Shopify | Adding Local Pickup & Stock Transfers

Shopify has been putting a lot of effort into improving their platform since "The C Bomb" hit, and I am definitely appreciating the changes. I'm going to talk about one of those changes in this post and another tip that I have discovered works really well for quickly and easily receipting stock into your online store.

Quick side note before I forget: one of the most exciting things I have heard from Shopify recently is that they are rolling out their own "buy now, pay later" gateway. Customers will proceed to the checkout and choose to pay for their order upfront or in four equal instalments - music to the ears of those of us paying through the nose for external payment gateways providing this service.

Adding Local Pickup to Shopify

I discovered this one by accident when configuring a client's store recently. Until now the "work around" has been to offer "Collection" or "Pick Up" as a free shipping option. The niggle has been that Shopify sorts shipping options by price and so at the checkout, all orders will default to the free "Pick Up" option.

The issue for online store owners has been that some customers then click through the checkout with "Pick Up" as their option but they are expecting their item to be delivered - and they haven't paid any applicable shipping charges.

This new update shows two tabs under Delivery method:

To set this option go to Settings > Shipping and Delivery and you should see Local pickup as a new option under Additional delivery methods:

 Click on Set up local pickup

And specify your pickup preferences, then click Enable pickup and the tab will now appear at the checkout.

Stock transfers from suppliers

One thing that I've been struggling to stay on top of in "The C Bomb" craziness is stock management and control. When my stock arrives from suppliers I prioritise sending out customer orders and it often slips my mind to update the stock levels on the website.

I have been making an effort to add a stock transfer to Shopify when I place an order with a supplier so that I can easily receipt the order when the stock arrives.

Go to Products > Transfers and click on Add transfer, when you click on Browse products you can filter your products using a range of options: 

Select the products that you have ordered by ticking the box to the left of those products

Then click on Add to transfer. Back in the Add transfer screen you can add the Origin, expected arrival date, tracking number, reference number and any tags, and also add the number of each product that you have ordered:

Then click on Save transfer.

The transfer will now appear in your Transfers list, and when your order arrives you can open the transfer and click Receive items. In the Receive items screen you can add how many of each item you received and then click Save.

If you only receive part of your order the Transfer will show in the list as Partial which makes it easy to keep track of which items you are waiting on.

Hot tip: If you go to Products > Inventory you can see how many of each item you have in stock as well as how many of each item you have incoming (based on your transfers), so you can can keep up to date with where your stock levels are at.

If you have any questions about adding local pick up or making the best use of the stock transfer function, the best place to start is the Running In Heels Facebook group, otherwise feel free to get in touch for a chat.