For Australian multi-store retailers running Retail Express

Retail Express Integration and Automation

Retail Express holds the truth about your shops: what is on each shelf, what sold today, who your customers are and what they are owed in loyalty. The problem is everything sitting outside it. The website, the accounting system, the marketplace listings and the freight portal each keep their own version, and someone spends their week keeping the four of them roughly in agreement.

We connect Retail Express to the rest of your stack and automate the work around it. Stock and pricing out to your online store and marketplaces, orders and customers back in, sales and takings into your accounting system, and dispatch details into freight. Built for multi-store reality: location level stock, transfers, stocktakes, store specific promotions, and the shop whose internet drops twice a week.

Book an Integration Call (03) 9003 0111

Realistic ROI

8 to 20 hours per week

Manual stock and order handling removed

Typical for a two to eight store retailer, scales with store count

Per location

Availability published online

Instead of one network wide number that suits nobody

Minutes

From counter sale to updated website

Versus a nightly file, which is where overselling starts

3 to 8 weeks

From scoping to a live pilot store

Product data quality is the usual variable

Where Retail Express Retailers Lose Time

The platform handles retail well. The friction is almost always at its edges, in the four places a spreadsheet appears.

The website gets a stale, flattened stock number

The common setup pushes a single network wide availability figure to the store on a schedule. It oversells the fast movers and hides the slow ones, and it makes pickup impossible to offer honestly because nobody knows which shop actually has the item. Publishing per location, near real time, with a buffer tuned per product velocity, is what fixes it.

Online customers and store customers never meet

A customer who buys at the counter on Saturday and online on Tuesday exists as two people, with split purchase history, split loyalty and split marketing consent. Staff cannot answer a warranty question without checking two systems, and your marketing addresses half a customer.

Takings are reconciled by hand

Store takings, web settlements, payment fees, gift card movements and refunds all have to land in the accounting system with correct GST. When that is done through exports and manual journals it eats days each month and quietly guarantees small, permanent discrepancies nobody has time to chase.

Dispatch is typed into a freight portal

Orders picked in store or at the warehouse get retyped into a carrier system, then the tracking number gets retyped back so the customer can be told. Two rounds of typing per order, entirely avoidable, and the source of most address errors and most where is my order calls.

What We Connect Around Retail Express

Six flows. Stock and orders come first, because together they remove the most manual work.

Live availability

Stock out to online

Availability flows from Retail Express to your online store and marketplace listings by location, with a safety buffer per product line tuned to how fast it moves. Transfers, stocktakes and adjustments flow through the same path so the number stays honest between counts.

Order captured

Orders and customers in

Web and marketplace orders land in Retail Express against the right customer and the right location, with payment and freight details attached, ready to pick. Existing customers are matched rather than duplicated, so loyalty and history stay in one place.

One catalogue

Products, pricing and promotions

Product data, barcodes, prices and dated promotions flow from the owning system so a new line or a price change appears everywhere without being entered twice. Store specific and channel specific pricing are handled as rules rather than a single overwritten field.

Ledger posted

Accounting and takings

Daily takings, web settlements, payment fees, gift card movements and refunds post into Xero, MYOB or your ERP with the GST treatment your accountant expects, so month end becomes a review rather than a reconstruction.

Labels and tracking

Freight and dispatch

Orders flow into your carrier or freight platform with the correct address and service, and tracking numbers flow back into the order and the customer notification automatically. No retyping in either direction, which removes most address errors.

One customer view

Marketing and loyalty

Customer records, purchase history, loyalty balances and marketing consent flow to your email platform so campaigns reflect what people actually bought, in store or online, with consent tracked per channel rather than assumed.

What Changes Once Retail Express Is Connected

Task	Traditional	With Yes AI	Notes
Last unit sells at the counter	Website keeps selling it	Availability updates in minutes	Per line buffers cover the gap between a register sale and the store hearing about it.
A web order arrives	Retyped into Retail Express	Captured against the right store	Routed to the location that can actually fulfil it, with payment and freight details attached.
Customer shops in both channels	Two records, split loyalty	Matched into one profile	Ambiguous matches queued for review rather than merged blindly on a shared surname.
A promotion starts	Entered twice, drifts apart	One rule, every channel	Dated promotions flow from the owning system so counter and web agree.
Daily takings	Exported and journalled by hand	Posted with correct GST	Payment fees, gift cards and refunds mapped to the accounts your accountant expects.
An order needs shipping	Typed into a freight portal	Sent, label back, tracking synced	Removes two rounds of retyping per order and most address errors with them.
Stock sits in one shop	Invisible to online shoppers	Sellable across the network	Slow moving stock in one store becomes available to the whole country.
A store loses internet	Data gap nobody notices	Queued, then replayed in order	Writes are safe to repeat, so nothing posts twice when the connection returns.

How We Keep a Retail Express Integration Safe

Reconcile products and barcodes first

The same item under two codes, barcodes that differ between Retail Express and the website, and variants that exist in one system only are the usual reason these projects stall. We audit and align the catalogue before connecting anything, because joining two mismatched catalogues just distributes the mismatch faster.

Tune stock buffers by product velocity

There is always a gap between a counter sale and an external system learning about it. Fast moving lines need a larger safety buffer than slow ones, and that is a commercial decision about lost sales against oversell refunds. We set it deliberately with you rather than applying one number across the whole catalogue.

Design for stores that drop offline

Retail sites lose connectivity, usually at the worst time. The integration queues what it could not send, replays in order when the link returns, and never double posts a sale already recorded. This is normal retail behaviour to design for, not an edge case to discover on a Saturday in December.

Merge customers on evidence, not hope

Aggressive automatic merging combines two real people who share a surname and an old phone number, which is worse than duplicates and much harder to unpick. We match on a combination of email, phone and loyalty number, merge only on high confidence, and queue the rest for a quick human decision.

Agree GST and takings treatment up front

Store takings, web settlements, payment fees, gift card movements, refunds and rounding all need an agreed posting treatment, confirmed with your accountant and reconciled in parallel for the first month. Errors here become business activity statement corrections rather than a technical annoyance.

Least privilege access and privacy obligations

Connections use dedicated service accounts rather than a store manager’s login, so staff turnover does not break the integration. Customer information is handled under the Privacy Act 1988 and the Australian Privacy Principles, marketing consent is tracked per channel, and deletion requests are honoured across every connected system.

How Yes AI Works With Retail Express Retailers

Catalogue and flow audit first

We align products and barcodes across Retail Express and your other systems, measure the duplicate customer problem, and map every flow you need. You receive a prioritised plan with a fixed price, and the audit stands on its own whoever builds it.

Built for multi-store reality

Location level stock, transfers, stocktakes, store specific promotions and offline queuing are treated as core requirements. We build against your actual network, including the site with the unreliable connection and the shop that does things slightly differently.

One store pilot before the network

We go live in a single location alongside your existing process, compare the numbers, tune buffers and matching rules, then roll out. Your team sees it working before anyone is asked to rely on it.

Monitored through your trading peaks

Same day failure alerting, offline queue behaviour verified, and capacity checked ahead of Christmas, end of financial year and stocktake sales. Platform changes on either side are absorbed under the managed fee.

Our Retail Express Integration Rollout

Five steps. A single store pilot is usually live within four to six weeks.

Audit catalogue, customers and stores (week 1)

Products and barcodes aligned across systems, duplicate customer records quantified, and your store network documented including fulfilment rules and any sites with connectivity problems.

Agree ownership, buffers and posting (week 1 to 2)

Which system owns stock, price and customer, the safety buffer per velocity band, customer matching rules, and how takings and fees post to your ledger. Approved before build starts.

Build stock out and orders in (week 2 to 4)

The two flows that remove the most manual work, built against the available integration interfaces and tested on your real data including the products that exist under two codes.

Pilot one store, then roll out (week 4 to 6)

Live in a single location beside the current process while we compare results and tune. Once the numbers agree, remaining stores follow, then accounting, freight and marketing flows.

Monitor and extend (ongoing)

Same day alerting on failures, offline replay verified, capacity confirmed ahead of each peak, and new channels or stores added to the same layer as the business grows.

FAQ

What can Retail Express be connected to?

Online stores including Shopify and Shopify Plus, WooCommerce, BigCommerce, Magento and Adobe Commerce, and Neto or Maropost Commerce. Marketplaces such as Amazon, eBay and Catch. Accounting including Xero, MYOB and full ERP systems. Plus freight and carrier platforms, email marketing tools, and reporting or business intelligence systems.

Can we show real stock levels per store on our website?

Yes, and it is usually the first thing we build. Availability flows out by location rather than as a single network figure, with a safety buffer per product line tuned to how fast it moves. That is what allows honest pickup options, ship from store, and a product page that tells a customer which shop actually has the item in their size.

Will this stop us overselling?

It removes most of it and manages the rest. Stock updates within a minute or two of a counter sale, and the buffer covers the unavoidable gap, including the period when a store is temporarily offline. Fast moving lines get a larger buffer than slow ones, which is a commercial trade off we set with you rather than applying a single default across the catalogue.

What happens when a store loses internet?

The point of sale keeps trading and the integration queues whatever it could not send. When the connection returns the queue drains in order, and because each write carries a stable reference nothing posts twice. Online availability for that store lags slightly during the outage, which is exactly what the safety buffer is there to absorb.

Can you automate our daily takings into Xero or MYOB?

Yes. Store takings, web settlements, payment processing fees, gift card movements and refunds post with the GST treatment your accountant specifies, so month end becomes a review rather than a reconstruction. We agree the mapping with your accountant before go live and run a parallel reconciliation for the first month so you can prove it.

Do we need to change our point of sale?

No. This work exists precisely so you do not have to. Replacing a retail platform your staff already know is a far larger and riskier project than connecting it to the systems around it, and it is only worth considering if the platform genuinely cannot do something core to how you trade. If we ever think that is the case we will tell you which specific requirement it fails and why.

How long does it take?

A single store pilot covering stock out and orders in is typically live within four to six weeks, running alongside your existing process so you can compare. The rest of the network follows quickly once the rules are proven, then accounting, freight and marketing flows in a second phase. The main variable is how well your product data and barcodes match across systems at the start.

Connect Retail Express to Everything Around It

Book a call. We audit your catalogue and store network, map the flows that matter, and give you a fixed price plan starting with a single store pilot.