How to hide products not stocked at a location from showing up on POS?

[addam]

I have four locations with different inventory at each store. I don't want products that aren't stocked at a location but are stocked at another location to show up on the POS of locations that do not hold the product. It clutters the screen and confuses team members. Is there any way to do this? All my inventory locations are set correctly, but inventory not stocked at store will still show on it's POS if it's anywhere in my system.

[Tira]

Hey, @addam. 

Tira here.

Thanks for reaching out and for these details, this is helpful. I understand how this would make an impact on your business and I’m here to provide some insight.

The Shopify POS was designed to show all of your products on the POS as the app assumes you have inventory on hand, because you are selling in person. These products will still show on your POS even if you don’t have inventory.

I know this isn’t ideal, so what I can do is send up a suggestion to our developers to hide sold-out products for specific locations on the POS app. Your feedback helps myself and our developers stay aware of how we can improve Shopify for you and all of our merchants. If we move forward with this suggestion, we will list it in our changelog or announcements page.

As a workaround, I recommend monitoring your Shopify POS app manually to make sure no products are over sold.

What are your thoughts?

[addam]

It’s fine for sold out products to show. My issue is this:

Gold Ring is stocked at Location #1, but not
Location #2

On Location #2s POS, Gold Ring shows up on search / in collections even though it’s not stocked there

It makes the POS system extremely cluttered because I have a lot of different items at every store. When all the items are accessible at every location even though they aren’t stocked at every shop, it’s difficult to navigate.

[Tira]

Thanks for getting back to me with these details @addam. They are helpful. I sent your details to our Retail team to look into this with us. There isn’t a way to restrict products by location.

One workaround for this is to create a collection for each location, then create tiles on the smart grid for those collections. You can create these collections in the Shopify admin, then open Shopify POS and login to your location on Shopify POS, and create tiles that link directly to these collections. The smart grid can be set up for each location, and you can set-up these tiles from one device by switching locations at the bottom of the ≡ Settings screen. You won’t need to go into each store or location to do this. Here is our help doc with the steps to add, edit and remove tiles: Organize your home screen by adding tiles. This should make it easier to sort through your products when placing orders on Shopify POS. 

I would also be happy to share your thoughts and need for showing products by location to our developers team. Your feedback is important and helps us make Shopify better for you and all of our merchants. If we move forward with this, we will list updates in our changelog or announcements page. 

I would love to know if this helps you accomplish what you need to do.

[NS-PR]

It's been more than a year since this request and post. Have Shopify solved this? Will we be able to hide inventory items that are not stocked at a specific location?

[NCTA]

I'm running into this situation more than 2 years after the original post. I wish Shopify developers would find a solution.

[MBowland]

Not fixed. July 2024 here

[MBowland]

The problem with collections is now there is a lot more of a manual element added in maintaining the collection.  If you get new products you now need to double check they are showing up where you want them.

If you only have something stocked at one location, it should simply be showing up ONLY AT THE ONE LOCATION.  This is basic functionality and a UX pain point that is being overlooked by Shopify dev team.

[Smyth263]

The product is always visible, regardless of stock level. The product is visible only when in stock. The product is not visible in your online store.

aces etm

[ConnectPOS]

Hi @addam,

You can take a look at ConnectPOS - a leading POS app for Shopify users. Our system is designed specifically to manage multiple locations. There will be NO mixing data since we allow users to assign 1 Shopify location to 1 outlet. And that outlet will ONLY show the products within the assigned location. You can switch between outlets to run each location separately and effectively.

For more information, visit our app or book a free demo to explore how ConnectPOS can be the perfect fit for you!

[ajay_ep]

This is a problem because it does not give any control to manage different locations, and staff can make mistakes for similar products. Shopify retail team should address this, as it is a long standing issue. We are having the same problem for over a year

[eroomsplus]

Did you resolve your issues? Did Shopify fix this problem?

I am facing the same situation now...

[NCTA]

We're having this same issue - original post was more than 2 years ago. It has not been solved yet.

[AlexSteel]

No, unfortunately they still didn’t change it… You still see all products in the POS regardless of the inventory location. It’s quite annoying. 

[Alison_Bell]

I'm another one experiencing this issue. It is very frustrating to scroll through so many items that are not valid at different locations.

[FullonBrands]

Also setting up some testing for POS and immediately noticed this as a major potential issue. Why would I want to see inventory at other locations when I'm trying to check out a customer. The workaround mentioned above is ridiculous and defeats the purpose of running your business on a platform like Shopify. Just allow for some basic sorting and filtering in the app. This can't be that difficult. Come on Shopify, please get this simple issue fixed ASAP.

[kwypych]

We are struggling with this issue too.  It makes the POS almost useless when we are at a fast selling popup location.  So stupid - why can't a collection filter by "stocked at location?"

[KaylaLynn]

I assume based on the follow up comments that this is STILL not resolved, almost 3 years later. We use Shopify POS to sell at consumer events like expos and trade shows, and only bring a small, curated sampling of our full product line to each event. The Products tab is essentially useless to us as it's not feasible to scroll through a hundred products to find one of the ten items we brought to a show to sell. I would think it would be simple to add a location filter at the very least.

The best workaround I've come up with is to create a product collection in the Shopify admin containing all the products we're bringing to an event. I set the sales channel for the collection as "Point of Sale" so the collection doesn't appear on our main webstore. Then, in the POS app, I add a new tile to the home screen > Collection > select my event collection. It's not a perfect solution, but it helps. 

[Imogen]

Hi there, @KaylaLynn. Thank you for taking the time to reach out to the Shopify Community Forums, and for following up on this thread. My name is Imogen. It's good to meet you!

At this time, it's not possible to natively restrict items from appearing in Shopify POS depending on the POS location being used. However, we've received loads of feedback around this over time, and I'm happy to add your post here to that collection of feedback so our developers can be made aware of how adding this functionality to POS would be helpful. Your idea of doing this specific product collection is a great workaround, but I recognize it's not a clear solution, so I'm happy to pass along this feedback on your behalf. I can't promise what the outcome may be from sharing this feedback, but rest assured it'll be seen by the appropriate folks here at Shopify. Thanks!

[MBowland]

Hi there, can you not do a piece of code with an 'if, then' statement to parse out what is NOT wanted at every location?  Seems it would be that hard to fix.

[MBowland]

Have the same issue and totally agree, this is a cluttered mess to scroll through and very easy when it gets busy to make a mistake

[Pablo-T]

I wonder if there is something that can be done for this and impacting everywhere. A solution requested from 2021 and still not resolved.