Why is it so hard for Shopify to implement a location-based permission? I have multiple retail stores, and want to assign a branch-manager level of permission. They should have access to the orders, inventories, etc for the assigned location but not able to change inventories in other locations. Currently, Shopify does not allow this type of customization to the permission, as enabling inventory permission allows them to access inventories across the entire network of stores. This is a huge problem for those who are growing and have multiple locations.
Missing this feature is critical for me. That is why I am looking into moving to another platform like WooCommerce and make a website with help of Wordpress. This is the SOLE reason Shopify may lose me as a customer. Who can we contact to really try and push this feature as a priority? Successful stores need this feature to hire branch managers who take care of a lot of aspects of the store!
After many nights thinking about this, I have figured out a way to work around this in Shopify…without needing to upgrade to Shopify Plus or anything expensive…I’ll post if this post gets more replies though, just in spite of no one taking interest when I had no solution
We are desperately trying to solve for this exact same solution and are about to leave shopify and use a CRM to help us. The only way we can figure out how to do this in Shopify is to set up two separate stores in shopify, but that’s duplicating everything.
Unfortunately, what I thought was a solution did not come to fruition.
Originally I had planned to work with a developer who can make an app which essentially duplicates the store’s inventory into a new GUI where the location branch manager can log in, and only access THAT one location’s inventory and others are not displayed in the user interface. (If you enable permission to inventory, it allows for ALL locations but at least this way, the other locations are hidden away so the inventory is not accessible thru the app.)
This solution got crushed when the developer said they specifically need that’ user’s inventory permission turned on, which then defeats the purpose of a separate app, because if the branch manager was to act maliciously, they can just access the other stores’ inventory thru the native Shopify Inventory page…
Still no solution, and ever since this post, I have added another location so I have 3 locations in total. All of my managers don’t have access to inventory, because them getting access to 3 locations means they could/may act with malicious intent and do some weird stuff. Or, just incompetence and they might make silly mistakes like adding inventory to a different location…
Anyways, I hope the best of luck to you on your CRM solution.
Shopify’s permissions are n yet entirely location scoped when it comes to editing the inventory, leading many multi location merchants to deal with this with a hybrid approach. A popular method is to create role based staff accounts for each location and manage inventory control with an inventory management app such as Cin7 Core, Katana or Stocky with POS Pro which supports location level stock workflows. Alternatively, if you require complete separation, you can separate locations into different Shopify stores. This is currently the best solution for managing multi branch operations.
