Finding your way

A quick map of the MiniMart back office — the sidebar, the branch switcher, search, and where the separate superadmin console fits in — so nothing feels hidden once you're past onboarding.

Overview

Everything you do day to day in MiniMart — selling, managing stock, looking at reports, changing settings — lives under one back office, reachable at /app once you're signed in. A sidebar on the left groups every screen by area, a top bar gives you search, your branch switcher and your account menu, and the specific sections you see in the sidebar depend on your role — a cashier's sidebar is intentionally much shorter than an admin's.

Why it's useful

With a product this broad — selling, inventory, purchasing, customers, staff, reports, settings — it's easy to lose track of where a particular thing lives. Knowing the three or four fixed landmarks (sidebar groups, the branch switcher, search) means you can always get to any screen in two or three clicks, or skip the clicking entirely and just search for it.

The sidebar

The left sidebar is grouped into sections that mirror how a shop actually operates: Operations (dashboard), Sales (POS, payments, returns), Customers, Shifts & cash, Catalog (products, categories, tax), Inventory, Purchasing, Expenses, Reports, Staff, Hardware and Settings.

A section — or an individual link inside it — only appears if your signed-in role has permission for it. The four built-in roles are:

So if a teammate tells you they "can't see" a screen you can, that's very likely their role, not a bug — check Staff & roles for what their role is permitted to do.

The top bar

1. Sidebar toggle

   Collapses the sidebar to icons-only, useful on a smaller screen or if you just want more width for a table or report.

2. Global search

   A search box (shortcut Ctrl+K, or ⌘K on a Mac) opens a command-style search across products, sales and customers — faster than navigating the sidebar if you already know what you're looking for.

3. Open POS

   A dedicated button (shortcut F1) jumps straight to the POS screen from anywhere in the back office.

4. Branch switcher

   Shows your current branch by name. See below — this is one of the most important controls in the whole app.

5. Notification bell

   Surfaces things that need your attention, similar in spirit to the dashboard's "Needs attention" tiles.

6. Your avatar

   Opens a menu: Profile & preferences, Store settings, Open POS, a Light/Dark/System appearance toggle, and Sign out.

The branch switcher — and why it matters

If your store has more than one physical location, the branch switcher in the top bar is how you move between them. This matters because of one rule that runs through the whole product: your product catalog is shared across every branch, but stock levels, prices overrides and almost everything you see in reports are per-branch. Whichever branch is selected in the switcher is the branch every list, report and KPI on the screen is currently showing you — switch it, and the numbers change to match. See Multi-branch for the full picture of what's shared versus what's per-branch.

Dark mode

You can switch between light, dark, and "match system" appearance from either the top bar's theme button or your avatar menu. Whichever you pick is remembered in your browser, so it stays set the next time you sign in on the same device.

The back office vs. the superadmin console

Everything on this page — the sidebar, the branch switcher, all the sections above — is the tenant back office: the part of MiniMart that a shop owner and their staff use to run their store. MiniMart is also a multi-tenant SaaS platform, meaning many different stores can run on one installation, and the person operating the platform itself (not any one store) uses a completely separate console to manage that — approving new stores, managing subscription plans, billing and platform-wide settings. That's the superadmin control plane, a different login and a different set of screens entirely; see The control plane if that's the role you're in.

Tips & best practices

• If a number on a report looks wrong, check the branch switcher first — it's the most common reason a figure doesn't match what you expected.
• Learn Ctrl+K early — searching for a product or customer by name is usually faster than drilling into the sidebar.
• If your sidebar looks "too short," it's almost certainly your role's permissions, not a missing feature — compare against the role table above.
• F1 to the POS screen works from literally any page in the back office — no need to navigate there manually.

Notes & warnings