The Store tab on HQ Connect is a real store: your franchisor stocks branded gear — uniforms, signage, promo items, printed materials, equipment — sets a price, and your shop buys it with a card, right inside SalesThumb. It's a different feature from Service Sync, which only pushes a pricing *definition* into your shop's own service catalog and never touches money or physical stock. The Store sells goods HQ actually holds inventory of and ships to you. If you were looking for the catalog-sync feature instead, see Service Sync — pushing your catalog to every location.
This guide covers both sides: how your shop orders from HQ, and — if you're on the franchisor side — how HQ builds the catalog and fulfills what comes in.
Finding the Store (shop side)
From the sidebar, under Run the shop, click HQ Connect, then click the Store tab along the top. That HQ Connect entry only shows up if your shop belongs to a franchisor org — a standalone shop with no HQ won't see it. If your franchisor hasn't added anything yet, the tab just shows "No products yet."
Ordering (shop side)
Each product shows its name, a short description if HQ wrote one, and its price. Use the + and − buttons to set a quantity — the stepper won't let you go above whatever HQ currently has on hand, and a product with zero on hand shows an Out of stock badge instead of the quantity controls.
As you add items, a bar pinned to the bottom of the screen tracks your running total and item count, ending in a Checkout · $[total] button. Only staff with the Manage inventory permission can actually check out — it's treated as the same kind of action as receiving or adjusting your shop's own inventory. Owner, Admin, and Manager roles have it by default; Technician, Front Desk, and Service Writer don't, though it can be granted to an individual person from Settings → Team.
Checkout opens a card-entry form processed by Rainforest, SalesThumb's payments processor — the same processor used for customer payments elsewhere in the app. Once your card is approved you'll see "Order placed!" with a note that your franchisor will ship it soon.
Tracking your order (shop side)
Click Order history in the top right of the Store tab to see every order your shop has placed, newest first, each with its date, total, and a status badge:
- Awaiting payment — the order was created but payment hasn't gone through (this happens if you close the card form before finishing)
- Paid — HQ has your money and hasn't shipped yet
- Shipped — HQ marked it fulfilled; if they entered a tracking number, it's shown right on the order
- Canceled — HQ canceled it before payment went through
- Refunded — HQ refunded it
There's no self-serve cancel on your side. An order HQ hasn't been paid on yet can still be canceled from their end, but once you've paid, canceling isn't an option anymore — only a refund is, and that's HQ's call to make.
Managing the catalog (HQ side)
In the HQ dashboard sidebar's Admin section — right next to Service Sync — click Store. Click Add product to create an item:
- Name — required
- SKU — optional
- Category — Apparel, Signage, Printed materials, Promo item, Equipment, or Other. This only organizes your own product grid; shops don't see or filter by category when they browse.
- Description — optional, and shown to shops
- Price ($) — what shops pay
- Your cost ($) — optional, and explicitly marked "Internal — not shown to shops"
- Starting stock — how many units you're putting on the shelf at creation
- Image — optional
Click a product card to edit it. Editing takes effect immediately, but only going forward — the dialog says so directly: "Updates apply immediately — past orders keep their original price." Changing a price today doesn't touch what a shop was already charged for a past order.
The same edit dialog has a Restock / adjust stock control: enter a positive number (e.g. "+10") to receive new stock or a negative one (e.g. "-2") to correct a count, with an optional reason note. A Deactivate/Activate toggle pulls a product from the shop-facing Store — it's labeled "Hidden from shops" once off — without deleting it or its order history; deactivated products stay visible to you with an "Inactive" badge.
Fulfilling and refunding orders (HQ side)
From the Store page, click Orders to see every purchase across your shops, filterable by status. Open one to see its line items and the action available for its current status:
- A Paid order shows a Fulfill this order card — enter a tracking number (optional) and click Mark fulfilled. This flips the shop's view to "Shipped" and, if the shop has a phone or email on file, sends them an automatic notification that it shipped.
- A pending-payment order shows a Cancel order button. This only works before payment clears — there's no cancel option once an order is paid.
- A Paid or Fulfilled order shows a Mark refunded button. This issues a real refund through Rainforest to the card that was charged — it's not just a record-keeping click — and, once the refund succeeds, restocks the on-hand quantity of whatever was actually deducted for that order.
Stock is locked at checkout, so two shops can't oversell the last few units of something at the same moment — whichever checkout commits first gets the stock, and the other sees "Insufficient stock" if there isn't enough left.
Frequently asked questions
Q: Who can place a Store order for my shop?
A: Anyone with the "Manage inventory" permission — the same bucket used for receiving and adjusting your shop's own inventory. Owner, Admin, and Manager roles have it by default; other roles need it granted individually from Settings → Team.
Q: Can I cancel an order after I've already paid?
A: Not from the shop side, and HQ can't self-cancel it either at that point — cancel only works on an order that hasn't been paid yet. Once it's paid, the only path is a refund, which HQ has to initiate.
Q: Why does a product say "Out of stock" when I want to order it?
A: It means HQ's on-hand count for that item is currently zero. The quantity stepper on every product is capped at whatever HQ actually has on hand, so you can't order more than they can ship.
Q: If HQ raises a product's price, does it change what I already paid?
A: No. Price edits apply to new orders only — an order you already placed keeps the price it was charged at, even if HQ changes the listed price the next day.
Q: I don't see HQ Connect or a Store tab at all — why?
A: HQ Connect only appears in the sidebar if your shop belongs to a franchisor organization. If it's there but Store shows "No products yet," your franchisor simply hasn't added anything to sell yet.