A Shopify app developer is soliciting merchant feedback to identify gaps and pain points in Shopify POS functionality. Several critical issues have emerged:
Employee & Commission Management:
Need for staff-specific sales visibility restricted by customizable timeframes
Automatic commission calculation tied to individual employee sales
Manager role configurations and access controls
Sales tracking isolated by employee and location
Variable Pricing & Tax:
No native support for variable/weight-based pricing at checkout (a 10+ year outstanding request)
Cannot handle multiple tax rates on custom sales
Merchants currently use workarounds like creating multiple $1 variants
Custom Sale tile doesn’t adequately solve these needs
Performance & Usability (Food Retail):
Slow, unresponsive UI especially when applying discounts
Smart grid limited to 10 tiles vs. competitors showing 25+
Missing modifiers for toppings/customizations
No native scheduling for future pickup dates
Accidental cart deletion too easy
Cannot print draft orders for phone/tab orders
Platform Stability:
Frequent Shopify updates break workflows and require constant staff retraining
Third-party apps struggle to maintain compatibility
Recent issues include disappearing user roles
The developer has shared surveys to gather detailed requirements. Multiple merchants express frustration that these requests have gone unaddressed for years.
Summarized with AI on October 24.
AI used: claude-sonnet-4-5-20250929.
I’m currently exploring how we can improve the Shopify POS experience for merchants and I’d really appreciate your input.
If you’ve ever found yourself limited by the current POS features, run into inefficiencies, or had to build workarounds just to get things done, I’d love to hear about it.
We’ve developed a number of Shopify apps already, but we know there’s more to be done. The goal is to build solutions that truly support how you work.
If there’s something you wish the system could do, or a pain point you keep bumping into, feel free to share it.
Your insight could directly influence what we build next.
I need POS system TO improve where staff can access only their own sales. I would like to customise the time frame for when they can view their sales, for example, allowing access from Monday to Sunday.
I want to be able to allow Employees to access the location where they log in to work and can only see the sales attributed to their names. I
need Shopify to have an option to automatically calculate commissions for these sales. Employees must not have visibility into other employees’ sales.
Additionally, I need the POS system to allow me to set up manager roles and access. I require Shopify Pro to send alerts for low inventory levels and to accommodate different types of discounts at various locations.
I also need to track inventory transfers between stores, as well as hours worked and sales commission. It is important for the system to handle multiple prices for the same item and provide commission reporting. I have been asking for the last 3 years
Are you currently using any app that partially addresses these features, like employee-specific sales access, automatic commission calculations, inventory transfer tracking…?
If not, how do you manage these processes right now?
The forums are full of recommendations and feature requests, along with pain points. The list is HUGE. The biggest ask of all - stability. Change means you have to retrain all your staff, and this opens you to more human error, along with reduced customer service levels. Shopify does not understand retail at all.
I’ve noticed you’re quite active on the forum and engage a lot with the challenges in the industry. What do you think is the biggest issue that still isn’t being properly addressed by apps in your business?
The POS app is a nightmare. There needs to be a stable, fully able to integrate POS for Shopify. They have their version, but it is the most unstable platform I have ever used. The amount of error that Shopify has introduced into our store is unacceptable. The app versions can’t keep up because Shopify constantly changes everything, so we can’t use a non-native app. We can’t afford the downtime. Shopify gives us enough disasters (hello - where did all my user roles go? gone as of today), and we can’t handle more from apps that are not able to keep up (because of how Shopify holds everyone hostage and doesn’t allow proper change control, so there is no way for an app developer to keep up).
Two things that would be helpful for our retail store:
1- We sell products with different sales tax rates. If we need to do a custom sale, there is an option to charge tax or not, but not to deal with different rates.
2- We sell products with variable prices, by weight. Currently we made them $1 increments and made each different price a variant. This works, but if we end up with an item outside of the normal range, we don’t have a variant listed. It would be nice to pull up the product and enter a price.
A topic that has been raised for over 10 years and has never been satisfactorily resolved: Variable Price at POS.
Simply a product that has a variable (i.e. not set) price that is entered at the time of sale. Other offerings like Square and Lightspeed allow this. It’s critical for many merchants, with the current “Custom Sale” tile not providing the correct solution.
As someone who does pop up shops mostly an all in one POS device would be great. I would love something that has function like pos go before the update. Having to have an iPad and card reader takes up space on a small table. I would love for the pos go to return as a stand along device before the change to a countertop device
There are several things that are missing and greatly affect the usability of Shopify’s POS at a small food retail like us (a bakery):
Slow UI - the UI is very slow to respond when adding items to the cart. Discounts are especially slow, making customers wait when it’s time to pay.
Small UI - many elements and texts are too small for the use. Especially when adding multiple of the same item to the cart, there is a tiny bubble with the number of that item. It’s very pretty, but not very functional.
Smart grid - the smart grid shows only 10 tiles at a time, which causes us to scroll up and down (add to the frustration of the the slow UI). The tiles can be much smaller, so more can be seen. To compare, Square presented 25 tiles on the screen.
Printing tickets/drafts - when taking orders over the phone, or when running a tab, we need the ability to print the draft and attach it to the order. I know that we can print an unpaid receipt, but that is just wrong and cannot be corrected if the customer change their mind.
Delete button - it is too easy to mistakenly press it. It should have a confirmation before clearing the cart, or be hidden in the menu.
New order push notifications to devices - we get orders online and in-person. There is no need for us to get a push notification for in-person orders,( we are there). However, push notifications of online orders would be useful. Currently, there is no way to set which notification should be sent per device. The shopify admin allows to do that only for a “user” or email notifications. So unless there is a separate user for each device that cannot be done.
Scheduling pickup - Many of our orders are for a future date, and there is no built in ability to set pickup date/time, and notify the customer when the order is ready. The same goes for the online. We use a third party app which works very well for the website, however on the POS it is very slow to load.
Modifiers - I was truly shocked when I realized there are no modifiers built in. This is a very basic feature that any food retail need (think toppings at a pizza place). Again, on the website that can be handled by third party apps, but on the POS any app that we try is extremely slow and cannot be used when there is a line of customers,
Thank you for reading through. I would be happy to provide any additional details, participate in beta or whatever I can to help resolve any of these issues.
I’ve had numerous requests and issues with the POS over the last several years; I used to post these requests/issues to the forum regularly, but stopped when I realized no one was really paying attention. Hopefully you’re still with Shopify (I know there’s a lot of turnover there and your post is already several months old by now), but please let me know if you’d like my input.
For starters, I’d love to see the ‘00’ button returned to the Custom Sale window, as it seems to have been removed by an update months ago. I used that key all the time, as all of our prices are in round numbers and I’m tired of accidentally missing a ‘0’ and having to remove and re-enter the item when that happens.
Anyways, I have many more suggestions and would love to convey them to you if you respond. Thanks!