Shopify Plus can't do Exchanges on Orders? Are you kidding me?

Shopify Plus
1

So I have seen this thread in various formats around the Community. Even Paid APPS perform this task, and Shopify POS has it built in for those of us on Plus.

So why can’t we perform the simple task of performing a product exchange within the Admin Console yet?

This is a core function in retail - period. But Shopify isn’t a retailer, so why not make it a mess to perform? I was told that “if/when” this function becomes available it should be announced by Shopify at some point.

The problem is this:

  1. This has been a known issue raised by other(s) since 2015.
  2. This is not the only essential retail function that somehow hasn’t gotten fixed - see “Locations” threads all over this community. It’s so bad it has even become a built-in “auto-response” for why you uninstall certain APPS.
  3. Paid APPS now perform this (and many other) tasks, putting an additional burden on the retailer to buy more “functionality” for a process built-in on its core POS Sales Channel.
  4. There is no mechanism to “upvote” or “recommend” product enhancements that would serve the community better.
  5. The only “upgrades” that Shopify seems to attribute resources for is to help individual projects instead of some fundamentally basic retail needs and use cases.

The current “Solution” to this issue (according to Shopify) is:

  1. Create the return label for the item and have it shipped back.
  2. Mark as “Returned” and choose whether or not to restock.
  3. Choose whether or not to refund.
  4. Then create a new Order for the same customer.
  5. Add a product and put “$0.00” for the sale since the customer already paid for it in the previous order.
  6. Then send the customer the new product.

This is an accounting/inventory nightmare. Now we’ve got two orders that need to be reconciled correctly and hopefully explainable in whatever notes you attach to both sales to explain to an auditor or accounting firm.

This should be a fundamental process for Shopify; just make it happen. It already exists in the Shopify ecosystem via POS. Asking Plus customers (or any customers for that matter) to pay more to perform an essential function that affects sales records and inventory is just asking for it to get screwed up by a human data entry.

I am interested to hear how others in this community feel about how some of these simple and essential functions are put to the side for paid APPS even when other core channels offer this functionality (without requiring additional paid APPS).

2

My understanding is that Order Edits in the admin equate to the same thing as an Order Exchange in ShopifyPOS. My team performs Order Edits before and after payment every day in addition to exchanges. That said, it has absolutely wreaked havoc on our accounting. In June this year, they completely changed their data model as to how to calculate sales using this new entity called Sales Agreements. It seems this has been a bit of a secret because it took me asking a thousand questions to uncover this. When an order is edited or exchanged, an external system would attribute that those added or removed sales to the original order date unless you have access to this Sales Agreements. We’re still trying to figure out exactly how to calculate sales for accounting a few months later and it’s a mess. So, I would advise you to look before you leap with the order edit functionality.