How can I notify walk-in customers when their POS order is ready?

Retail & Point of Sale
1

I have customers that walk in and want to place an order through the POS. The items will not be ready for pickup for several hours. The sales person is inputting the order so it is not online, how do I notify them when order is ready for pick up. I only see this option is this was an online order.

2

Hi, @jantolini .

That is a great question.

Unfortunately, there is no streamlined, or direct way of achieving this. I can see how this feature would be important for merchants in your position. Therefore, I’ll be submitting this as a feature request to our developers on your behalf. This would be an absolutely epic feature.

That being said, this can be done, albeit a bit trickily. Essentially, while this can’t be done directly in the POS, you can install the Shopify App and utilize that to achieve what you are looking for via draft orders. The process would mean your staff members would exit the POS app and open the Shopify App and create a manual order by completing the following steps:

  1. Open the Shopify App and select Orders
  2. Select Create Order and add the product/s to be included, as well as the customer’s contact information.
  3. Select Collect Payment, and input the customer’s credit card details (if the customer doesn’t want the credit card details to be manually input I have a potential work around below.)

Once you submit the order, it will populate in your Shopify Admin orders list as unfulfilled the same as online orders. Once the order is ready to be fulfilled, send a notification to the customer by clicking their contact information within the order and sending a note that the order is ready to be picked up. Once the customer picks up the order you can mark the order as fulfilled.

In the case the customer doesn’t want their payment details to be input manually, you can follow the below steps:

  1. Follow steps 1-2 from above
  2. Add discount of 100%
  3. Instead of Collect Payment, select Mark as Paid
  4. Complete and submit the order
  5. Exit the Shopify and open the Shopify POS
  6. Create order in the Shopify POS and collect payment via the card reader

The only issue with the above option is it will create a POS order and a traditional order. This will create issues with your analytics as it will show two sales, and two payments. Additionally, you will need to adjust the inventory. The reason for the 100% discount in the manual order is to prevent your financial data from being incorrect.

As mentioned, I will be submitting this as a feature request, as the above option is quite the workaround that could be tricky and tedious to yourself and staff.

In the meantime, I would love it if you could provide your store so I could see what other support and potential feedback I can provide!

3

My store is https://global-flooring-systems.myshopify.com/

Thanks, I am still not seeing how I can a notification to customer after placing the order that is fulfilled or ready for pickup.

4

Hi, @jantolini .

Thanks for providing your site! Additionally, I apologize if I wasn’t clear on how to notify the customer. As mentioned, once the order is ready to be fulfilled, send a notification to the customer by clicking their contact information within the order and sending a note that the order is ready to be picked up. Once the customer picks up the order you can mark the order as fulfilled.

The specific steps for this process is:

  1. Open the order in your Shopify App (not the POS app)

  2. Click on the customers email address which is listed under the order’s contact information

  3. This will provide the option to send the customer a message. For example “Your order is now ready for pick up”

  4. Once the customer comes in and picks up the order the staff member can re-open the order and mark the order as fulfilled.

When it comes to your site, things look amazing. I recently had my garage floor done so definitely appreciate your products! I do however, recommend spending a bit of time editing your theme more. It appears you are using the standard colours, fonts, and settings. While it sounds the majority of your sales are generated through your storefronts, you are potentially missing out on potential online sales. Design can really go a long way and can be completely simple!

For example, consider matching some of your heading fonts to the font used in your logo. Also find a way to incorporate your color scheme into the header and footers. We have a fantastic free course/guide that can walk you through this process. It’s friendly for even the most novice users! I definitely recommend investing a bit of time into this as it could really help build your branding.