For multi-store regulated retail: liquor, convenience, tobacco and grocery
Backstock rings up the sale, checks the ID, counts the shelf, orders the next case, matches the vendor’s invoice and posts every one of them to double-entry books — store by store, company by company.
Sign in with Google or email. The demo has three sample stores to explore.
Screens from the demo, with sample data.
Industries
Backstock started behind the counter of the liquor store, where a sale needs an ID, a deposit and the right hour. The same system runs any store that sells what the law watches — and the back office runs any multi-store retailer.
Hardware, pet, garden, beauty, gift and specialty food chains run on the same back office — stock, purchasing, payables, pricing by margin and the books — with the age rules simply switched off.
Photographs: Unsplash.
The quiet leak
North Valley’s invoice says $8.10 a six-pack now, not $7.40. It’s one line among forty, and nobody is looking for it.
The tag still says $10.99. Every pack sold from now on earns six points less, at every store that stocks it.
The increase lands in Cost Changes with what it costs you a year, and a new shelf price that holds your margin. Accept it, and the shelf tag is ready to print.
One platform
Six parts of the business that usually live in six systems — or a drawer full of paper — working from one product list, one set of stores and one set of books.
01 · Sell
Scan, check the ID, take the money and print the receipt. Every sale takes units off the shelf and posts itself to the books.
02 · Stock
One catalogue with each store’s cost, price and stock. Staff count shelves on a phone, and moves between stores come before new orders.
03 · Buy and pay
Suggested orders by vendor, deliveries received in parts, and each vendor invoice matched to the order and the delivery before anyone pays it.
04 · Price
Vendor increases wait in one queue with what they cost a year if left alone, and the shelf price that holds the margin you set.
05 · Books
Sales, returns, receipts, invoices, payments, expenses, counts and transfers each post a balanced entry, to the right company, as they happen.
06 · See
Sales to net operating, against budget, with the cash outlook and the tax due — and a plain sentence above every chart saying what it shows.
Point of sale
A till built for age-restricted retail: it checks the ID, blocks alcohol outside the hours the store may sell it, adds the bottle deposit, and keeps going when the internet doesn’t.
Scan the barcode on the licence or key the birth date. Refusals and overrides go in a log ready for an inspector.
Alcohol is blocked outside the store’s hours and on no-sale days, by the store’s own clock.
If the connection drops, the till keeps taking cash sales and sends them when it’s back.
Opening float, paid-ins, paid-outs, drops and a counted close, with over or short.
With or without the receipt, inside the days you allow, with a manager over the limit.
Voids, big discounts and returns over the limit need a manager’s PIN — never the clerk’s own.
Cash sales are live at the till today. The card terminal connection is coming soon.
Books
Backstock is double-entry underneath. The till, the stockroom, purchasing and expenses each write a balanced journal entry to the right company the moment the work is done — so the trial balance is always current, and the month-end close is a check, not a project.
Sample sale and entry; account numbers as in the demo’s chart of accounts.
A checklist for each company, intercompany stock moves posted to both companies automatically, and a lock so nothing lands in a closed month.
Invite your accountant to the books for a set time. They can read everything they need and change nothing, and every view is logged.
Monday morning
The home screen ranks what’s waiting by what’s at stake, lists what Backstock did by itself overnight, and shows each store’s four weeks at a glance.
Cost changes, invoices to pay and deliveries due, most at stake first.
Orders placed, deliveries received and products matched while you slept.
Sales and margin by store against the weeks before.
Compliance
Each account keeps a profile for every place its stores sell: the tax on each kind of product, the deposit on each container, the minimum age, the hours and days alcohol may be sold, and how long vendors may give credit. The demo runs on a Massachusetts profile.
Every ID checked, sale refused and override, with who and when — kept for three years, ready for an inspector.
AI, where it earns its place
Backstock uses the AI provider you connect — Claude, OpenAI, Gemini or any OpenAI-compatible service — for two jobs that eat an owner’s week. It never acts on its own: what it reads waits for a person to confirm, and what it answers names the report it came from.
Photograph the driver’s note or the vendor’s invoice. AI reads each line and matches it to the order, and the counts wait for someone to confirm before stock moves.
Sample: Delivery note DN-48213 · PO-0300 from NORTH VALLEY DISTRIBUTING: 24 × Riverbend IPA 6pk at $8.10, 12 × Cedar Hill Cabernet 750 at $11.40, 36 × Sparkling Water 12pk at $4.25. Matched to PO-0300. Cost up from $7.40 — sent to Cost Changes. Waiting to confirm.
Ask from any screen, or press “Ask about this” on a chart. Answers use only the reports that person may open.
Sample question: Which store had the lowest margin last month, and why? Answer: Harbor Street, at 24.1% — about 4 points under your other stores. Most of the gap is beer: three North Valley cost increases are still waiting in Cost Changes. From: Gross margin by store · October.
Runs on your own AI key, with a model chosen per job and a monthly usage limit you set. Sample data.
Control
The safeguards a large retailer expects, switched on from the first day.
Every record belongs to one business, and every query is scoped to it. Another business’s records don’t exist as far as yours can tell.
Owner, manager, bookkeeper, staff and accountant each see only their job. Managers can be held to the stores they run.
Every change and approval, with who, when, and the value before and after.
Close a month and nothing more is posted to it, from any screen.
Write-offs, big invoices and till exceptions need someone other than the person who made them.
Keys for your mail server and AI provider are encrypted with AES-256-GCM and never shown again.
Receipts and the audit trail kept seven years, ID logs three, then purged nightly. The owner can export everything.
Google or email, with sign-in and PIN attempts throttled and locked after repeated failures.
Built for everyone in the business
People are added by an owner and see only what their job needs. Everything else is denied by default.
Every store, every company, every figure.
All stores, or only the ones they run.
The books, payables and expenses.
Runs the till and counts the shelves.
Invited, read-only, for a set time.
Works with what you have
Backstock connects through accounts you control. Each business sets these up in Settings › Integrations.
The counter till, built in: ID checks, deposits, shifts and offline selling.
Upload a file, or let the back office drop one each night to a secure address.
Any till’s CSV export, with its column layout learned once per store.
Upload OFX, QFX or CSV statements; each charge becomes an expense.
Purchase orders and digests go out from your business’s address.
Claude, OpenAI, Gemini or any OpenAI-compatible service, on your key.
Sign in with a Google account or an email address.
Card payments at the Backstock till through a payment processor.
Sales, items and refunds kept in step with these tills as they ring up; prices sent back to Square.
Bank and card transactions arriving in a list to file and reconcile.
Bills and spend brought in as expenses, with accounts mapped once.
Questions
Stores that sell what the law watches: liquor, wine and beer; convenience stores; tobacco and vape shops; and grocers and markets that sell beer and wine. The till checks IDs, blocks alcohol outside its hours and adds deposits. The back office — stock, purchasing, payables, pricing and the books — suits any multi-store retailer, with the age rules switched off.
Yes. Backstock has its own counter till, with ID checks, sale-hour blocks, bottle deposits, returns, shifts and 8 hours of offline selling. Cash sales are live today; the card terminal connection is coming soon. If you keep your current till, its sales can come in from an NAXML file or a CSV export instead.
The till keeps taking cash sales for up to 8 hours, holding them on the device, and sends them when the connection is back. Anything that would have needed a check online is flagged for a manager to review.
Backstock keeps full double-entry books for each company — trial balance, balance sheet, P&L, aging, sales tax and month-end close — and your accountant can be given read-only access. Many owners will still file taxes through their accountant’s own tools; connections to QuickBooks Online and Xero are coming soon.
Proposed prices wait in the Cost Changes queue for someone to accept or keep. With delegation limits, small moves can be settled by the district and bigger ones escalate to the owner. Every change is recorded in the price history, and a bulk decision can be undone in one click.
No. Staff run the till and count stock without ever seeing a cost or a margin. Managers can be limited to the stores they run, a bookkeeper gets the books and payables, and an accountant can be invited read-only for a set time.
Yes. Each store belongs to a company and can move to another from a given month. Each company has its own chart of accounts, books and month-end close, purchase orders are billed to the right company, and stock moved between companies posts to both companies’ books.
Backstock records each payment — check, ACH or card — against the invoices it settles, and posts it to the books. The money itself moves through your bank as it does today.
From the AI provider you connect — Claude, OpenAI, Gemini or an OpenAI-compatible service — using your own key. It works only from the reports the person asking is allowed to see, and every answer names the report it came from.
Each account sets up a profile for where its stores trade: tax by kind of product, deposits by container, minimum age, sale hours, no-sale days and vendor credit terms. The demo runs on a Massachusetts profile. Tell us where your stores are and we’ll set yours up with you.
Backstock is set up around how many stores and companies you run. Get in touch and we will talk it through.
Yes. The demo has three sample stores, with vendors, sales and books you can explore.
Open the demo and look around, or book a time and we will walk through it with your own stores.
