During the last 2 weeks, I was searching across all Shopify help centers and online chatting and finally, I see that there are big flows in the Shopify system when it comes to true retail omnichannel commerce.
The store pickup option works fine without any problems
Ship to the customer and overselling due to priority rules have many limitations:
1- Let's say that you have two physical locations (store 1 and store 2). If store 1 is out of stock in product X, and store 2 has an inventory. Store 1 can't sell the product on behalf of store 2 and an automated notification will pop up in the ship to customer grid. Instead, the order will be fulfilled from the same location and the inventory will be negative. When I asked Shopify support they said that if there is 1 line at the cart Shopify will oversell from the default location! something does not make any sense to me.
2- If you stock 4 pieces of product X at the online location and 5 pieces of product X at location store 1 (physical store). If a customer made an order online for 9 pieces of product X. The order will not be splitted between the 2 locations. Instead, it will be all fulfilled from the default location (in our case the online location) with overselling and turning the online location with negative inventory! When I asked Shopify store they replied with this again if it is one line order ( one product with multiple qty.) Shopify will fulfill the entire order from the default location.
The true retailer with true omnichannel options should take into consideration all of these scenarios and it spouse to be a smooth transaction for the admin ( backend) and front end users (POS at stores).
The solution:
1-Shopify needs to change the 1 line product limitation as we don't control this and it's a customer's decision to add more than 1 product to the card or not.
2- When an online order comes with more than the available QTY at the online location, the system will set the remaining qty from the nearest location (store) to the shipping address and this will trigger the ship to the customer grid at the POS system
3- Any physical location can sell a customer a product that is out of stock in their location but is available in another location and this again should trigger the ship to the customer grid at the POS system where the product should be shipped from.
