What missing features do you find in POS systems?

Retail & Point of Sale

Topic summary

Feature gaps highlighted for Shopify POS, plus what can be solved via apps vs. Shopify core changes.

Key pain points and requests:

  • Returns/exchanges: Manual returns without a receipt; unlimited exchanges; add shipping/address on exchanges; issue store credit beyond original payment.
  • Customer management: Merge duplicate customers; track/store account credits and surface them at POS; clearer cart indicators for tags/gift cards.
  • Hardware/processing: More reliable wired readers (non‑Bluetooth); offline card capture during outages; faster “type amount then tap” checkout.
  • Inventory/catalog: Sell by decimal quantities/weight; show “on order” (Stocky) in POS; location-specific product visibility and payment methods; vendor fields; pick tickets with SKU; collection‑wide sale pricing; product notes; sorting preferences; randomization.
  • Checkout/UI: Larger product grid front‑and‑center; custom‑price service items without breaking analytics; POS gift‑with‑purchase automation; send gift cards directly to recipients with notes.

Developer responses/current status:

  • Many items need Shopify core updates (manual returns, offline, hardware, decimal inventory). Decimal support is unlikely within ~12 months.
  • Suggested/workable via apps: templated products for custom pricing; Order Printer for SKU pick tickets; Custom Fields for product notes; bulk price editor apps; gift cards or loyalty points for store credit; use POS tiles + POS‑only collections to mimic a product grid.
  • Exploring: Stocky “on order” display; clearer POS surfacing of tags/gift cards; potential customer-merge approach.

Outcome: No resolution; discussion ongoing. New asks include POS gift‑with‑purchase support.

Summarized with AI on December 24. AI used: gpt-5.
7

@offermagl Thanks for your input, this is awesome to see and super helpful.

  1. Unfortunately, as an Expert and app developer, I cannot help with the hardware side of things, that is something Shopify has to do. I agree though that this is frustrating and has been an issue with our merchants in the past. Have you found that hardware integration with the new POS is better?
  2. It would be interesting to hear more about the on order status and stocky. I wonder how they store these details and if its something we could request and show in our applications.
  3. Unfortunately, this is again another thing built right into Shopify POS that we wouldn’t be able to help with. We could rebuild the product search in an app, but that experience wouldn’t be very good unfortunately.

Please let me know if anything else comes up that we could potentially help with. Ill see what we might be able to do about integrating with Stocky.