Store Requests is a mobile app feature designed to improve the in-store experience by helping store personnel better serve customers and increase the likelihood of sales, even when a product is not in stock locally.
Overview
When a customer requests a specific product or size that is not available in-store, staff can use the mobile app to:
- Check availability across store stock, in-transit stock, and warehouse stock
- Place a request directly from the warehouse
Once submitted, the request is reviewed and may be automatically approved, rejected, or marked as pending for manual review by Head Office. Approved products are delivered to the store in the next replenishment cycle, so staff can notify the customer to return and complete the purchase.
- ⚠️ Note: Head Office may approve or reject requests based on business rules, store priorities, or availability.
Functionality process
A customer walks into the store looking for a product that’s out of stock. Instead of losing the sale, the shop assistant opens the mobile app and checks if the item is available in the warehouse or already on its way to the store. If it’s available, they can place a Store Request directly from the app.
To do that, the assistant taps on Store Requests—either from the menu or the floating action button—and starts a new request by hitting the “+” button. From there, they can search for the product manually by reference or scan the barcode with the app’s scanner.
If the product exists in the system, a simplified product card will appear showing the available sizes and their status. The assistant can choose the right size and add the number of units they want to request. Items marked as stockout can’t be requested and will be blocked.
If they want to know more about availability, they can tap the green or red label to open a detailed modal. This shows how many units are in the warehouse, how many are already on the way (in transit), and what’s in the store (if any).
Once everything looks good, they tap Continue to send the request. Right away, they’ll see a summary screen that shows the request status for each size:
- Approved – green
- Rejected – red
- Pending – gray (waiting for head office to decide)
When manual approval flow is enabled, the pending requests will be shown in the web platform so the headquarters staff can check manually and approve the requests based on their own criteria.
⚠️ Note: Two modes of replenishment are available and depending on properties set for each customer one of the following might happen:
- Ensured delivery mode: All approved requests will go "on-top" of the replenishment. It means we ensure the delivery of the items to the store regardless of the optimization algorithm
- Optimization/regular mode: requested items represent a higher probability of sale, so the optimization algorithm takes that into account but does not ensure all the requests will be delivered. In cases of scarcity, approved requests might not result in sending items to that store.
Expiring requests
By default, we assume that the customer will come back to buy the product within 14 days of the product being requested. If in these 14 days the ordered unit(s) is/are not sold, we assume that the request has expired and it will not be displayed in the mobile app.
Simultaneously, to measure this function's efficiency, we can track whether the store eventually sold the requested product. This is also helpful to ensure that stores are not using it irresponsibly. They are only requesting products which they are certain to sell. To do this, we track daily sales until the request expires to determine whether the unit(s) ordered is/are sold. If it is, we also consider that the request has expired and will flag it accordingly. In the web app Store Requests page, there is a column that shows how many units were sold of those requested.
Usage Limits
In order to limit a store's usage of the feature and ensure that they are using it responsibly, the maximum number of units per product that can be requested also be limited. This will apply to all active requests, meaning that if a store has recently requested 2 units and the maximum is set at 3, then it will only be able to order one other unit of the same product. As soon as the request expires, either because it timed out or is sold, the limit will adjust.
