Unified Commerce
Greg Cantlon
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Kelly Brown steps down as Triquestra CEO

Triquestra

New in Infinity — December 2025

Here’s new functionality across the Infinity platform that will help you and your team reduce operational complexity and create a differentiated omnichannel customer experience.

Infinity is a modular platform and you may need additional components or licensing to access some functionality.

INFINITY API

Seamlessly create and update item details in bulk

We’ve made creating and updating stock items in bulk using APIs more seamless and cost-effective. Product dimensions are now supported, as are kitsets and custom product options, meaning you can update a wider range of granular item detail without having to drown in complex spreadsheets. 

You can also retrieve and update site-specific variations for a master product and update site-specific item configurations.

Take the hassle out of processing cancelled orders

You’ll no longer have to waste effort doing a manual refund at the POS when a customer cancels an online order. Instead, cancelled lines can now be handled automatically via the Infinity Sales Order API, saving you time and streamlining the process.

INVENTORY

Easily find the right supplier when entering invoices

If you have to enter invoice details manually after goods have arrived, you’ll now be able to find the right supplier much more quickly and easily, instead of having to search through a list that includes suppliers you no longer use.

CUSTOMER AND LOYALTY

Protect against fraud when using epay digital gift cards

If you’re a New Zealand retailer who uses epay gift cards in conjunction with Infinity, you can now offer your customers the flexibility of using either plastic or digital cards.

To make the move to digital cards more secure, we’ve implemented a layer of fraud protection by allowing you to define the digital cards that can be scanned at the POS. If a customer scans a card that isn’t on your permitted list, then it needs to be swiped on the magnetic reader instead. And as an added layer of protection, a PIN needs to be entered when a card that is on your permitted list is scanned during balance enquiries and redemptions.  

PRICING AND PROMOTIONS

Offer ‘spend more, save more’ discounts

Offering customers discounts based on the total value of a transaction is a great way to reward their decision to shop with you. Our new total sale discounts let you scale your promotion, meaning the more a customer spends the greater the reward.

You can decide which customer types to includes in the promotion, how long you want a promotion to run, which products you want to include and whether you want to reward customers with a dollar-off or a percentage-off discount, giving you flexibility over how the reward is designed and delivered.

REPORTS AND ANALYTICS

Easily customise point of sale documents

Customising point of sale documentation is an effective way to communicate both your brand and the vital information your need to give to customers. We’ve made it easier to get those essential documents just right by introducing an integration with FastReport.

Using standard templates, you can customise your customer order and tax invoice layouts to easily add logos, QR codes, barcodes and custom fields such as customer emails, as well as lines of text in the font of your choice.  You can also create your own templates, although you’ll need to obtain a licence from FastReport first.

The integration is designed to use A4 layouts, but you can use thermal layouts by resizing them as required.

POINT OF SALE

Refund prepaid sales without losing revenue

If you use Infinity’s enhanced returns module, you can now prompt your store staff to refund items to a specified payment type. So, for example, if the customer paid with a gift card, you can prompt staff to issue the refund as a gift card balance, so it will be spent with you in the future instead of being given away as cash.

Easily locate scheduled stock takes

Completing stock takes is all about getting the details right. If your store staff carry out scheduled stock takes at the POS, they’ll be able to locate the right stock take more easily now that they’re listed alphabetically by name, speeding up the process and letting the team get on with what really matters – entering accurate stock counts.

TECHNOLOGY

Get the latest SQL Server support

On 19 November, Microsoft announced the general release of SQL Server 2025. To keep pace with these latest changes, we’ll be adding Infinity RMS support on SQL Server 2025 by 1 April 2026.

We also need to let you know that Infinity RMS support on SQL Server 2012 and SQL Server 2014 will end on 1 April 2026.

Existing Infinity installations operating on current SQL Server versions will remain functional, but support for issues related specifically to SQL Server 2012 and SQL Server 2014 will no longer be provided.  If you’re running either of these versions, you’ll need to upgrade to access new releases of Infinity RMS after 1 April 2026.

Simplify upgrades using the Infinity Upgrade Service

You have more options when it comes to upgrading Infinity now that you can use the Infinity Upgrade Service on a Restricted Back Office and on POS stations that connect directly to the Back Office, simplifying automatic upgrades across a wider range of environments.

We’ve also made using the Upgrade Service easier and more reliable by enhancing the EventLog Report to let you confirm that the Linker is running as a service before you begin the upgrade.  

To find out more about any of these enhancements and add them to your Infinity platform, contact us. 

If you’d like to get our regular ‘New in Infinity’ updates in your inbox, sign up to our newsletter.

Triquestra brings out the (competitive) Christmas spirit

Here at Triquestra, we pride ourselves on our diligence and dedication to delivering the best software. Come December, we add a new target to our laser-focused quest for quality – Christmas.

Around here, Christmas isn’t just a chance to eat mince pies, it’s also a way to win prizes. This year’s celebrations came with some extra competitive edge, with not two but three opportunities to score victory over our colleagues.

As always, we went out for a Christmas dinner at a local Auckland eatery to enjoy good food and company. And, as always, dinner was preceded by a fiercely fought contest. This year, we put away the child’s play of last year’s mini-golf, turned up the adventure dial and went axe-throwing. Upper-body strength and mental fortitude were tested as one by one the field narrowed to our CTO Mike Baxter and Product Owner Nevin Betts, with Nevin prevailing. We’re not sure Mike’s quite got over it.

Then last week we enjoyed our annual Christmas barbeque, during which the winner of the newly inaugurated Best Decorated Desk competition was announced. An intense battle played out between the traditionalists like Sales and Marketing Manager Victoria Crossfield, who went for the snow and simulated fireplace effect, and the modernists like Tech Analyst Tom deBorst, who brought in a young Pohutukawa tree and decorated it with toy New Zealand birds such as kiwi and piwakawaka (fantails).

 

The decision was made by voting, and when all the votes were counted the winner was Developer Joel Sevilla, with his beautifully crafted gingerbread village. Congratulations, Joel!

We finished up with a round of Secret Santa, with the usual TQ twist. Instead of simply buying a present for an allocated colleague, we do the competitive version where we can either take something from under the tree or take a present from someone who’s already chosen a gift. It’s a white-knuckle ride to the end to see if you’ll hang on to that gift you really want or be left with the one you’re going to have to give to your great-uncle.

Greg Cantlon looks back on 2025 and forward to 2026

Triquestra Christmas BBQ

While this has been a challenging year for many businesses, it has been inspiring to see the progress and resilience across the retail sector. Several of our customers have spoken about the plans they have to grow in 2026, and at Triquestra we are no different. This year we've been focused on setting the foundations for future growth, and our whole team are excited for what lies ahead.

This year we said goodbye to long-term team members Vidula Kulkarni (Programme Manager), Aby Thampi (Technical Analyst) and Vlad Nikolsky (Head of Development). I am grateful to all three for their contributions over the years and I’m excited to follow their progress. I'm also proud of the depth of talent we have at Triquestra which has allowed others to step up and maintain the stability and quality of service you expect from us, while also introducing changes that will help you thrive in an ever-changing landscape.

After several years in development, Infinity+ is now running in production, enabling retailers to manage inventory more seamlessly than ever before. We have also begun to leverage AI to deliver changes more efficiently across our software, a capability that we see as a major driver for the future.

Looking ahead, 2026 will be a year of growth, both for Triquestra and our customers. We are planning to help you stay ahead of the curve and turn complexity into opportunity. In the coming weeks we'll share two new case studies that highlight how retailers are already using Infinity to innovate and drive results, and we’re excited to help you write your own success story.

As we head into the festive season and the summer break, I hope you take the time to relax, recharge and enjoy time with friends and family.

Thank you for your trust and support throughout 2025, and on behalf of the entire team, have a great Christmas. We look forward to partnering with you in 2026 and beyond.

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Changing your POS? 7 questions to ask before taking the leap

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In a recent blog, we talked about how the retail store is and will likely remain vital for customers who value trusted advice, social engagement and tactile product discovery. And those customers will continue to have high expectations of the instore experience, including the expectation that it will be harmonised with the shopping they do online.  

As your store evolves to meet a future where it can serve as an experiential hub and as mission control for customer fulfilment, you need to ensure that your retail platform is keeping pace rather than holding you back.  

Here we look at the challenges retailers experience when making the shift to a new POS, and the important questions you need to ask before choosing a new platform.

 The POS upgrade challenge 

Preparing the point of sale for a future where tech-savvy consumers expect ‘phygital’ omnichannel experiences can be daunting.  

Retailers need to keep up with shoppers’ demand for a unified, cross-channel buying journey, but many have outdated point of sale systems that aren’t suited to the task. 

Making the shift to a new point of sale comes with challenges, though, especially when margins are tight. Fear of losing revenue through potential disruption to current operations and having to invest in staff training while perhaps not achieving anticipated returns can deter retailers from taking the leap.  

You don’t want a project that fails to deliver the desired returns because the wrong product was selected. 

So how do you select the right system for your business requirements? 

Here are the 7 questions to ask when looking for a new POS.  

1. Can it be implemented and deployed rapidly?

The number one priority for most of the retailers we speak with is speed of deployment.

To minimise the operational disruption, you’ll need a platform built on a modern architecture. All your core requirements need to come out-of-the-box, along with the ability to customise and easily add new functionality.  

When you choose a partner with a mature platform, they can focus on delivering innovation because the core functionality you need already exists. 

Check the provider has recent and proven success planning, implementing and managing complex, large-scale deployments across multiple stores, formats and geographies. They’ll need to understand your fast-paced, data-intensive environment where any significant level of downtime is unacceptable. And their people will need to be skilled in helping you plan and implement your projects so that they work for you now and into the future.

Our client Z Energy was able to quickly and seamlessly convert some of its existing fuel locations into unattended self-service U-GO sites.    

“By using a modular platform, we’ve been able to roll out technology quickly by configuring existing tools instead of building custom solutions. This has allowed us to tailor the solution to the market in just a few days.”
— Callan McLaughlin, Retail Platform Manager at Z Energy

2. Will it support your unified commerce business model?

Today, the store is the epicentre for all your unified commerce activity. 

That means you’ll want a point of sale system that supports endless aisle, click and collect, store fulfilment, pricing and promotions, clienteling and loyalty, as well as functions that allow customers to search, transact, acquire and consume products across all your channels.  

You don’t want to be tied to a point player that can only provide parts of a total solution.  

“The reason unified commerce resonated with me is that it would give us one core platform to do the heavy lifting and a single source of truth to manage the customer data, inventory and order orchestration, rather than relying on too many systems to push and pull data everywhere.”
— Shane Lenton, previously Cue’s Chief Information and Digital Officer

3. Does it allow your store team to deliver exceptional service?

The new solution needs to empower store teams to deliver a superior, frictionless customer experience that maximises their productivity, no matter where they are in the store.

An easy-to-use UX and straightforward setup will enable new employees to quickly learn the system and begin selling almost right away. By removing the frustrations caused by complex technology, you'll also help lower staff turnover. 

In addition, by consolidating store technology onto a single POS-based retail system, your teams can do everything in a single view, from sales transactions, customer loyalty, pricing, product and promotions through to virtual appointments and endless aisle access to stock.

4. Will the system work offline?

Delivering exceptional customer service is irrelevant if your staff can’t complete sales. 

When inevitable network outages happen, you need to know that your POS will keep all your stores operational without any disruption.  

When implemented correctly, the offline POS experience should be so seamless that your staff may not even realise the system is offline. 

Though some features may be limited, it's essential to know what transactions can still be processed during the loss of connectivity. For example, the system should handle card and cash payments, process returns, capture customer data and link it to profiles, and continue scanning products for smooth checkouts. 

5. Can it grow with you, and adapt to change?

Whether you're expanding into new locations or launching pop-up stores, your POS system must be scalable and adaptable to change. While it might seem obvious, scalability can easily be overlooked in the excitement of cutting-edge technology. 

Your growth plans should account for how your physical stores can complement your online presence, so that your POS solution can function across channels in the same way as your ecommerce platform. 

It should operate seamlessly across tablets, phones and fixed tills, allowing transactions to flow between devices effortlessly. This flexibility not only opens up possibilities for innovative store layouts but also provides the practical benefit of better backup strategies for your devices. 

Your partner should let third-party solutions connect via APIs so that you are free to focus your development efforts on the front-end. You can be more agile and create a community of third-party apps and systems that work together in an ecosystem. As a result, you’ll reduce integration and maintenance overheads, increase real-time accuracy and enjoy virtually limitless scalability and agility. 

6. Will it make complex sales simple?

Enterprise retailers with multiple brands, B2B operations or franchises will need a POS system that makes complex sales simple. 

You’ll want the power to set pricing and promotion rules, permissions, return and refund validation, discounting and cash management from either head office or at store level. 

And you’ll want to ensure the solution supports complex sales like charge-to-account, quote management by channel, debtor management, loyalty and all types of pricing, including retail, trade, contract, promotional, project, customer-specific and rules based.  

“Infinity is one of the few platforms able to accommodate our diverse business model, with both retail and wholesale customers requiring multiple volume breaks and bulk purchasing. And Infinity’s New Zealand presence gives us an out-of-the box solution with local capabilities that can be customised to our requirements.”
— Amanda Thompson, General Manager of Moore Wilson’s

7. Can you rely on the vendor for new functionality and ongoing support?

Working with the right people and processes will make the rollout of your new point of sale much easier and deliver results much faster. 

A partner located in the Australia-New Zealand market means you’ll have direct access to second- and third-level support, as well as direct contact with people committed to your success. 

You’ll also have more influence on the product roadmap and have to deal with less bureaucracy to get things done. And a mid-size partner is more likely to view you as an important customer of influence.

This blog was originally published in September 2024 and updated November 2025.

Want help to modernise your point of sale? 

As you transform your customer experience to deliver the seamless and personalised buying journeys your customers crave, your point of sale system must transform as well. If you’re looking for help to shape your strategy and extend your omnichannel capabilities, get in touch. We’d love to help you develop the solutions you need now and guide you to where you’re headed next. 

For more on how a move to a unified commerce strategy gives you the flexibility and agility you need to keep in step with consumers’ changing needs, download our ebook:

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Triquestra celebrates Diwali, the Festival of Lights

Celebrating Diwali has become a yearly event in New Zealand. Across the country, crowds gather to play music, dance, eat and, of course, let off fireworks to mark the Festival of Lights that symbolises the triumph of good over evil, light over darkness and knowledge over ignorance.

Here at Triquestra, Diwali is part of our annual calendar, too. For the past few years, we’ve celebrated the festival with a morning tea, and some of us even get dressed up for the occasion!

This year was no exception, despite farewelling our Diwali queen Vidula Kulkarni in July. Our social committee elves treated us to a feast of samosas, dal kachori and pakora from local restaurant Mithaiwala, as well as an assortment of delicious kaju sweets.

It was also a good time to reflect on the similarities between Diwali and Matariki that we celebrated back in June. Both festivals rely on the lunar calendar, and both involve spending time with family and friends contemplating the past and looking to the future.

As New Zealand changes and evolves, festivals like these are gaining in importance and popularity. Triquestra’s proud to play our part in celebrating them and the diversity of not just our country but of our great TQ team as well.

Happy Diwali!

New in Infinity — October 2025

 

Here’s new functionality across the Infinity platform that will help you and your team reduce operational complexity and create a differentiated omnichannel customer experience.

Infinity is a modular platform and you may need additional components or licencing to access some functionality.

INVENTORY 

Schedule pre-defined POS stock takes at back office and head office

Infinity’s stock take schedule function is a great way to run pre-defined, repeatable stock takes at the point of sale. Managing site-specific schedules is even easier now that stores can create and maintain their own scheduled stock takes without the risk that they will be overwritten by the head office.

CUSTOMER AND LOYALTY

Enhance your gift card offering

Enticing your customers with regular loyalty offers and redemptions is a key to unlocking repeat business. You have even more ways to keep them coming back now that you can use gift cards with PIN numbers, offering shoppers a wider range of options for collecting and redeeming dollar amounts at your stores.

Note that this enhancement relates to any digital gift cards using the epay New Zealand solution on Windcave devices.

REPORTS AND ANALYTICS

Easily see the theoretical GP items should sell at, today

Setting items’ sell price can be a make-or-break decision for a retail business. You need to base that decision on the best information available, and you need to know that you won’t be selling at a loss.

Infinity’s new Theoretical GP Report gives you all this and more. It supports both your promotional and buying activity by calculating the theoretical gross profit an item should sell at right now. You can use it to get a single view of retail prices, promotional prices and the value of stock on hand based on current item and rules-based pricing master data, not sales data.

And because it doesn’t rely on sales to have taken place, you can set promotional pricing without the risk of selling items at a loss, giving you confidence that you’re making informed decisions that support your business’s profitability.  

POINT OF SALE

Quickly identify premium delivery orders

When customers ask for items to be delivered they expect fast, reliable service. And if you offer a paid premium delivery service, such as those supported by Uber Eats and Delivereasy, expectations go to the next level.

Using Infinity, you can now easily identify priority orders at the point of sale both on screen and by way of a sound notification. Your store staff are alerted to which orders they need to act on first, allowing them to deliver the great, speedy service customers demand.    

Leverage the efficiency of Adyen referenced refunds

Spending time ensuring customers are being refunded correct amounts can add unwanted cost to your business. Infinity’s integration to Adyen now reduces this burden through referenced refunds, which tie refunds to specific payments.

Omnichannel as well as in-store transactions are supported. Online refunds can be refunded to the original card in-store either with or without the customer being present, giving both you and your customers greater flexibility and peace of mind when it comes to processing refunds.

TECHNOLOGY

Use AOAGs to manage failovers

Infinity ETL licensing now supports Always On Availability Groups (AOAG). It uses the listener’s name instead of the name of the server running the SQL server instance, saving you the time and effort of having to manually intervene in case of a failover.

Note that if you currently have ETL installed, you’ll need to relicense it for this enhancement to work. Also, if the SQL Server is not part of an AOAG, the licensing logic remains unchanged.

Save time cleaning up email messages

If you use Infinity Messaging to send emails and attachments to customers, you’ll no longer need to manually clean up the database and remove obsolete records. Instead, you can use the new message cleanup processor to automatically remove these records at regular intervals, saving you time and freeing up precious space.

Get the benefit of the latest RabbitMQ features

Infinity APIs are now compatible with RabbitMQ 4, allowing you to operate the API platform on the most recent version and giving you access to the latest security features and functionality.

For customers using multiple RabbitMQ instances for high availability, the Infinity platform now supports Quorum Queues within RabbitMQ to provide the maximum availability and performance.

To find out more about any of these enhancements and add them to your Infinity platform, contact us. 

 

If you’d like to get our regular ‘New in Infinity’ updates in your inbox, sign up to our newsletter.

New in Infinity – August 2025

PRODUCT INFORMATION MANAGEMENT

Help us develop and improve Infinity
As part of our commitment to continuous improvement, we’re giving you the option to share information with us about how you use Infinity. We’ll use this information to identify features that can be enhanced or retired, as well as any opportunities for user training and upskilling.

When you upgrade Infinity, you’ll be able to choose whether to opt in or out of sharing data with us. If you opt in, we’ll capture and analyse menu clicks at both the Head Office and the Back Office, along with technical information such as operating system and SQL versions. This will allow us to see which features are used heavily and which aren’t being used frequently, as well as giving us an understanding of the systems Infinity is being run on.

It’s important to note that we won’t capture any data that can identify individuals, including passwords or user names.

Taking part in data sharing means you can help shape the way Infinity evolves and ensure that it remains relevant and useful to you. Even if you initially decide not to share data with us, you can opt in at any time, and vice versa.

If you have questions or concerns please contact Infinity Support.

INVENTORY

Easily order and manage non-stock items
Ordering and managing stock can be tricky if your business needs a regular supply of items that you don’t necessarily want to bring into your inventory. So, for example, if you sell coffee you’ll need a steady number of coffee cups to be on hand, but you aren’t going to want those cups to be counted as stock items that are sold on their own. Similarly, if the coffee machine breaks down, you need an easy way of paying for a repair by purchase order without treating the repair as an item.

To help make the ordering of these items more seamless, Infinity now allows you to include non-stock items in purchase orders. When you receipt them, the quantity on hand won’t increase, so you can keep these items on hand without them impacting your inventory.

CUSTOMER AND LOYALTY

Expand your fuel offering with automatic discounts
If you’re a fuel retailer who uses Infinity’s loyalty solution and you offer cents-per-litre discounts, you now have even more options when it comes to rewarding customers for their business. We’ve introduced discounts that apply automatically, so that purchasers save on fuel without your store staff having to manually select which discount applies, thereby speeding up transaction times while still offering customers meaningful savings.

INTEGRATIONS

Leverage seamless integration of accounting data into Xero
If you use Xero as your accounting software, or are thinking about moving to Xero, you now have even more reason to integrate it with Infinity. We’ve listened to feedback and introduced improvements that make our Xero solution easier to deploy, use and support.

We’ve improved the overall experience by polishing the user interface, simplifying installation, enhancing logging so you can easily track errors and providing you with better troubleshooting to quickly address issues.

There’s never been a better time to integrate Infinity and Xero so you get the timely, granular, automatically updated accounting information you need while also leveraging Xero’s ecosystem of business tools.

Charge fees directly from EFTPOS devices
If you use Windcave as your EFTPOS provider, you can now add surcharges to these transactions from the EFTPOS device. This means you can charge a fee for things like contactless payments and have it recorded in Infinity, so you’ll get an accurate view of these charges in reports and transaction records.   

To find out more about any of these enhancements and add them to your Infinity platform, contact us. 

If you’d like to get our regular ‘New in Infinity’ updates in your inbox, sign up to our newsletter.

From agile to permaculture: Triquestra farewells Vidula Kulkarni

At the end of this month, Triquestra will say a fond farewell to our programme manager, Vidula Kulkarni. Since joining us in April 2016, Vidula has played a pivotal role in some of our most complex and high-impact projects, and she will be a familiar face to many of our customers who have benefited from her knowledge and energetic engagement over the years.

Before saying goodbye, we wanted to look back over her time with Triquestra to see how both she and we have evolved.

Vidula joined Triquestra at a particularly busy time, with several large projects on the go. Her background in software development meant she could hit the ground running when she took on the role of project manager, and she soon proved her worth by working closely with Freedom Furniture and Fantastic Furniture.

After a busy start, her role at Triquestra evolved from managing a range of smaller accounts to overseeing large projects and teams. Vidula has played a vital part in delivering some of our biggest initiatives, including the Pumped and Z Rewards customer loyalty projects for Z Energy, as well as Z’s Sharetank, a virtual fuel tank that lets customers prepay for fuel and then share it with family and friends. Other significant projects have included the Everyday Rewards loyalty scheme for GAS and digitally assisted sending for NZ Post, which streamlines parcel sending by allowing customers to complete documentation electronically.  

She’s revelled in the opportunities all these projects have given her. "Managing multiple projects simultaneously was challenging but rewarding. It helped me grow and develop new skills," she says. She’s also appreciated the support she’s had from Triquestra management, who have trusted and encouraged her to take on these challenges.

Vidula also leaves a lasting legacy at Triquestra in terms of how we deliver for our customers. It’s no exaggeration to say that she changed the way we work every day by implementing an agile approach to software development.

Vidula Kulkarni

She introduced us to terms like ‘scrum master’, ‘agile coach’ and ‘sprint’ and orientated our development cycle away from delivering large pieces of work at once and towards producing smaller increments. This change of approach has meant our customers receive more regular updates, while agile practices, such as daily stand-ups and planning meetings, have allowed the Triquestra team to gain a better understanding of our customers and their business drivers.  

"We started small, with a few people, and gradually expanded. The team quickly saw the benefits of agile, such as increased engagement and more efficient project management," Vidula explains. 

But as she said in 2017, there’s a difference between ‘doing’ agile and ‘being’ agile. Under Vidula’s guidance, Triquestra has avoided a one-size-fits-all approach and has adapted the way we work to meet customers’ needs and expectations. As she explains, “The benefit has been to think of multiple ways to do a project. It's not a rote way of thinking. So, for example, we adopted a continuous delivery model for Z, which was agile based, but which was totally different from how we worked with Fantastic Furniture.”

In recent years, Vidula has worked as our programme manager, overseeing projects, providing mentorship and becoming involved in pre-sales activities.

Now, though, she’s ready to take on a new challenge away from software as she and her husband set up a permaculture farm in Kokan, Maharashtra, India. She’s excited about the opportunity to contribute to the local economy and improve environmental conditions through sustainable farming practices. And she’s looking forward to returning to life as a yoga teacher, too.

We wish Vidula all the very best for her future endeavours and look forward to hearing about progress from the farm!

Triquestra celebrates Matariki 2025

In 2022 New Zealanders gained a new mid-winter public holiday to celebrate Matariki, named after the star cluster that rises on the winter horizon and heralds the Māori New Year.

The Matariki cluster, also known as Pleiades or the Seven Sisters, is visible across the world and has significance to people globally, being mentioned in the Bible and the Koran, and known as Subaru in Japan.

In traditional Māori culture, its first appearance in the early morning sky marked the end of harvest and was a time for people to come together for feasting, as well as to reflect on the past year and plan for the future. Now, all of New Zealand’s people can share in this important Māori tradition with a holiday that this year fell on Friday, 20 June.

Learning about Matariki holds a special meaning at Triquestra, a proudly diverse New Zealand company. In the past, we’ve held events celebrating Eid-al-Fitr, Diwali and Chinese New Year, and in the spirit of inclusion we saw last week as a chance for everyone to learn about New Zealand’s Indigenous culture.

Our guides on this journey were Trev Teau and Kauri Wharewera from Kulture Ink, a tattoo studio that specialises in Māori and Polynesian design, to explain the history and meaning of Matariki. They introduced us to the nine stars that comprise the Matariki cluster, explaining that together with other surrounding stars they form the shape of a waka, or canoe, with Matariki at the prow and Orion’s Belt at the stern.

 

Trevor Teau & Kauri Wharewera from Kulture Ink

Each star within the Matariki cluster has its own meaning, including Pōhutukawa, which connects us to those who have passed on, and Tipuānuku, which has a connection to the food that comes from the earth.

The most important part of the Matariki celebration is Hautapu, which involves feeding the stars with a sacred offering of food harvested from the earth, water and sky. During hautapu, loved ones who have passed away in the previous years are remembered and mourned, and the food is cooked before Matariki rises. The ceremony ends with the rising of the sun.

Kauri explained that Matariki is a time to harvest not just food but also the lessons that have been learned in the past year, while planting the seeds for the coming year until Matariki rises again.

Afterwards we enjoyed a feast of our own, including fried bread fresh from the oven. Sharing food also gave us a chance to reflect on the similarities between Matariki and Eid, as well as Easter, which are connected to the lunar calendar and have a focus on feasting, and the ways that people across the world find similar ways to come together and celebrate with a feeling of renewal.

New in Infinity – June 2025

Here’s new functionality across the Infinity platform that will help you and your team reduce operational complexity and create a differentiated omnichannel customer experience.

 Infinity is a modular platform and you may need additional components or licencing to access some functionality.

INFINITY API

Leverage real-time cost information

Our Products API now lets you see a real-time value for weighted average costs if you create transactions or carry out inventory analysis in an external system.

PRODUCT INFORMATION MANAGEMENT

Quickly locate branch item information in clusters

Searching for detailed stock item information can be time consuming, especially if you have a lot of stores offering different prices or sourcing items from different suppliers. Head office staff can find the branch information for an item in a cluster more quickly now that they can sort branches alphabetically instead of having to know the branch’s numerical ID.

INVENTORY

Get a consistent view of stock take results

Stock taking is one of the most important tasks in your business, and getting the count right is vital to maintaining accurate inventory data. To help your staff quickly identify and double-check variances before they complete the stock take, you can now choose to list items in the printed stock take report in the same order they appear on screen, meaning staff don’t waste time trying to match what they see on screen with what’s in the report.

REPORTS & ANALYTICS 

Summarise stock takes by stock count group

We’ve also enhanced stock taking by giving you a new report that summarises stock takes that have been carried out based on stock count group. The Stocktake Count Group Summary Report provides an overview of stock takes that have been carried out at branches, lets you see variances and gives you the option to list results according to individual stock count groups.  

POINT OF SALE

Monitor staff safety at the point of sale

Staff safety is a growing issue across the retail sector, with some staff regularly dealing with threatening or abusive behaviour from customers. You can now keep track of how often your staff are facing this problem by using new functionality at the POS. When your staff feel threatened, they can press an on-screen button that records the event, allowing you to monitor how often these incidences are happening and enhancing your people’s sense of well-being.

Speed up processing of sales by under-age staff

If you sell age-restricted items, such as alcohol, you need to be sure that you’re complying with the law without compromising speed of service. To help you serve customers quickly and efficiently while meeting your legal obligations, Infinity now recognises an under-age staff member each time they complete a new transaction, instead of forcing them to log back in after every sale.

ADMINISTRATION 

Send invoices and statements to multiple debtor contacts

Managing debtor customers is a more seamless experience now that you can automatically send invoices and statements to more than one email address, saving you the hassle of manually emailing documents to the relevant people in the business and enhancing lines of communication.

So, for example, when the customer buys an item in-store, you can send the invoice to the purchasing team as well as to the customer’s primary contact. And at the end of each period, you can send statements to the primary contact and to the customer’s accounts payable, so that the right people see the amount due.

Enhance financial integrity of trading days

If you use Infinity’s extended cash management module, you can now require store staff to complete any draft trading days before creating a new one. Trading days can also be completed the next day if necessary even if new sales have been processed, giving you peace of mind that all transactions are correctly accounted for.

TECHNOLOGY 

Use the latest Microsoft technologies

Infinity now ships with SQL Server 2022 as default, giving you the most recent version of SQL Server currently in Microsoft’s mainstream support. We also continue to support SQL Server 2016, 2017 and 2019, while customers on SQL Server 2012 and 2014 should be planning to update to a later version.

Proactively address database-related performance issues

If you use a version of SQL Server Express, you’ll now be warned when the database size reaches a threshold of 9.8GB or higher, allowing you to proactively address issues before they affect your store operations.

To find out more about any of these enhancements and add them to your Infinity platform, contact us. 

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What is unified commerce?

Unified commerce is the term used for a retail software system which connects all your inventory and customer data to all your online, in-store and mobile sales channels. 

Use our extensive resources to learn more.