Pos Pro money grab

Ask & Offer
1

While I’ve genuinely loved using Shopify and appreciate how user-friendly the platform is, this feels like a major pain point for small businesses.

I run a flower shop, and I need my employees to be able to mark pickup orders as fulfilled once customers collect them. We currently have POS Pro on one iPad for taking orders, but using that as our main front-of-house device created workflow issues and slowed everything down. To make things more efficient, we added a second iPad at the front for quick grab-and-go purchases and to search customer pickup orders.

The issue is that in order for staff to mark pickup orders as fulfilled on that second iPad, Shopify requires us to pay for a second POS Pro location. For a small business, that extra cost just isn’t realistic.

Right now, my staff have to text me every time an order is picked up so I can manually fulfill it myself from my device. That’s incredibly inefficient for something that feels like it should be a basic POS feature.

I completely understand charging for advanced tools and features, but allowing staff to mark an order as fulfilled feels more like a POS Lite capability than something locked behind an additional Pro subscription. Small businesses are already doing everything they can to make things work, and this setup honestly feels unnecessarily restrictive.

2

Hi @MagnoliaFloral

A few possible workarounds you could consider this:

  1. Use Shopify Admin on the second iPad (browser instead of POS app)

  • Staff can log into the Shopify admin through Safari/Chrome or any other browser

  • Then mark orders fulfilled from Orders

  • This sometimes avoids needing full POS Pro functionality depending on permissions

  1. Create a restricted staff account

  • Give employees access only to orders/fulfillment.

  • Avoid exposing sensitive store settings.

  1. Use order tags or notes temporarily

  • Staff can tag orders as “Picked Up”.

  • You bulk order fulfill later from admin section from the shopify .

3

POS lite is intended for solo merchants. Any team related functionality is only available on Pro plan.

4

What about small teams and small shops? It feels like the options are to be a solo merchant or to not be able to afford their platform. I just feel like marking orders as fulfilled is a basic need even as a solo entrepreneur from your pos system.

5

Hi @MagnoliaFloral, @mastroke’s suggestions are actually pretty solid, especially the Shopify admin browser workaround, that’s probably your quickest fix without adding costs in the meantime.

But I get your frustration, I believe Shopify does have a feedback portal where you can submit this as a feature request for the POS Lite. Might be worth a try, if enough small business owners flag it, it might get picked up.

6

If you feel it’s scary, you can avoid Admin access on the second iPad.
Say, you Plan may not allow you to create a second user with limited permissions.

Instead, you can add a Forms form to a hidden page on your storefront.
Or use alternate template / preview link to unpublished theme to access this page.

You may make this form only visible if particular “customers” – your employees are logged in.

The form will have an order number entry field.
Upon submission, Shopify Flow will pick it up, retrieve order number, fetch this order and mark it as fulfilled.

Free and secure.