logs. | Sales, consumables, faults. |
| It is managed | As a Fleet device, in both cases. | |
The terminal is also the companion of an embedded box: it then brings payment, badge reading and the sale's screen onto the local bus.
The point-of-sale types
Fridge, freezer, vending machine, locker, drinks bar, coffee machine, counter and microwave. The self-service fridge rests on weighing, the lock and optionally the camera; the freezer is a fridge at negative temperature; the vending machine has its spirals, its chute and its coin mechanism; the locker has its doors; the drinks bar and the coffee machine are recipe machines that sell by volume; the counter is operated as a till; the microwave provides a service tied to a purchase.
A water fountain monitored without selling belongs to Octopoda Data; when a fountain has to sell, it is a drinks bar.
The sites
| Site | Audience | Content |
|---|---|---|
| Manager portal | The manager | Points of sale, sales, review, operations, products, offers, publications, consumers, organisations, subsidies, sites, returns, reports. |
| Consumer site | The consumer | Account, purchases, top-up, badges, claims, unsubscriptions. |
| Till site | The operated point of sale | The Octopoda Pay till system, on the Distrib catalogue. |
A marketplace merchant is a catalogue entity, not a user: the operator opens the manager portal to them through a context whose merchant axis lists them.
What it receives from the foundations
From the Octopoda foundation: the portal, the contexts, multi-channel alerts, ingestion, white labelling and the own domain, one-click commissioning and content translation. From Fleet: the image, deployment, remote updates, monitoring, managed secrets and field configuration.