A shop owner manually enters items into their POS system (an old iPad) without barcodes. When a customer with a large order steps away to continue shopping, they must delete the entire cart to serve other customers, then re-enter everything later.
Solution Identified:
Shopify POS offers a “Save as draft” feature that addresses this exact workflow
Allows saving the current cart as a draft order, serving other customers, then retrieving the original cart later
No need to re-enter items manually
Key Limitation:
This feature requires a POS Pro subscription (not included in standard plans)
Availability depends on the store’s current Shopify plan
The shop owner was directed to Shopify’s Help Center and documentation on saving/retrieving carts to learn more about POS Pro features and subscription options.
Summarized with AI on October 23.
AI used: claude-sonnet-4-5-20250929.
I’m pretty new here and I’m trying to figure out a smart way to save an order that I can bring out again later for checkout on my POS.
This is my scenario: My physical shop has thousands of SKUs but does not have a barcode system, so I input each item MANUALLY by searching for it in our POS by name. Occasionally, there’s a customer who’s wants to buy a large amount of items, and I’ve keyed it into the POS, but then they change their mind and go back in search; meanwhile, another customer would like to checkout one or two items. I would then have to delete the entire order on my POS (a very old iPad), key in the second customers order, charge them, and then re-enter the previous customer’s large order again.
Is there a way I could simply save the 1st customer’s order to one side, checkout my 2nd customer, and then bring back up the 1st customer’s order, so I don’t have to reenter the list?
This may be due to the settings on your device. Have you tried upgrading system on the iPad? If still not working, you may need to consult the responsive people from Shopify and check if they have this feature during the transaction on POS.
This is Aaron from the Retail Team here at Shopify!
Thank you so much for sharing your question with our Shopify Community, and welcome to Shopify POS!
This is a great question, and the workflow can be achieved with the our Save as draft feature for the Shopify POS app. You can also refer to our Saving and retrieving a Shopify POS cart resource to learn more about this, but this feature would allow you to save the cart as a draft order that can be completed later. Saving the cart lets you continue with other orders without losing the details of the current cart. When the customer returns, you can retrieve the cart using Shopify POS.
One important factor here is that this feature is only available with our POS Pro subscription. Depending on which Shopify Plan your store is currently utilizing, you might have POS features that are already included in your Plan but the Save as draft feature is specific to the POS Pro subscription. You can refer to our Choose your Shopify POS app subscription resource to learn more about this.
I would highly recommend getting in-touch with our Retail Team by visiting the Shopify Help Center to learn more about how this feature, alongside others, can be used for your store with the POS Pro subscription.
Use the feature POS Hold Order to save orders which are not completed. Add products for the first client, tap Hold Order, then move to the second client. Held orders can be completed, modified, and finished later. This way you don’t have to re-type SKUs and you can have multiple orders running at once, right on your iPad POS.