Company Store App Overview
Turn recognition into rewards employees actually want — a points-and-cash rewards store with branded swag, global gift cards, experiences, and charitable donations, backed by spend budgets, redemption approvals, returns, multi-region catalogs, and tax-compliance reporting.
What is the Company Store?
The Company Store is your organization’s internal rewards marketplace. Employees earn reward points through recognition — peer appreciation and manager/milestone awards — and spend those points on things they value: company-branded swag, gift cards, experiences, or a donation to charity. Where allowed, they can also pay with their own card (cash) or a mix of points and cash.
Core Value Proposition:
- 🎁 Tangible Rewards — Convert recognition points into real merchandise, gift cards, and experiences
- 🌍 Global Reach — Multi-region catalogs with local currency and region-appropriate providers
- 💳 Flexible Payment — Points-only, cash-only, or mixed (points + card) checkout — each admin-controlled
- 🛡️ Spend Governance — Company-funded spend budgets, redemption approvals, velocity limits, and tax-compliance reporting
Key Concepts (How It Works)
If you only read one section, read this — it explains the model behind the screens, and clears up the things people most often get wrong.
How points get INTO the store — there are two earning paths
Reward points land in an employee’s store balance from Recognition, through two different flows (both handled by RecognitionIntegrationService):
- Peer points (Mango Kudos) — when peer giving is turned on, an employee spends their monthly giving allowance to recognize a colleague, and those points land in the recipient’s store balance 1:1 (points are already points — no dollar conversion).
- Award value — a manager/milestone/achievement award carries a value; when the award goes active, its value is converted to points (using the store’s points-per-dollar rate) and credited to the recipient’s balance.
Both paths require the Company Store to be enabled and integrated (recognition_integration on) — the recipient needs somewhere to bank and spend the points. If the integration is off, there is no earning path, and the store honestly hides the “how to earn points” on-ramp.
Not everyone can bank points. Admins can exclude certain worker classifications (e.g. contractors, volunteers, interns) from accruing monetary reward points for tax/legal reasons. Those people can still be recognized — only the points credit is skipped.
Your points balance vs. a store budget — two different pools
This is the distinction people confuse most. They are separate and never mix:
- Your points balance (
UserStoreBalance) — the spendable points that belong to the individual employee. It has an available balance, pending points (credited but not yet released), and lifetime earned/spent totals. Every credit and debit is written to a permanent transaction ledger. - A store spend budget (
StoreBudget) — a company-funded, points-denominated finance control set by admins, hierarchical (a department envelope can hold manager sub-allocations). It caps how much of the company’s cost a team may draw down through redemptions in a budget year. A hard cap blocks a redemption that would exceed the remaining allowance.
The employee always spends their own points balance. The store budget is a governance layer on top — it limits company exposure, it is not the employee’s wallet. A budget is optional: with none configured, redemptions are unbudgeted (no enforcement).
What a “category” is, and which are on by default
Every item belongs to exactly one of four categories, and each category has its own admin toggle:
| Category | Default | Fulfillment style |
|---|---|---|
| Swag (branded merchandise) | ✅ On | Physical (ships) |
| Gift Cards | ✅ On | Digital (delivered instantly) |
| Experiences | ⬜ Off | Physical / arranged |
| Charitable (donations) | ⬜ Off | Donation receipt |
A category that’s toggled off is hidden from the catalog and blocked at checkout — even a direct deep link to an item in a disabled category can’t be redeemed. The AI store assistant honors the same rule, so no surface can sell an item a human can’t.
Payment types — and who actually pays
Three checkout modes, each independently enabled by an admin:
- Points (default on) — spend your reward points. No card involved.
- Cash (default off) — pay with your own card through Stripe Checkout. The charge is never attached to the company’s billing — the store charges the employee, not the business.
- Mixed (default off) — use some points to reduce the card amount, pay the rest by card.
There is no “pay with the company card” path. Points are how the company funds rewards; cash/mixed is the employee spending out of pocket to top up.
What “pending approval” means (points are held, not spent freely)
Most redemptions complete instantly. But a redemption can be held for approval based on admin-configured thresholds (in Store::CheckoutService):
- At or above the admin threshold → held for an admin/business admin.
- At or above the manager threshold → held for the redeemer’s manager (or a designated approver group).
- Tripping a velocity limit (too many orders/points in a rolling window) → always held for an admin.
When held, the order is in pending_approval, the points are deducted and held (not still spendable), and inventory is reserved. On approve, it releases for fulfillment; on reject, the held points are refunded and inventory restocked. Either way the employee is notified.
How items are fulfilled
Fulfillment depends on the item’s provider and kind:
- Gift cards → delivered digitally and instantly through Tremendous or Tango (a reward link / code).
- Print-on-demand swag → produced and shipped on demand through Printful (no stored inventory).
- Managed / warehoused swag → real inventory the business stocks, shipped by the MangoApps ops desk (Managed Swag Fulfillment) with an inventory ledger, cycle counts, and low-stock alerts.
- Charitable → routed to a charity partner, returns a donation receipt.
Who is an “admin” here — two different admin scopes
The Company Store deliberately splits admin power:
- Company Store App Admin — can merchandise: manage the catalog, sync/browse/import provider catalogs, fulfill orders, run analytics, adjust balances (up to a configurable cap). This lets a store owner run the store without full business-admin rights.
- Business Admin (admin or above) — everything above plus the sensitive surfaces: provider credentials (configured once in the central Integrations hub), unlimited balance adjustments, and tax-compliance reports (which carry PII — SSN last-4, addresses — and require step-up identity verification to download).
Do points expire?
Only if the admin turns it on. Points expiry is off by default (points_expiry_months = 0). When a tenant sets an expiry window, ExpireStorePointsJob first warns employees whose points will lapse within 14 days, then removes points aged past the window (breakage) using a fair, oldest-first method — recorded as an “expiry” ledger entry that does not count as spending.
At a Glance
| 📊 Categories | 💳 Payment Modes | 🔗 Reward Providers | 📱 Mobile Ready |
|---|---|---|---|
| 4 (Swag · Gift Cards · Experiences · Charitable) | 3 (Points · Cash · Mixed) | 5 (Internal · Printful · Tremendous · Tango · Charitable) | ✅ Yes (/m/ views) |
Perfect For:
- 🏢 HR & People teams — turn a recognition program into rewards employees actually redeem, with budgets and tax reporting built in
- 🌍 Global / distributed organizations — region-specific catalogs, local currencies, and print-on-demand or digital fulfillment
- 👷 Frontline workforces — mobile store, and order/fulfillment alerts delivered in-app + push + SMS so deskless workers hear about their rewards
How It Works
Redemption Flow
┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ POINTS-TO-REWARDS JOURNEY │
├─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ │
│ ┌──────────────┐ ┌──────────────┐ ┌──────────────┐ │
│ │ PEER POINTS │ │ RECOGNITION │ │ MILESTONE │ │
│ │ (Mango Kudos)│ │ AWARD │ │ / ACHIEVE │ │
│ └──────┬───────┘ └──────┬───────┘ └──────┬───────┘ │
│ └───────────────────────┼───────────────────────┘ │
│ ▼ │
│ ┌─────────────────────────┐ │
│ │ POINTS CREDITED to │ │
│ │ employee store balance │ │
│ └───────────┬─────────────┘ │
│ ▼ │
│ ┌─────────────────────────┐ │
│ │ BROWSE CATALOG → CHECKOUT│ │
│ │ Points · Cash · Mixed │ │
│ └───────────┬─────────────┘ │
│ │ │
│ ┌─────────────────┴─────────────────┐ │
│ ▼ ▼ │
│ ┌────────────────────┐ ┌────────────────────┐ │
│ │ INSTANT ORDER │ │ HELD FOR APPROVAL │ │
│ │ (below thresholds)│ │ (over threshold or │ │
│ │ │ │ velocity limit) │ │
│ └─────────┬──────────┘ └─────────┬──────────┘ │
│ │ approve │ reject → refund points │
│ │◀─────────────────────────────────┘ │
│ ▼ │
│ ┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐ │
│ │ FULFILL: Gift card emailed · Swag shipped · Donation made │ │
│ └────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ │
│ │ │
│ └──▶ Order confirmation · Processing · Shipped (in-app+SMS) │
│ │
└─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
Integration Ecosystem
┌─────────────────┐
│ COMPANY STORE │
└────────┬────────┘
│
┌──────────┬──────────┬──────────┼──────────┬──────────┬──────────┐
▼ ▼ ▼ ▼ ▼ ▼ ▼
┌─────────┐┌─────────┐┌─────────┐┌─────────┐┌─────────┐┌─────────┐┌─────────┐
│RECOGNI- ││ PRINTFUL││TREMENDOUS││ TANGO ││ STRIPE ││MANAGED ││ ASK AI │
│ TION ││ (POD ││ (gift ││ (gift ││ (cash/ ││ SWAG ││ (Store │
│(earning)││ swag) ││ cards) ││ cards) ││ mixed) ││ (ops) ││ Agent) │
└────┬────┘└────┬────┘└────┬────┘└────┬────┘└────┬────┘└────┬────┘└────┬────┘
▼ ▼ ▼ ▼ ▼ ▼ ▼
points in ship on digital digital employee warehouse natural
from awards demand delivery delivery card pay inventory language
Key Features
🛒 Store Catalog
Browse and search the company’s reward offerings.
| Feature | Description |
|---|---|
| Category filters | Swag, Gift Cards, Experiences, Charitable (only enabled categories shown) |
| Search | Find items by name or description (plural-aware — “hoodies” finds “Branded Hoodie”) |
| Sorting | Featured, Price (low/high), Name, or Newest |
| Affordability | Item cards show whether you can afford it with your current balance |
| “Within reach right now” | The dashboard surfaces the best points items you can afford today |
| Regional filtering | Items automatically scoped to your location’s region when regions are on |
| Product variants | Size / color / denomination selection for applicable items |
| Wishlist & notify-me | Heart an item to save it, or get a back-in-stock alert when it returns |
Use Case: An employee with 500 points filters to “Gift Cards,” finds a $25 card they can afford, and redeems it in one step — the code is emailed to them instantly.
💡 Pro Tip: Use the ❤️ on any item to save it to your wishlist. If a swag item is out of stock, tap “Notify me” and the store will alert you the moment it’s restocked.
🏷️ Item Categories
Four categories of rewards, each independently enabled by admins.
| Category | Items | Fulfillment |
|---|---|---|
| 🎽 Swag | Apparel, drinkware, branded merchandise | Print-on-demand (Printful) or warehoused |
| 🎁 Gift Cards | Retail, dining, and prepaid cards | Instant digital delivery (Tremendous / Tango) |
| 🎟️ Experiences | Events, perks, arranged rewards | Physical / arranged |
| 💝 Charitable | Donations to charity partners | Donation receipt |
Variant presets make setup quick: apparel sizes (XS–XXL), sizes + colors, and gift-card denominations ($25/$50/$100/$250).
💰 Points Balance & Transactions
Every employee’s balance is fully transparent and fully auditable.
| Field | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Available balance | Points ready to redeem right now |
| Pending points | Points credited but not yet released/matured |
| Lifetime earned | Total points ever earned |
| Lifetime spent | Total points ever redeemed |
| Transaction ledger | Every credit, debit, adjustment, and expiry, with running balance |
| 30-day activity | A rolling snapshot of earned vs. spent |
Points sources: peer recognition (Mango Kudos), recognition/milestone awards, and manual admin adjustments. Refunds from a cancelled or rejected redemption return points to the balance automatically.
💳 Flexible Payment Options
┌───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ PAYMENT OPTIONS │
├───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ ┌────────────────┐ ┌────────────────┐ ┌────────────────┐ │
│ │ POINTS ONLY │ │ CASH ONLY │ │ MIXED PAYMENT │ │
│ ├────────────────┤ ├────────────────┤ ├────────────────┤ │
│ │ • Spend reward │ │ • Your own card│ │ • Some points │ │
│ │ points │ │ via Stripe │ │ • Remainder │ │
│ │ • No card │ │ • Never the │ │ on card │ │
│ │ • Instant │ │ company card │ │ • Stretch pts │ │
│ └────────────────┘ └────────────────┘ └────────────────┘ │
│ (default ON) (default OFF) (default OFF) │
└───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
Each mode is enforced server-side, not just hidden in the form — so a payment type an admin disabled can’t be forced through a crafted request.
✅ Redemption Approvals & Spend Controls
Governance for high-value or high-velocity redemptions.
| Control | What it does |
|---|---|
| Admin approval threshold | Redemptions at/above N points are held for a business admin |
| Manager approval threshold | Redemptions at/above N points are held for the redeemer’s manager |
| Approver group | Optionally route manager-tier holds to a fixed group (e.g. a Rewards Committee) instead of each line manager |
| Monthly redemption cap | Cap total points a person can redeem per month |
| Velocity limits | Too many orders/points in a rolling window → held for admin review |
| Store spend budgets | Company-funded, points-denominated budgets (department → manager) that hard-cap company cost per year |
Manager self-service queue: managers get a queue to approve/reject the mid-tier redemptions held for their own direct reports, plus a read-only view of their team’s store spend budget.
💡 Pro Tip: If you want a lightweight sign-off on big rewards without loading it all onto admins, set only the manager approval threshold. Mid-value redemptions then route to each employee’s own manager, who can release them from the manager queue.
📦 Order Management & Timeline
Track every order from placement to fulfillment. Orders follow a strict state machine.
| Status | Description |
|---|---|
| 🟠 Pending approval | Held for admin/manager review — points already deducted and held |
| 🟡 Pending | Approved/instant — awaiting fulfillment dispatch |
| 🔵 Processing | Physical item being prepared by the provider |
| 🟢 Fulfilled | Shipped, gift card delivered, or donation completed |
| ⚫ Cancelled | Cancelled — points refunded and inventory restored |
| 🔴 Refunded | Fulfilled order later refunded |
Every meaningful event (placed, held, approval released, payment captured, shipped, cancelled, refunded, return requested/processed) is written to a per-order activity timeline, and order changes carry a field-level audit history.
Order details include: order number (e.g. ORD-20260706-ABC123), item name with variants, points and/or cash, tracking number + clickable carrier link (UPS/FedEx/USPS/DHL), gift-card reward link, and donation receipt.
🔄 Returns & Exchanges
An RMA-lite flow for physical swag.
- A fulfilled physical order can be returned or exchanged (wrong size, defective, not as described, changed mind, etc.).
- Digitally-delivered items (gift cards) can’t be physically returned, but a “dud” (code not received, invalid, wrong amount) still routes through the same review queue so the employee has recourse.
- Admins approve (refund the points, or arrange an exchange) or reject; the whole thing is folded into the order’s activity timeline.
🌍 Regional Support
Serve a global workforce with localized catalogs.
| Feature | Description |
|---|---|
| Multi-region catalogs | Different items per country/region |
| Local currency | Each region carries its own currency code + symbol |
| Auto region detection | A user’s region is resolved from work location → profile country → default region |
| Global items | Region-less items are available to everyone |
| Region isolation | When regions are on, users can’t access items outside their region (no cross-region leakage) |
🔗 Provider Integrations & Fulfillment
Connect leading reward-fulfillment providers. Credentials are configured once in the central Integrations hub (business-admin only); merchandising (sync/browse/import a provider’s catalog into the store) happens inside the Company Store admin so a store owner can curate without full admin rights.
| Provider | Type | Role |
|---|---|---|
| Internal | Physical | Company-managed items |
| Printful | Physical (POD) | Print-on-demand branded swag, shipped on order |
| Tremendous | Digital | Global gift cards & prepaid cards |
| Tango (TangoCard) | Digital | Gift-card catalog delivery |
| Charitable | Donations | Charity-partner donations |
| Managed Swag | Physical (warehoused) | Real inventory shipped by the MangoApps ops desk |
Managed Swag Fulfillment adds a full inventory ledger: every ship/restock/cycle-count/damage movement is recorded, variance is tracked, and a low-stock reorder alert fires once on the downward crossing of the threshold.
📊 Analytics & Insights
Measure store performance and engagement (admin).
Metrics: total orders, points redeemed, category breakdown, top items by redemption, and per-user activity — across day / week / month / quarter / year periods, exportable to CSV.
💵 Tax Compliance Reporting
Because reward value can be taxable imputed income, the store ships real compliance tooling (business-admin only, PII-gated with step-up identity verification).
| Report | Purpose |
|---|---|
| Annual employee summary | Per-employee taxable reward value for the year |
| Detailed transactions | Line-level redemption export for a date range |
| Gift-card report | Gift-card redemptions specifically |
| W-2 supplement | US payroll supplement (adds SSN last-4, address) |
| 1099-NEC supplement | For non-employee reward recipients |
| P11D | UK benefits-in-kind report |
| Threshold monitoring | Flags employees who have exceeded or are approaching the reporting threshold |
Employees also get their own imputed-income statement — the taxable value of the rewards they received.
🤖 Company Store Agent (AI Assistant)
Do store tasks conversationally through Ask AI (toggle: agent_enabled).
| Capability | Example |
|---|---|
| Check balance | “How many points do I have?” |
| Browse / search | “Show me hoodies under 300 points” |
| Affordability | “What can I buy with my points?” |
| Track orders | “Where’s my order ORD-20260706-ABC123?” |
| Redeem an item | “Order the black hoodie” — confirmation-gated before points are spent |
| Request a return | “Return my last order — wrong size” |
| Approvals (approvers) | “What redemptions are waiting for me?” → approve / reject |
| Team budget (managers/admins) | “How much of our store budget is left?” |
The agent honors the store kill-switch, category toggles, region access, and role gates — it can never surface or redeem something a human in the same seat couldn’t. Write actions (redeem, return, approve, reject) are confirmation-gated.
🔔 Notifications
Reach every employee — including deskless workers — where they are (in-app + push, with SMS for the “it shipped” beat).
| Notification | Trigger |
|---|---|
| Points credited | You receive points from recognition |
| Order confirmation | Immediately after placing an order |
| Being prepared | Physical order enters processing |
| Shipped / ready | Item ships (with tracking) or gift card is delivered |
| Cancelled / refunded | Order cancelled or refunded (points refund noted) |
| Redemption approved / not approved | Your held redemption is released or rejected |
| Low-balance reminder | Optional nudge with items you can afford |
| Admin order alert | Store admins notified of new orders |
| Expiry warning | Points expiring within 14 days (only if expiry is enabled) |
User Roles & Permissions
| Role | Capabilities |
|---|---|
| Employee | Browse catalog, check balance, redeem (points/cash/mixed), wishlist, track orders, request returns |
| Manager | Employee capabilities + approve/reject mid-tier redemptions for direct reports + view team store budget |
| Company Store App Admin | Catalog & item management, order fulfillment, provider catalog sync/import, analytics, balance adjustments (up to a cap) |
| Business Admin | Everything above + provider credentials, unlimited balance adjustments, and tax-compliance reports (PII, step-up verified) |
How We Compare
See how MangoApps Workforce Company Store stacks up against leading employee-rewards platforms. Competitor capabilities vary by plan; ⚡ = limited/varies.
| Feature | MangoApps Workforce | Awardco | Bonusly | Xoxoday Empuls |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Redeem recognition points for rewards | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Company-branded swag store | ✅ | ✅ | ⚡ | ✅ |
| Global gift-card catalog | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Charitable donations | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Multi-region, local-currency catalogs | ✅ | ✅ | ⚡ | ✅ |
| Redemption approvals + company spend budgets | ✅ | ✅ | ⚡ | ✅ |
| Built-in tax-compliance reports (W-2 / 1099-NEC / P11D) | ✅ | ⚡ | ⚡ | ⚡ |
| Unified with recognition, comms & HR in one platform | ✅ | ⚡ | ⚡ | ✅ |
| Legend: ✅ Included | ⚡ Limited / varies by plan | ❌ Not available | 💰 Paid add-on |
Why MangoApps Workforce?
- 🔗 One platform — earning (Recognition), spending (Store), comms, and HR share one login, one directory, one org chart — not a bolted-on rewards silo
- 🛡️ Governance built in — approvals, velocity limits, per-team spend budgets, and tax reporting are native, not add-ons
- 👷 Frontline-first — mobile store plus in-app + push + SMS delivery so deskless employees actually receive and redeem their rewards
- 🤖 AI-native — a conversational store assistant that respects every permission and toggle
Getting Started
For Employees
- Open Apps → Company Store
- Check your Balance to see available points
- Browse the Catalog, filter by category, and ❤️ items to save them
- Open an item, pick any variants, and Checkout with points (or cash/mixed if enabled)
- Track progress in My Orders; request a return from a fulfilled order if needed
For Managers
- Watch the approvals badge — release or reject redemptions held for your reports
- Check your team store budget to see remaining allowance
- Recognize your team so they earn points to spend
For Administrators
- In Settings, enable the categories and payment types you want, set points-per-dollar, and (optionally) approval thresholds, caps, and expiry
- Connect reward providers once in the central Integrations hub, then sync/import their catalogs from the store’s Providers page
- Add and feature Items (or import in bulk); set up Regions for a global workforce
- Configure spend budgets by department/manager to control company cost
- Review Analytics monthly and generate Tax Reports before year-end
Best Practices
For Employees
- ✅ Save items you want with the wishlist ❤️, and turn on “notify me” for out-of-stock swag
- ✅ Redeem gift cards promptly — they’re delivered digitally, right away
- ✅ Check your balance during any points-expiry window your company sets (you’ll get a 14-day heads-up)
- ✅ Add your shipping address before ordering physical swag
For Administrators
- ✅ Start with Swag + Gift Cards on; add Experiences/Charitable deliberately
- ✅ Use manager approval thresholds for a light sign-off on big redemptions instead of blocking everything
- ✅ Set spend budgets to keep company cost predictable, and watch velocity limits for abuse
- ✅ Refresh the catalog and feature seasonal items to drive engagement
- ✅ Run tax reports and threshold monitoring before payroll year-end
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: How do employees get points to spend in the store?
A: From Recognition. When peer giving is on, spending your monthly giving allowance credits the recipient’s store balance 1:1; recognition/milestone awards convert their value to points and credit the recipient. The Company Store must be enabled and integrated for either to work.
Q: Do reward points expire?
A: Not by default. Expiry is off unless an admin sets a window (points_expiry_months). If enabled, employees are warned 14 days before points lapse, and only points older than the window are removed.
Q: Can employees pay with a company card?
A: No. Points are how the company funds rewards. If cash or mixed payment is enabled, the employee pays with their own card through Stripe — the charge is never attached to the company’s billing.
Q: Why was my redemption “held for approval” instead of completing?
A: It crossed a threshold your admin set (an admin-tier or manager-tier point threshold) or tripped a velocity limit. Your points are held (not lost); once an approver releases it, it fulfills, and if it’s rejected your points are refunded.
Q: What’s the difference between my points balance and a store budget?
A: Your balance is your personal, spendable points. A store budget is a company-funded, points-denominated cap admins set per department/manager to limit the company’s total cost — it governs spend, it isn’t your wallet.
Q: Can I return swag that doesn’t fit?
A: Yes — a fulfilled physical order can be returned or exchanged for a set of reasons (wrong size, defective, etc.). An admin reviews it and refunds your points or arranges the exchange.
Related Resources
- Recognition App Overview — How employees earn the points they spend here
- Store Catalog Guide — Browsing, filtering, wishlists, and checkout
- Admin Settings Guide — Categories, payment, thresholds, budgets, and providers
- Order Management Guide — Fulfillment, approvals, and returns
The Company Store turns recognition into rewards employees actually want — with the budgets, approvals, and compliance controls to run it responsibly at scale.