Store operations where every pickup order, transfer and exception has an owner — across all your stores

Mi Retail is an operations center for retail stores and chains. It does not replace the POS or the retail management system; it manages the human work that appears around them. A pickup order with a missing item, a transfer from another store, a cash variance at closing, a broken freezer or a planogram change from head office becomes an Operational Work Item with an owner, a state, a due time and evidence. Each person sees what is theirs: associates see the orders and checklists assigned to them, store managers see exceptions and decisions, district managers see how their stores are doing and head office sees execution across the chain. Sales, stock and prices stay in StoneOS apps or in the systems you already use.

No. Your POS stays the system of record for sales, returns at the counter and payments, and your inventory or retail management system keeps stock, prices and promotions. Mi Retail never sells an item or adjusts a stock level. What it adds is the layer those systems were not built for: the work that has to happen when a record needs a person. The system can say a pair of shoes is in stock; Mi Retail manages who looks for it, what happens when it is not there, which store sends it and who tells the customer. You keep your POS; Mi Retail takes over where the work leaves it and records who did what, and when.

The pickup order arrives from the order management system as a picking work item in the store that must fulfill it. If the associate cannot find an item that the system shows in stock, they raise an exception with a photo of the empty slot instead of cancelling the line. The store manager sees it in their queue and decides between a transfer and a substitute; if a sister store has the item, a transfer request lands in that store’s queue with a due time. Customer care gets a follow-up to tell the customer the new pickup time before the original promise passes. When the item arrives, the associate hands over the order with evidence, and a cycle count is scheduled so the discrepancy does not repeat.

A transfer between stores of the same company is a request work item that goes from the store that needs the item to the store that has it. It lands in the sending store’s queue with the item, the quantity, the reason and the time it must leave, so an associate there can pull it, pack it and put it on the next run without a phone call. Both stores see the same state: requested, in progress, shipped, received. If the sending store cannot fulfill it — the unit is damaged, the run already left — the work item is blocked with that reason, and the requesting manager can look for another store. The stock movement itself is recorded in your inventory system.

Instead of an email to every store manager, head office sends the change as a work item to each store, with the instructions, the due date and the evidence it expects back — a photo of the finished display, a signed price audit, a count of recalled units. Each store sees it in its own queue and assigns it to the right associate. Merchandising or operations then sees, store by store, what is completed, what is late and what is blocked, and why: a fixture that did not arrive, a product that is out of stock. District managers can step in where a store is falling behind, and nobody has to wait for the next store visit to know what really happened on the floor.

When a cash drawer does not balance at closing, when a cycle count finds units missing or when a loss prevention check raises a concern, the case becomes a work item with its evidence instead of a note in a closing report. A cash variance goes to the store manager with the count and the session; an inventory discrepancy becomes a finding that schedules a recount or a review of receipts; a repeated pattern at one store escalates to the district or loss prevention team. Each case has an owner, a state and a resolution that can be reviewed later. The drawer counts and stock levels themselves stay in Cash Sessions, Cycle Counts or your current system; Mi Retail makes sure someone resolves what they reveal.

Yes, when they have their own organization on Mi Retail. A short delivery from a direct-store supplier, a broken refrigeration unit or a leaking roof reported to the landlord can be sent as a derived work item that lands in the other company’s own intake queue. They assign it inside their team, and the store follows its state, due time and result without seeing their internal work; they see only what the store shared. When they close their part — a replacement delivery, a repair report with photos, a credit note — the store’s work item is updated and can close. Store managers stop chasing contractors by phone, and head office can see which vendors keep their commitments.

Each role has its own surface on the same operation. Associates work from My Work on the store device or their phone, which shows only the pickup orders, transfers, checklists and requests that are theirs today. Store managers use Team Operations to see what is unassigned, late or blocked in their store and to reassign it between shifts. District managers look at Operational Portfolio to compare their stores: open exceptions, overdue checklists, transfers in progress. Head office uses Executive Operations for what needs a decision at that level, and Control & Assurance lets audit or loss prevention review closed cases with their evidence. Nobody has to read a chat history to know what is going on.

Yes, it is the same product at both ends. In a single shop run by its owner and two associates, the experience collapses to one Today view with what is pending, what is waiting on a supplier and what must be done before opening, without districts or approval chains that do not exist. In a chain with hundreds of stores, the same work items are distributed across associates, store managers, district managers, merchandising, customer care and head office, each with its own surface, and exceptions escalate to the right level. Opening a new store means adding its teams, not redesigning the process. What changes is how responsibilities are split, not the way the work is represented.

Opening and closing routines are published by the Store Checklists app, and what needs a person shows up in Mi Retail as work items for the shift, with their due times. Most items are simply done and checked. The value appears when something fails: a security gate that does not close, a cooler out of temperature, a display not ready for a promotion. That item becomes an incident or a request with an owner — the store manager, maintenance or an external contractor — instead of a line marked “no” on a form nobody reads. District managers see which stores completed their routines and which exceptions are still open, and the next shift starts knowing exactly what the last one left behind.

The Retail edition of StoneOS brings apps for the domain work of a store network — Store Management, Store Operations, Cash Sessions, Merchandising, Assortments, Store Replenishment, Cycle Counts, Loss Prevention, Omnichannel Fulfillment and Store Checklists — on top of the Business Core apps every team uses, such as Chat, People, To-do, Drive and Calendar. Those apps keep the depth of each domain: Cash Sessions balances the drawer, Cycle Counts holds the counts, Omnichannel Fulfillment routes the order. Mi Retail is where the work they generate meets the people who must move it: a short pick, a transfer, a cash variance or a failed checklist lands as a work item in the right queue. If you keep your current POS, it stays the record.

Start with the flow that costs the most calls between stores — usually pickup orders with missing items and store-to-store transfers, or head office changes that nobody confirms — instead of modeling the whole chain. Create a workspace for that flow, invite the store managers, associates and customer care people involved, and let the next exceptions arrive as work items with an owner and a due time. Within a few weeks you will see which stores wait on which, where promises to customers break and which discrepancies repeat. Then add checklists and replenishment, connect the POS you already use and, when it makes sense, bring in the Retail edition apps from StoneOS. Mi Retail is free to start, so a few pilot stores can prove it first.