We opened new US and UK shipping zones for our EU winery’s online shop.
However, due to specific packaging and duty policies to ship from our EU winery to these non-EU markets, customers’ orders in these markets need to consist of a quantity that is divisible by 6.
Can I create a market-specific rule or a pop-up announcement at checkout for this, telling the customer to add or remove products so the total is divisible by 6?
Or can I enable order approval from staff for orders from these specific markets to approve before the customers pays for their order?
I do not know how to code, so that is not an option.
Thank you for eaching out with your question and for sharing those details. I can imagine how much of a headache those kinds of restrictions can be to setup and enforce.
There are a few options I can suggest for you that might help. If a small cost is acceptable to you, then I do recommend combining options 2 + 3. Using an app to create a sku bundle and then restricting access to the sets of 6 to customers who must have those limitations in place.
1: The simplest option, which leaves the burden of order verification on your staff, is to set payment capture to manual instead of automatic. This means that the customer checks out as per normal and your staff have usually 5-14 days (depending on payment gateway in use) to verify the order and finalize payment capture. You can cancel, adjust or capture the order as is.
You can set up a notice on the product pages, cart pages or alter some of the text during the checkout flow to remind customers of restrictions in certain markets.
2: Use a third party app to bundle products together, so the customer adds one pack of 6 to the cart and you see 6 individual skus in the order details in the admin. An app like** Bundler** is a great option to consider. You can also search the app store for “Sku Bundler” to see alternative app options. This method pairs well with Shopify Markets (see next option).
3: Another simplistic option, leaving the burden of inventory tracking with your staff, is to create 2 versions of the products, one charges for a single and the other charges for a set of 6. Without an app like suggested above, you would need to manage the actual inventory being ordered yourself. The set of 6 is just a fee for six of the items, but is a single SKU in your admin. You can even use Shopify Markets to hide the set of 6 options for customers outside of the restricted countries, so customers who must buy in sets of 6 can only see sets of 6 and vice versa. You can learn more about how to do that here: Publishing products with Markets · Shopify Help Center.
4: Hire a developer to customize your theme for order validation at the cart. I don’t recommend this option as it locks you into your current theme file and could restrict changes to the customer flow at a later time without hiring someone to assist further. It will work though, but I suggest it as a last resort option.
I’m happy to share more in depth information on any of those suggestions if you like. Please don’t hesitate to reply back here and let me know.