Pick up in store still is unusable for omni channel business

[evaldas_92]

Let's say I am selling a shirts.

1. I have 2 locations - Warehouse and NY Showroom
2. Then item has stock of 0 in the Warehouse and 10 in the NY Showroom.
3. Both locations can fulfill orders
4. NY Showroom is setup with Shopify POS

When the customer visits the webshop, they can see the shirt is in stock. As far as I can see, there is no way in liquid to determine if the item is only available in store. This is pretty annoying, because a customer will end up adding the item to their cart even without knowing they can only pick it up in NY, regardless of where they live.

When the customer goes to checkout, even though the item is only available in store, the checkout still shows the option to have a delivery (see screenshot 1).

If the customer does choose delivery (up until this point they could not have been informed the item is only available in store), and enter their shipping address, they will get the following error (see screenshot 2), which roughly translates to "Delivery is not available. Your order cannot be shipped to the selected address. Review the address to make sure it is correct and try again or choose a different address."

As I see, the following is need for this to be usable:

1. Liquid should be able to identify if an item is only stock in the warehouse (default warehouse, metafield, etc.)

2. The checkout should not show a pick up option if an item can only be shipped from a warehouse (arguably, this might be possible with checkout extension)

[Merchanto]

You can use Liquid to check the stock levels at each location and display a message if an item is only available in the NY Showroom. For the checkout process, consider using a custom script or checkout extension to hide the delivery option for items that are only available in-store. This will help prevent customer confusion and improve the overall shopping experience!

[evaldas_92]

How? I don't think you can. There is no way to check if item has availability in the central warehouse (without enabling local pick up in the central warehouse, which in most cases should not offer pick up).

I.e. store_availabilities will not return the warehouse if it does not have local pick up enabled (https://shopify.dev/docs/api/liquid/objects/variant#variant-store_availabilities)

[Merchanto]

You're right; if local pickup isn't enabled for the central warehouse, the Liquid object won't return its availability. As a workaround, you could set up a metafield for products that indicates their availability status. Then, use this metafield in your Liquid code to display a message for items that are only in the NY Showroom. This way, you can inform customers before they reach the checkout.

[evaldas_92]

Yes, but the data is already in Shopify, so I'd rather complain about the native solution being less than ideal, so that hopefully it get's improved 🙂

As a workaround, then I'd rather enable pick up in the warehouse and add a checkbox metafield on the Location whether it should be shown as an option in the front-end and checkout, since I'd likely have to customize both anyway.

[Merchanto]

Make sense) 

It’s great that you’re thinking creatively! Enabling pickup in the warehouse and using a checkbox metafield to control visibility is a smart workaround.

[blanklob]

Did you disabling the ship from store option in settings (aka fulfill online order on the NY Showroom) ?

[evaldas_92]

This makes it even more strange.

- If I disable ship from store on the NY Showroom, PDP still shows item as available (only stocked in NY Showroom), but store availability is no longer returned (so why is the item shown as available? Remember, this is default dawn theme).

- Trying to add to cart shows an error - item is not available. 

So, now I can't get to the checkout to place a "pick up in store" order.