We've switched from BigCommerce to Shopify Plus with expectations that needs to sell to both Canada and the US would be better met for the time, however, it's been much more challenging than we'd hoped.
Expansion store (or more Shopify sites):
~ you'll still need to build your navigation tree separately for each site (Shopify currently has no way to clone it).
~ If you draw from same inventory, overselling is now going to be a constant worry. Even with Syncio as a patch, the API call rate is as fast as Shopify's which is twice per second. That may be enough for some people, but with popular product drops, we'll have a lot of disappointed customers in the future. So, it seems we have to change to Multi-currency based on this.
~ If you create a draft order in one store, then that inventory may be reserved in that store, but not the other(s).
So, now we're thinking to switch to Multi-currency, and to have custom coding or LockSmith to hide products that are only available in one country and not the other. With this route, since Shopify is doing the currency conversion into our bank account for payouts, will it be near the spot rate, or a currency exchange rate that sees us with a little loss...? Or does Shopify let our own bank account do the conversion....?
Our big hurdle in switching to multi-currency, is that Shopify doesn't have native checkout in PayPal for anything but the default currency. So, I have to choose, do I stay with 2 stores, and high stress of overselling, and cannot make good use of draft order feature, or do we switch to Multi-currency, and have headaches each day of customers upset with currency exchange in PayPal? We were so excited to switch to Shopify, but currently have been very stuck here now. Neither are great, as both involve customer frustrations and a lot of time on my end each day (customers will want to know why the amount in PayPal doesn't match exactly what was displayed on their screen while they were shopping, and if they have an order edit/partial refund, they'll want it to be without currency exchange again). BigCommerce does currently allow checkout in PayPal in native currency with their multi-currency, however, I'm told it's not near to being introduced with Shopify. So, now we're really struggling with whether to return to BigCommerce based on this.
It's been a terrific amount of work and sleepless nights switching, but also a great loss of income during this time. We also stepped back and lost the homeschooling/ back to school sales revenue having our store in transition the last couple months (particularly as linking items in the inventory management software needed to sync between the two sites took a lot longer than expected), which would've been high for us this period in particular, so we could make this switch to position ourselves for the holiday ahead, and instead, it's just rather a mess now.
What do other people use for inventory management software between two sites with different currencies? And how do they manage the risk of overselling?
