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 → All Apps 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), from Levels & Badges level-up rewards, 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 → All Apps, 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 business administrators — only a business administrator can decide an admin-tier hold, so a Company Store app admin who is not one can see it but not approve it. 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, and the approver is told why it was held. A manager-tier hold from someone with no manager, or from the Approver Group’s only member, goes to the business administrators too. Nobody decides their own hold while someone else can. Points are deducted and inventory is reserved at the moment the hold is created; if declined, 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.

Cart — Employees can add several items to a cart and check out once, as one order with one shipment. The cart takes company swag — print-on-demand items, managed-program items and items shipped from HQ inventory — but a cart holds items from one fulfillment route at a time, so print-on-demand and HQ-shipped items are ordered separately (the store says so when you try to mix them). Gift cards, charitable donations, engraved items and cash-only items are always checked out on their own. A cart holds up to 5 different items and up to 5 of each. Checkout accepts points, card, or points plus card (subject to the payment settings), the address and payment are entered once for the whole order, and every budget, approval and cap check is evaluated against the cart total. On the phone the cart checks out with points only; a shortfall points the employee to the desktop checkout to pay the difference by card. Redeem now on an item page places just that item, leaving the cart as it was, and Order Again on a finished order refills the cart from that order. Cancelling a cart order refunds the points and restocks every line.

Order requests — From an order page an employee can message the store admins: Question about my order, Request cancellation (once the order is already with the provider and can no longer be cancelled directly), Change shipping address (before dispatch) or Item arrived damaged or wrong (after delivery). Store admins are notified in their Inbox and by email; cancellation requests appear as a queue on Admin → Manage Orders, everything else on the order’s admin page. Approving a cancellation recalls the order at the provider where possible, cancels it and refunds the points; declines and replies reach the employee in their Inbox and by email and show on the order page.

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. On a Draft or Coming Soon item with a publish time, the box instead announces it when the scheduled publish makes it live (if it is in stock and its category is on then). 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).
• Reply to, decline or approve the employee’s requests about the order (questions, address changes, damage reports, cancellation requests). Cancel & refund on a cancellation request tries to recall the order at the provider first, then cancels and refunds; if the provider refuses, the order is still cancelled here and the refusal is shown so you know it may still be produced. Cash orders need a business administrator.

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 Points Cap (default 5,000 points per adjustment); larger adjustments require a business administrator. The same cap applies to an order an app admin places on an employee’s behalf. 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 decline each held order. Add a short reason when you decline — the employee sees it. On approval the order proceeds to fulfillment; on a decline the points and inventory are refunded and the employee is told it was not approved, and why.
• 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. Store admins are notified of each new request. An admin approves or declines it; 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 → User Balances and click Redeem for employee 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. Turned off, employees can’t browse, redeem or buy, but can still see My Orders (and any gift-card codes on them). Admin pages and Settings stay available, and points don’t expire while it is off.
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 Points Cap (grants and redemptions for others)	5,000	Maximum points a store app admin can move for one employee in a single action — a balance adjustment, or an order placed on their behalf; larger actions 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 an order starts being prepared (a physical order, a gift card being issued, or an experience being arranged).
Fulfillment Updates	On	Notify employees when their order is fulfilled — including the notice that delivers a gift-card code.
Low Stock Alerts	On	Notify store admins in the app when an item with a counted inventory falls to its Low Stock Alert number, and remind them weekly while it stays low.
Send store admin alerts to this group instead of the app admins	Not set	When set, store admin alerts (new orders, low stock, low gift-card balance) go to this group instead of the Company Store app admins. Redemptions held for an admin’s approval, and overdue ones, go to its business administrators.
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.
Company Store assistant (Ask AI)	On	Lets people use Ask AI to check balances, browse and track orders and — after a confirmation — redeem, check out a cart, cancel or return orders; managers can approve or decline redemptions.

6. More help

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