Can you assign variable prices to POS items?

[SMO13]

I see several posts on this topic, gong back as far as 2014.  I did not find any post of a resolution or innovation.  Anyone have an update?

I'd like to have a couple products in my POS that are open priced.  That meaning that I have an item set up & can assign price for each order.  For example, we have small quantities of fabric we run out as remnants.  Each is has a different price and all are tracked as one inventory item in our system.

I know the work around, I am asking if there is actual resolution to the issue.  We are too fast paced to type in descriptions, using the work around, on each transaction.

[Almanaturals]

Yeah, try doing that when they are buying 20 different little things, with a line of 15 people behind them waiting to check out.

[kyrellrissler]

i have the same problem, i need to change the price to what we and the customer agreed on, not try and figure out the discount percent with a calculator. the pos system should do that for us, i want to click the price on the item, and type in what i need to sell it for 

[Talktohenryj]

I created an app that I think can help with doing the discount on 20 products with 15 people in line like you mentioned. It doesn't do variable pricing like may people mentioned here but if you have a set discount or price you want to charge for a product in store it allows you to apply a discount in seconds rather than minutes. Also, it's super easy. 

Would love you to be a tester if you're interested.

[erindawn1011]

This could work BUT I think it’ll look like items were discounted and could mess up analytics? I’ve never noticed this button before, must be new!

[maurib12]

you said it. not pretty. at all.

There is also the problem with inventory.

[NatureStore]

Since this have you found any other work arounds?  

[jenniferKTB]

Is this possible when creating invoices for Shopify online? I want to be able to send an invoice to a customer and override the set price of an item. Thank you!

[kyrellrissler]

i need the same thing for my wholesale customers vs retail

[soulchild37]

Hi JenniferKTB and Kyrellrissler,

This is possible with an app! (unfortunately an app is required).

I have recently added a feature to my Draftable app (https://apps.shopify.com/draft-helper), which allow adjustment of price of line items in a draft order, you can set a higher price for the item in the draft order (higher than the price listed on your store).

After installing the app, you can go to your draft order, and select "More actions" > "Increase item prices", then you can select the items which you want to increase prices, and input the new prices and click "Apply".

The items in the draft order will then have this new price applied, and the product price listing on your store  will remain unchanged.

Hope this can help! The Draftable app (https://apps.shopify.com/draft-helper) has a free plan which you can try this feature out.

Regards,

Axel Kee (developer of the Draft Order Helper app)

[Almanaturals]

Yeah that's too many steps when you have a line of people and 90% of the items are variable priced. A basic Pos function that they should have included, not something requiring a paid app to accomplish.

[Mart826]

It looks like you can do this, but only with round numbers. Is there a workaround if you want to change it an amount with change. Ex. $1.92

[Nicole_Ingram]

this is not a realistic option. one it shows the customer that you've given them a "discount" when you haven't and it isn't feasible when you have multiple items to check out and you have a line up of people waiting to be rung in.

[HoneyExchange]

People are asking for an improvement to make POS work for brick and mortar stores, not a clumsy work-around or another app for $12 per month. I can't believe Shopify is not addressing this.

[hstb]

I get that you want a feature. I also get that Shopify is extremely opaque
about how they make decisions to remove features and their roadmap for
planned features. It's like shouting into the void. But yes, part of what
you're paying the base amount for is for a platform that has excellent
extendability and a huge ecosystem of apps. Do you complain that iOS or
Android don't give you every feature and that you have to pay for apps?

On the other hand, specifically with regards to POS functionality, the API
is pretty lacking so that it's currently difficult to impossible for
certain missing functionality and features to be achieved through apps

[isaiahk]

I am completely blown away that Shopify didn't add this feature from the beginning and am even more confused why they haven't addressed this problem! The Lack of Open/Variable priced products is the only reason I am not going towards a Shopify POS. Love my Shopify Online store and hoped the their POS solution would be equally as functional. Listen to your costumers Shopify!!!! 

[ClareCinnabar]

Come on Shopify! Please update this! We all pay you thousands in commission! Give us the product we need!

[Cristi_Yarn]

I also want this feature!

[Max_Sadlowski]

Hi All, I wanted to post something and see if I can help address this. I am a Shopify Expert and we develop POS apps to help merchants fix difficult issues like this. We know there are multiple work arounds, but when it boils down to it, that isn't good enough and not having the ability to be more flexible here is really difficult for busy merchants. The other option of using custom sales means tracking and inventory get out of place. Many of you use it for selling items in parts, so I get the frustration.

Shopify long ago made a choice to have whole inventory numbers. This might not have been the best decision, but it was a decision made and now it is very deeply ingrained in their systems, APIs and applications. Allowing that number to be a decimal would break a lot of code in a lot of places, and be something most developers would need to account for in their apps. Unfortunately, that means, from my point of view as an app developer (I by no means work for or know Shopify's internal plans) that split quantities in POS or online is simply not going to be coming any time soon.

With that said, I would love to find a solution that helped and made things work better for you. One of my ideas is to use a structure where you can open an app, select the products you want to add to the cart, and be able to enter a decimal number. When you do that, we will add a variant to your Shop at the right price point with the right measurement (say you are selling 1.35 meters of fabric). The quantity of that line item would be 1, but the price would reflect that amount. 

In terms of Inventory, we could also track that in the application and periodically write that back to Shopify correctly in a round down method. So for example, if you had a quantity on hand of 10 meters of fabric and you sold 2.45 meters, we would track that and write the inventory down to 7 in Shopify. If you then sold another 2.45 meters (total of 4.9 meters) we would simply reduce your on and inventory to 5. 

I know this isn't the best solution, but I wanted to see if anyone had thoughts about it and if they feel it would work for them in their store. Obviously opening an app for each transaction would be a task, however we would make sure that you only had to open the app once to complete adding all the partial and regular variants. I look forward to hearing comments and thoughts!

[Msunflower]

I don’t understand?  This thread isn’t about 1/2 or quarter quantities. No body wants half quantities?  I mean that would be nice .  It’s about variable pricing On the same item. both PayPal and square have open pricing.   For instance I sell wax melts but they go by weight.  So all the wax melts have  different price.  I don’t want to add a custom item each time. And I don’t want to do half quantities. I want to put wax melts in my products with a variable price.  That is all. Means I select wax melts as a product and be able to put the price in.  Even though it’s different each time.  Now I’m looking at going to square because you don’t have an open price point.  

[kyrellrissler]

same thing i need bro

[maurib12]

Is Shopify even monitoring this forum?

2/2021

Still nothing from you guys.. Come on!

[rwchampin]

Hey guys - im just replying in general to everyone about this here because your comment is the first one currently haha

Anyway, you can do this pretty easily with the JS API - I'm a Shopify Developer and all you need to do is make a new product template that has the product form in it and use JS to grab the quanitity, price and product ID and with JS Storefront, create a new product, save it and charge it! 

[digimatt]

Not particularly ideal when you have a lineup of customers at the cash register. Just allow price overrides or add another field or two to the custom sale function.

[maurib12]

Done with this..

Moving client POS to Square.

[ClareCinnabar]

Yes we moved to MobiPos as Shopify Pos is hopeless

[kyrellrissler]

i agree

[Almanaturals]

Or just give us unlimited 'custom sale' buttons that we can change the name of.

[DavidModus]

I've seen questions going back 8 years.

This is a big deal, are there any solutions?

[Almanaturals]

I sell a lot of jewelry and crystals in my shop. I do not track inventory,  but would love to be able to hit a "ring" button and enter the price. Or "crystal" and enter the price.  Instead I have to do everything as "custom sale" so I have no clue how many rings sold etc.  As soon as my prepaid time is over I'm going back to square. It's absolutely ridiculous that such a basic thing is ignored.  

[Mark118]

Hi all, I was getting worried after signing up then reading this forum, but surely this is the answer >>  https://help.shopify.com/en/manual/sell-in-person/shopify-pos/inventory-management/products/quick-sa...

[digimatt]

@Mark118 that workaround makes a custom sale possible, but you can't track inventory, departments, vendors, etc. What people are asking for is to be able to add a product ahead of time where the price can be entered at checkout.

[Mark118]

Ah, I see. Yes, I was planning on asking about a misc button for each brand during my onboarding call but that's obviously not possible. 

From your experience is there any other obvious function which is not available? 

[digimatt]

I don't want to derail the thread, but I'll just say be prepared to add a few paid extensions when planning your budget. It's not a dealbreaker, and there's some excellent extensions, but you will on occasion wonder why it isn't core functionality.

[Almanaturals]

No that is not what we are taking about. You would have to type in the product name each time and it won't give you reporting for each item. For example i sell a lot of jeweley and crystals. I have to use custom item for each sale because every piece is different, so i have no way of knowing how many of my custom sale purchases are crystals, rings, necklace, earrings etc. You just get one total number. Its absolutely stupid and when my contact is up i will be switching. It's created way too much extra work for me .

[LSCShop]

Bumping this topic as well. We have a few "open" items that need to have custom prices entered from time to time as well. This should be included in Shopify's POS. QB POS has it and they have been around for much longer and are equally a POS. 

[EscapeVelocity]

We are having massive problems with this. We are a brick & mortart stoe with a large number of items that are the same product or product type say, "used hardcover" but we need to price them individually at the POS.  We are going to try the POS Variable Priced Products app mention here previously...

[JBeckman]

We're building out our e-commerce store on Shopify and had planned on using the POS too. But the very basic feature of variable price items (which exists in Square for Retail and performs beautifully) doesn't exist in Shopify's POS. The other feature we use regularly on POS is the creation of customer tickets (basically starting a "tab" when you're at a bar). You would think that this also would be a basic feature (again, Square for Retail handles this beautifully), but alas it doesn't exist in Shopify POS. So unfortunately, it looks like we're gonna be stuck with one system for e-commerce and another for POS. We would just stick with Square for our online purposes too, but they don't integrate well with third-party vendors for automatic order fulfillment. If someone could create a new platform that had all the best from Shopify for e-commerce and all the best from Square for POS, it would rock the world!

[ywittman]

Almost 4 years later & we are all still on the same boat. Did you find a workaround or did you end up leaving Shopify? 

[Nicole_Ingram]

I ended up creating:

Grocery no tax
$1.00
$1.05
$1.10
$1.15
All the way up to $100

It’s ridiculous! And the service from Shopify is useless. They don’t care.

[ywittman]

ommmggg, brilliant but WOW! I am sorry! So much extra work! I dont get it! Square & Quickbooks have editable variables. This is getting out of hand! 

I was on a call with someone from sales and they recommended an app thats $12/month. Like paying $89/m for POS Retail, $400/website + all the fees isn't enough. I am not paying $12 for another app. 

[kyrellrissler]

we ended up keeping a calculator close by and we discount the item when it is less than the regualar price.

i agree shopify acts like its dumb to be able to manually input the selling price at time of sale instead on revising the item 20 times a day.

all pos systems let you change the price at checkout with a manager code, not just some dumb discount percentage or amount. 
if the customer agrees to take the item at say, 150$  but regualar selling price is 234.90
i want to type in $150     not get a calculator out to minus  150 - 234.90 to see how much i should discount the item, it is very frustrating

[ywittman]

This is what is holding me back from switching over completely.

[Nicole_Ingram]

Does adding a discount to a sale to adjust the price mess up your accounting?

[kyrellrissler]

as long as the cost of the item is the same, accounting is correct

[Talktohenryj]

If you're on this page and want a solution that will quickly lower the price of your items, I have created something that could be useful for you. Few notes:

1. Unlike custom sale this will track your inventory
2. It's only for discounting. Because of Shopify limitations we cannot raise the price
3. It's not variable pricing, you would need to set what the discount is ahead of time (that said, after reading this thread, I will add the ability to do variable discounts soon).
4. It will show the discount on the receipt
5. You will have to pay for the app. I know Shopify should and probably will build this internally but I just created this for people that need help in the meantime. Hope nobody bites my head off 😩

If you're interested, let me know, I'd love to have you test it out.