Company Store

Company Store

1. What it is

Company Store lets employees spend recognition points — or, optionally, cash — on company merchandise, gift cards, experiences, and charitable donations. Admins curate the catalog, set approval thresholds, cap spend, and connect reward providers; employees browse, redeem, and track orders from the same app.

• Enablement: Licensed app, disabled by default. An admin enables it from Admin → Apps Marketplace and must grant a licence before it is available to employees.
• What it is not: Company Store does not issue recognition awards. Points flow in from the Recognition app (when the integration is on) or from manual admin adjustments. To set up who can give recognition and for how much, use Recognition Connect.

2. Standing it up

1. Go to Admin → Apps Marketplace, find Company Store, and enable it with a licence.
2. Open Company Store → Settings and confirm Store Open is on (it defaults to on). Choose which payment modes to allow — Points Redemption is on by default; Cash Purchases and Mixed Payments are off.
3. Under Catalog Categories, choose which categories to offer. Company Swag and Gift Cards are on by default. Experiences and Charitable Donations are off until you enable them.
4. If you plan to offer gift cards through Tremendous or Tango Card, go to Admin → Reward Providers and connect the provider. Gift cards will not fulfill automatically until credentials are configured. Internal gift cards (no external provider) require manual fulfillment by an admin.
5. Go to Admin → Manage Items and add your first catalog items, or load sample data from Settings to explore the app before stocking real items.
6. If your workforce spans multiple countries, go to Admin → Regions and create a region per country. Items can then be scoped to a region, and each employee is auto-matched to one based on their work location or profile country.
7. To control company-funded spend, go to Admin → Spend Budgets and create budgets per department or manager team. Without a budget, redemptions are uncapped at the company level (employees are still limited by their own points balance and any monthly cap you set).
8. Confirm it works: as a non-admin employee, open Company Store. They should see the Dashboard with featured items, be able to browse the Catalog, and check their Points balance.

Silent-until-configured pairing: gift-card items with an external provider type will not auto-fulfill until the matching provider integration is connected. The order is placed, points are deducted, and the item sits in Pending until an admin manually fulfills or retries it — with no error visible to the employee until the admin acts.

3. How it fits together

Items and categories — Every item in the catalog belongs to one of four categories: Swag, Gift Card, Experience, or Charitable. Each category can be turned on or off independently in Settings. An item that belongs to a disabled category is hidden from the catalog. Items can be priced in points, cash, or both; at least one price is required. Items carry a status — Active, Out of Stock, Discontinued, Draft, or Coming Soon — and an item whose tracked inventory reaches zero is automatically moved to Out of Stock. When stock is added back, it returns to Active and employees who signed up for a back-in-stock notification are alerted.

Points balance vs. spend budgets — These are two independent controls that are easy to confuse. An employee’s points balance is what they own and can spend (earned through recognition or admin adjustments). A spend budget is a company-funded cap on how many points a department or manager’s team can redeem in a given year — it does not add points to anyone’s balance; it limits how much the company will let that group redeem. Redemptions draw down the most specific budget that applies (the employee’s manager’s budget first, then the department’s). When both exist, a manager-level sub-allocation is carved out of the department envelope. An employee can still hold more points than the budget allows; they just cannot redeem past the budget until an admin tops it up. The budget warns its owner at 80% committed and again when a redemption is blocked.

Approval holds — Redemptions above a configured point threshold are held for approval instead of being fulfilled immediately. There are two tiers: a Manager Approval Threshold routes the hold to the employee’s direct manager (or to a designated Approver Group, such as a Rewards Committee), and an Admin Approval Threshold routes it to store administrators. The admin tier always takes precedence when both match. A velocity/fraud hold — triggered when an employee redeems too many times or too many points in a short window — always routes to admin approval. Points are deducted and inventory is reserved at the moment the hold is created; if rejected, both are refunded.

Regions — An optional layer for multi-country workforces. Each region maps to a country and a currency. Items can be assigned to a region (or left global). Employees are auto-matched to a region by their primary work location’s country, then their profile country, then the default region. Only one region per country is allowed within a business.

Fulfillment — How an order gets to the employee depends on the item’s provider and category. Gift cards with an external provider (Tremendous, Tango Card) are fulfilled automatically — the provider issues the card and the code or redemption link appears on the order. Print-on-demand swag (Printful) is submitted to the provider automatically. Managed swag (warehoused inventory fulfilled through the Managed Swag Fulfillment program) is routed to the operations desk. Internal items with no external provider are fulfilled manually by a store admin. Employees can track their order status and, for physical items, see carrier tracking links (UPS, FedEx, USPS, DHL). If an employee’s physical order shipped wrong, they can request a return or exchange from the order page.

Multi-item cart — Employees can add multiple items to a cart and check out in one order. The cart is points-only and accepts items that do not require external fulfillment — gift cards, charitable items, and externally-fulfilled swag must be checked out individually. A cart holds at most 10 distinct lines. All budget, approval, and cap checks are evaluated against the cart total, not per line.

Wishlists and restock alerts — Employees can add items to a personal wishlist (saved until they remove it) or sign up for a back-in-stock notification on an out-of-stock item. The restock notification is one-shot: once the item comes back in stock the employee is notified and the watch is removed automatically.

Managed Swag Fulfillment — An optional program (enabled under Admin → Swag Fulfillment) for warehoused company merchandise. When enabled, items marked as managed carry real inventory counts with a full audit ledger of every stock movement — restocks, redemptions, cycle counts, and damage adjustments. A configurable low-stock threshold (default 10 units) triggers an admin alert when stock crosses below it. Admins register inbound stock shipments; the central operations desk handles outbound shipping.

Recognition integration — When enabled (on by default), points from recognition awards are automatically credited to the employee’s Company Store balance. Turning this off disconnects the two: employees can still receive recognition, but it will not add store points.

4. Running it

Managing the catalog

Go to Admin → Manage Items. From here you can add, edit, or discontinue items. Each item requires a name, a category, and at least one price (points or cash). You can set inventory (leave blank for unlimited), assign a region, mark an item as Featured to show it on the store dashboard, add variant options (size, color), upload an image, and schedule a future publish date. When creating or updating an item, check Announce to employees to send a one-time notification that the item is now available. Items can also be imported from a connected reward provider’s catalog (e.g. Tango Card).

Reviewing and fulfilling orders

Go to Admin → Manage Orders to see all orders. Filter by status to find orders that need attention. From an order’s detail page, you can:

• Fulfill a pending order manually (enter a tracking number and carrier, or a gift card code/link for internal cards).
• Cancel an order — points and inventory are refunded automatically.
• Refund a fulfilled order — points are refunded; for physical items, inventory is restored. Charitable orders cannot be refunded.
• Retry a failed digital fulfillment (the button appears when a provider error is recorded).

For orders that included a cash or mixed payment, cancellation or refund automatically triggers a Stripe refund for the card portion.

Adjusting employee balances

Go to Admin → User Balances to see every employee’s points balance, lifetime earned, and lifetime spent. You can adjust an individual balance (credit or debit points with a reason) or run a bulk adjustment. Store app admins are capped at the App-admin Balance Adjustment Cap (default 5,000 points per adjustment); larger adjustments require a business administrator. The employee is notified of every admin adjustment.

Approving held redemptions

• Manager approvals: Managers (or members of the configured Approver Group) go to Team → Approvals and approve or reject each held order. On approval the order proceeds to fulfillment; on rejection the points and inventory are refunded and the employee is notified.
• Admin approvals: Admins review held orders from Admin → Manage Orders, filtered to the pending-approval status.

Processing returns and exchanges

When an employee requests a return or exchange on a fulfilled physical order, the request appears in the order’s detail page. Each order supports one open request at a time. Physical items can be returned for a refund (points restored) or exchanged. Employees choose a reason — Wrong size, Defective, Not as described, Changed mind, or Other. Gift-card orders have a separate set of reasons for reporting issues — Code not received, Code invalid, Wrong amount, or Other. An admin approves or rejects the request; on approval, the corresponding refund is processed.

Viewing team budgets (managers)

Managers with direct reports see a Team → Team Budget tab showing their team’s budget allocation for the current year: total allocation, amount spent, amount carved out for sub-allocations, and remaining balance. This is read-only — budgets are created and adjusted by admins under Admin → Spend Budgets.

Assisted redemptions

Go to Admin → Redeem For to place an order on behalf of an employee — useful for new-hire welcome kits or frontline workers without app access. The admin chooses the employee, the item, and provides a reason; the employee’s own points are spent, and all the same rules (budget, approval threshold, inventory) apply.

Tax reporting

Business administrators (not store app admins) can access Admin → Tax Reports to review employees approaching or exceeding the tax-reporting threshold (default $600, matching the US IRS figure). Downloadable reports include annual summaries, detailed transactions, gift card reports, W-2 supplements, 1099-NEC data, P11D data, and threshold status. Reports containing SSN or home-address data require step-up identity verification before download.

5. Settings

All settings are at Company Store → Settings.

Setting	Default	What it changes
Store Open	On	Master switch. Turning it off closes the storefront for all employees. Settings remains accessible so you can turn it back on.
Points Redemption	On	Whether employees can redeem items with points.
Cash Purchases	Off	Whether employees can buy items with a credit card via Stripe.
Mixed Payments	Off	Whether employees can combine points and cash in one purchase.
Company Swag (category)	On	Shows or hides the Swag category in the catalog.
Gift Cards (category)	On	Shows or hides the Gift Cards category.
Experiences (category)	Off	Shows or hides the Experiences category.
Charitable Donations (category)	Off	Shows or hides the Charitable Donations category.
Points per Dollar	100	Conversion rate used when mixing points and cash (100 points = $1).
Points Expiry	0 (never)	Months after earning before points expire. 0 means points never expire.
Monthly Redemption Cap	0 (no limit)	Maximum points an employee can redeem per calendar month.
Manager Approval Threshold	0 (off)	Redemptions at or above this point value are held for the employee’s manager.
Admin Approval Threshold	0 (off)	Redemptions at or above this point value are held for admin approval.
Manager-tier Approver Group	Direct manager	When set, manager-tier holds go to a designated group instead of each redeemer’s org-chart manager.
App-admin Balance Adjustment Cap	5,000	Maximum points a store app admin can add or remove per adjustment; larger changes require a business administrator.
Tax Reporting Threshold	$600	Annual taxable reward value at which an employee appears on admin Tax Reports.
Featured Items on Dashboard	6	Number of featured catalog items shown on the store dashboard.
Velocity Window	24 hours	Rolling window for velocity/fraud controls.
Velocity Max Orders	0 (off)	Orders in the window that trigger a hold for admin review.
Velocity Max Points	0 (off)	Points redeemed in the window that trigger a hold.
Order Confirmation	On	Notify employees when their order is placed.
Processing Updates	On	Notify employees when a physical order starts being prepared.
Fulfillment Updates	On	Notify employees when their order is fulfilled.
Admin Order Alerts	On	Notify store admins when a new order is placed.
Unspent Points Reminder	Off	Email employees with idle points at most once a month.
Recognition Integration	On	Automatically credit points when an employee receives a recognition award.
AI Store Assistant	On	Allow employees to interact with the Company Store Agent via Ask AI.

6. More help

• Company Store FAQ — specific setup and operating questions.
• Ask AI — the assistant answers questions about Company Store from these articles.