Point of Sale

The benefit to the Shopify POS is that it integrates your online store with your brick and mortar store and syncs the inventory. This saves a lot of labor time. It is also easy to use and doesn't require much training.

The Cons...

It only works with certain overpriced equipment.

There is no option to exchange an item, which is a pretty standard thing amongst POS systems. You must refund as store credit and then use store credit to purchase the new item. The system does not keep track of the store credit. You only have a receipt to go by. There is nothing to stop the customer from trying to use that store credit again.

You need to use Shopify as the payment gateway otherwise you cannot use their card swiper and will need to process credit cards with a different system (Shopify tech support tells you that you can use any gateway without mentioning the fine print).

It allows employees to discount items up to %100 off without the need of a managers approval. However, it does not allow you to change the price of an item when checking out a customer... only lets you discount. This issue came up when there was a mistake with the price of an item and my employee had no way of correcting it at time of checkout.

The system constantly loses contact with the wireless barcode scanner, card swiper, and receipt printer. You have to restart the POS app to reconnect them while the customers are standing and waiting.

Overall, it is a good system to help keep track of all of your stores and sales. If inventory syncing is not that important for you, there really is no reason to overpay for the Shopify POS.

I guess this system works best for an online store. For my physical retail store it lacks a lot features Counterpoint POS offers with their basic service.

I will be closing my store with shopify.

Do not support most popular payment terminals and receipts printers! Limited only to several models (old and ugly). No support for any payment terminals i Europe which is why I'm thinking about changing the platform to another one that comes with the latest technologies. Currently, with Shopify, upselling at a brick-and-mortar location is archaic and cumbersome.

Free app is great for merchants just starting out, you get what you need to start selling at in person events. I gave 2 stars because merchants should beware of using tap to pay on iphone. As seen on Shopify forums, many merchants have issues with tap to pay on iphone connectivity - it rarely works (it has only worked once or twice for me) forcing me to enter card payments manually. This was fine until I realized from another forum poster that Shopify payments charges higher fees for manual card entry even though it is a Shopify app issue that tap to pay is not working. So be sure to get a card reader so you can avoid this!

Updated Jan 19 2021:
Changing from 3 stars to 2. Chip reader keeps disconnecting after last update. Contact support, and they think that it's appropriate to remove and reinstall every few days. Totally unexceptable. Should have stuck with my PC based software and hardware. Older review: It's okay, but could be great. A little confusing for staff to understand. Returns are a nightmare. Cannot complete a return if you do not have the original receipt. When exchanging an item you cannot add more than 1 item to the exchange. For example. If someone returns 1 item and wants to buy 2, you would have to do an exchange with 1 item and do an new transaction for the 2nd. Why so complicated? Should be much easier than this.. Our 15 year old POS had more features and made more sense.

The app definitely needs some layout and user interface work. The cart is not accessible from every screen which makes adding and removing items more difficult and require more steps than necessary. When you add an item to the cart, you can only add one item. If you need to change the quantity of any item you have to go back to the menu, go back to the cart then change the quantity. You should just be able to change the quantity before you add the item to the cart. The "Ship to customer" option is only available at the beginning of the sale which is incredibly inconvenient. When my customer decides half way through the sale they'd rather ship instead of carry the items with them. If anything the "Ship to customer" option should be a separate page or section before you check out the customer with a simple toggle switch that enables shipping or pick up. My last complaint is that the bluetooth does not reconnect to the card readers if you walk away from your paired reader. In order to get the readers to reconnect I had to either make the my phone or iPad to forget the device or completely restart my phone or iPad. I gave the app 2 stars because it did perform enough for me to make sales but the overall inconvenience of how the app is laid out made my sales in a fast paced environment more stressful as opposed to helpful. I really hope Shopify updates the app to be more user friendly and streamlined. I'm going to try and use it one more time before the end of the year, and if it's still PITA, I'll defiantly be switching to a different option.

We specifically moved to Shopify because our old ecommerce did not have a POS component and our POS system was separate from ecommerce. We decided that having both in one was a win win situation. Well, after we moved our website over successfully (SHOPIFY REALLY IS THE BEST ECOMMERCE SOLUTION!!!!), we decided to start tackling the POS side and came to discover it is woefully lacking. For example, I don't want our employees to add any discount code but rather to select from discount codes I pre-create. It doesn't even offer that. Anyone can give any discount they want and word it any name they want. It's cray cray- so in the end, we have decided we love the Shopify website and we love our eCommerce solution so I am actively looking for a way that both of those can integrate rather than using Shopify's POS. I really hope they can make it better and stronger in the long run.

We switched to Shopify POS so that we could have more cohesive inventory and data management between our online store and brick and mortar. It's okay, but lacking in some significant areas. Pros: -Fairly intuitive to use/teach staff
-Easy search
-Stocky is overall a good inventory management system, despite a few small complaints Cons:
-No function to honour Status Cards/Tax Exemptions in Canada (which I believe may be illegal in Ontario)
-Unable to edit any product details/add bar codes/adjust stock/change price etc. inside the POS app, which makes a lot more work for managers and creates many issues/errors
-I was told I would have dedicated "set-up support" but it seems that that person's job was just to email me links and direct me to the general help line
-Support staff are unevenly trained - a few times I've called with a specific question and received multiple different answers from different people
-No "Void" function and returns/exchanges are unnecessarily complicated Overall, it doesn't feel like there were many people consulted who actually work in retail. It would be a lot more convenient to stay with Shopify, so I hope it improves.

So I have one huge complaint about Shopify POS, to me it is almost a deal breaker. When you have multiple employees that have their own login you are able to give them limited permissions which is exactly what should happen but one of the things they are still able to see is your register shifts. Register shifts log your day to day sales and daily profits, why on earth do I want my Employees to see exactly how much my store is making? This should be private information that only I should get to see! Please fix this issue

8/23 Update: Still rating 2 stars due to the amount of development needed. We are functioning, but I would not use this POS if it were not for the website and gift registry ap we use. Staff permissions still needs a significant overhaul. I am happy to say that the receipts have improved. Still no customization option for me as the user, but the developers have removed the "double name" issue. Our largest issue after two months of use though is the return/exchange issue. We still have a separate "old" register to process returns as shopify does not offer a "real world" brick and motar solution for returns/exchanges. The ap needs a manager override return options that allows a "custom return." Inventory can be adjusted after the fact, but it is just not realistic to hunt for a previous order or an order that was processed prior to using shopify. The return option offered may work for brand new businesses who are starting fresh with e-commerce, but it is not functional for established brick and motar expanding to ecommerce. Looking forward to a solution on this major oversight.

June 2020: The POS app has A LOT of room for development such as staff permissions. I should be able to limit who can process a return/refund/exchange or limit the type of discount a staff member can provide. But the top of the list is the physical receipts. I need better customization options. Customers are confused by the way taxes are broken out. My logo which include my store name is top of the receipt to be followed by the same store name that I can't remove is weird. And the receipts are two miles long because I can't edit the font size in the header or footer where I need to list my store's return policy.