New Life — Laundry & Dry Cleaning Manager

A full admin web app for a dyers/dry-cleaning business: Dashboard, Orders, Customers, Services, Invoices, Delivery, Inventory, Expenses, Reports, Staff, and Settings — all backed by a real database (Supabase) with login.

This guide assumes zero prior hosting experience. Follow it top to bottom.

---

What you'll end up with

• A free Supabase project = your database + login system
• A free Vercel project = your live website, with a real URL like https://new-life-laundry.vercel.app
• Your own GitHub account holding the code (so Vercel can deploy it)

Total cost: $0 to start.

---

Part 1 — Create your database (Supabase)

1. Go to https://supabase.com and click Start your project → sign up (GitHub or email is fine).
2. Click New project.
   • Name: new-life-laundry (anything you like)
   • Database password: generate one and save it somewhere safe
   • Region: pick the one closest to you
   • Click Create new project (takes ~1–2 minutes to spin up).
3. Once it's ready, in the left sidebar click the SQL Editor icon.
4. Click New query.
5. Open the file supabase/schema.sql from this project, copy its entire contents, paste it into the SQL editor, and click Run.
   • This creates every table (orders, customers, invoices, etc.) and locks each one down so only you can see your own data.
6. In the left sidebar, go to Project Settings → API.
   • Copy the Project URL and the anon public key. You'll need both in Part 2.
7. Still in Supabase, go to Authentication → Providers and make sure Email is enabled (it is by default). Optionally, under Authentication → Settings, turn off "Confirm email" while you're testing, so new accounts can sign in immediately — turn it back on before going live with real customers.

Your database is ready.

---

Part 2 — Run the app on your computer first (recommended)

1. Install Node.js if you don't have it: https://nodejs.org (choose the LTS version), just click through the installer.
2. Unzip/open this project folder in a terminal (on Windows: right-click the folder → "Open in Terminal"; on Mac: right-click → "New Terminal at Folder").
3. Install dependencies:

   npm install
   

4. Create your local environment file:

   cp .env.example .env
   

   (On Windows, just duplicate .env.example, rename the copy to .env.)
5. Open .env in any text editor and paste in the Project URL and anon public key from Part 1, step 6:

   VITE_SUPABASE_URL=https://your-project-ref.supabase.co
   VITE_SUPABASE_ANON_KEY=your-anon-key
   

6. Start the app:

   npm run dev
   

7. Open the link it prints (usually http://localhost:5173) in your browser. Click Sign up, create your admin login, and confirm your email if prompted. You're now in your dashboard — add a customer, a service, and an order to make sure everything saves correctly.

---

Part 3 — Put the code on GitHub

1. Go to https://github.com and create a free account if you don't have one.
2. Click the + in the top right → New repository.
   • Name it new-life-laundry
   • Keep it Private if you don't want the code public
   • Click Create repository
3. Back in your terminal, inside the project folder:

   git init
   git add .
   git commit -m "Initial commit"
   git branch -M main
   git remote add origin https://github.com/YOUR-USERNAME/new-life-laundry.git
   git push -u origin main
   

   (Replace YOUR-USERNAME with your GitHub username. GitHub will show you this exact command on the empty repository page too — you can copy it from there instead.)

---

Part 4 — Host it online (Vercel)

1. Go to https://vercel.com and sign up using your GitHub account (this makes deployment automatic).
2. Click Add New → Project.
3. Find new-life-laundry in the list and click Import.
4. Vercel will detect it's a Vite app automatically. Before clicking Deploy, open Environment Variables and add the same two values from your .env file:
   • VITE_SUPABASE_URL → your project URL
   • VITE_SUPABASE_ANON_KEY → your anon key
5. Click Deploy. Wait ~1 minute.
6. You'll get a live link like https://new-life-laundry.vercel.app — that's your website, live on the internet.

From now on, any time you git push new changes to GitHub, Vercel automatically re-deploys your site — no extra steps.

---

Using a custom domain (optional)

If you own a domain (e.g. newlifelaundry.com):

1. In Vercel, open your project → Settings → Domains → add your domain.
2. Vercel shows you 1–2 DNS records to add at your domain registrar (wherever you bought the domain — GoDaddy, Namecheap, etc.).
3. Add those records there; it usually takes effect within an hour.

---

What's included

Module	What it does
Dashboard	Live order counts, revenue, status breakdown, 7-day trend
Orders	Create orders with line items, assign customer/service, track status, auto-generates an invoice
Customers	Full customer directory with VIP tagging and status
Services	Manage your price list and categories
Invoices	Auto-created from orders, printable preview, mark as paid
Delivery	Schedule deliveries from existing orders, assign staff, track status
Inventory	Track stock, unit price, and low-stock flags
Expenses	Log business expenses by category and vendor
Reports	Revenue vs. expenses, revenue by service, revenue by payment mode
Staff	Employee directory with department, role, and salary
Settings	Business profile shown on invoices

Notes on the data model

• Every table has an owner_id. Row Level Security means each signed-in account only ever sees rows it created — this is what lets multiple staff logins (or multiple shops) safely share the same database if you ever need that.
• Creating an Order automatically inserts a matching Invoice row.
• Marking an order "Delivered" automatically marks its invoice "Paid".

If something doesn't load

• Blank dashboard / errors in the browser console mentioning "Supabase" → double check .env (locally) or the Vercel environment variables (online) match Part 1, step 6 exactly, with no extra spaces.
• "Row level security" errors → make sure you ran the entire schema.sql file, and that you're signed in (not browsing anonymously).