How To Use The New Inventory Transfers with Shopify POS
Inventory transfers are critical for multi-location retail
Want to know a retail secret? Nailing your inventory is absolutely the key to success. Whether you're selling online or in-store, you gotta have stuff in stock to make a sale. Nothing tanks customer satisfaction faster than someone making the trip to your retail store and finding out something is out of stock. Same goes for your online store. If they buy it online and you can’t fulfill the order, then you’re losing that customer’s trust.
Managing inventory gets a whole lot trickier when you've got multiple stores and warehouses in the mix. Your business hinges on how smoothly you can shift stock between all these locations. To help with this process, you can use Transfer Orders to keep track of products moving between locations. If you’ve never heard of Transfer Orders or if you’re not using them, then take notes because we’re about to make your life way easier. Once you get the hang of it, you can keep tabs on what you’re shipping out and make sure everyone knows the "who, what, and when" for every transfer.
If you’re currently using Stocky, then get ready to update your workflow because Stocky’s days are numbered. Transfers are now part of the native workflow in Shopify POS. Your staff can monitor, receive and accept transfers right from your POS tablet screen. Let’s review how this new inventory transfer process works.
Transfers are now native inside Shopify POS
If you’ve ever dealt with Shopify’s Stocky app, you know it involves jumping into a different site to configure transfers. The all new Shopify transfer order and fulfillment process streamlines this whole process. Shopify POS has added an all new inventory transfer workflow right into the native services. Starting with Shopify POS 10.20, your staff can fulfill outgoing transfers and receive incoming transfers natively in the POS app. The latest version of the Shopify POS app is available now in the Apple App store. Simply apply the update and you’re ready to take advantage of the new features listed below.
With the latest POS app update, you can pick, pack, and monitor your transfers from one POS device, while your destination location can verify and receive it from their POS devices. If you have barcodes in place, then scanning makes it even easier to count and receive products. Shopify added a few new screens to the POS to give you real-time status updates along the way. You start the transfer in the Shopify Admin and then each location handles the shipping and receiving. The POS becomes the execution layer for your store teams.
The New POS Transfer Workflow, step by step
Your retail staff can now natively fulfill and receive inventory transfers between different locations. And here’s some good news, the new inventory transfer process ditches the need for Stocky. This means you can do everything right from the Shopify Admin and POS. You no longer need to jump into Stocky and add the Stock tiles to your smart grid. There are all new screens and buttons to support the transfer process. Here’s a step-by-step process for creating and fulfilling a transfer between locations.
Let’s start by getting the most obvious thing out of the way, you must have multiple Shopify locations in order to transfer. If you only have a single location, this workflow isn’t for you. The point of inventory transfers is to move stock between your locations. We’ll assume you already have your locations configured in your store.
Step 1 - Creating the Transfer Order
The first step is creating the initial transfer order (TO) in the Shopify admin (you’ll find this under Products > Transfers.) The TO is typically created by a store manager or a stock manager so you’ll want to create the appropriate permission in your store. The transfer order is a record of the specific inventory movement from one location to another. It’s like your “shipping plan” for inventory. When you create the transfer, you’ll select the origin location and the destination location from the drop-down. Shopify will automatically populate your Locations as available selections. Your origin location will pick and send, while your destination will receive the new stock. Next, you’ll select which items (from the origin) will be shipped to the destination location. Shopify will display the current quantity at your origin so you can choose the correct amount to transfer. Once you’ve added the products to the TO, you can save and prepare the order. It will start in a Draft status until you click the “Mark as ready” button. This will move the TO from Draft to Ready to ship. This status will send an alert to your origin location. You will then start the process from the origin POS.
Step 2 - Ship the Products from your Origin
Once you kick off the transfer in Shopify Admin, the originating store is in charge of getting the items out the door. This is now handled in-store via the Shopify POS. Your in-store team will hop into the POS app and access the new transfer page. Make sure you're set to the correct origin location or you won’t see the transfer order. To start this process, you will access the new "Outgoing Transfers" section under the "Orders" button in the POS UI. This is where you’ll see the transfer order and the items that need shipment. You will see a little alert badge with the number of pending transfers. This lets you know how many transfer orders are waiting to be shipped out. Click into this page to start your shipment.
This new Outgoing Transfer page shows a list and ID for every pending shipment. The transfer ID will match the order you created in the Shopify Admin. Simply click on any order to start the shipment. You will confirm the shipment and pick & pack the products. You can enter or scan each item for the shipment. Once you have everything prepared, you can send the shipment and alert the destination store. They will get an alert about the incoming shipment.
Step 3 - Receive the Products at your Destination
Once the origin store sends the shipment, you have to handle the other side. The destination store will now need to receive that transfer in their Shopify POS. There is another new section in the Products area to find “Incoming transfers.” Your destination team goes here to verify what arrived by confirming quantities and receiving it into stock. Make sure you are in the correct destination location to see the incoming transfer. The transfer ID will match the one from the origin store. Now the destination team can count (or scan) each item to accept the inventory. If you need to short-ship for any reason, the system will accept any value for receipt. The products will go into inventory immediately upon acceptance. This gives you a clean receipt workflow so your in-store quantities only change when the items are physically there (and counted by your team.) If for some reason the products are damaged or you can’t accept it, the original transfer order will display the accepted values. Your team can then contact the origin store to resend or close out the TO.
You should make barcode scanning your default mode of entry at every step of the transfer. It’s the easiest way to prevent errors. You scan when you pick at the origin location, you scan again when you pack and you scan when you receive at the destination. That routine makes sure the right variant and quantity move every time.
That’s it, you now successfully transferred stock from one location to another. Your store has complete records of all transactions so a full audit trail exists for any future inspection.
Setting Up Permissions
Inventory transfers involve moving real inventory (i.e. value) from store to store, so it’s important to think about security. It's basically moving money, since you're shipping tangible assets around. Because of this direct link to your bottom line, you really need to focus on keeping the process secure and controlled. Not everyone on your staff should be able to start, manage, or finish these transfers without permission. It’s up to you to determine who should have this power, but in a typical retail environment, there is a stock manager or store owner who manages inventory. You’ll want to structure your process around these individuals.
Shopify has a structured set of permissions just for handling transfers inside the Shopify POS system. Use these permissions to assign your trusted and designated team members to access the correct functions in the admin and POS. To successfully ship an inventory transfer and confirm it arrived, you’ll need two specific permissions:
Inventory Permission: This is the basic access where the user can view and mess with the core inventory features. They can't participate in the transfer process at all without this foundational permission.
Manage Transfers Permission: This is the specialized one. It gives the staff member the specific authority to create, edit, send, and receive all the transfer documents.
Any team member who needs to be involved in an inventory transfer must have both the Inventory permission and the Manage transfers permission active on their Shopify staff account. Setting up permissions correctly helps cut down the risk of mistakes, loss or internal theft.
Sunrise Integration helps you roll this out the right way
If you’re ready to upgrade to Shopify POS or tighten up multi-location operations, Sunrise Integration is here to help you. Get support setting up locations properly, defining staff roles and permissions so transfers are controlled and configured. We can provide hands-on guidance, staff training and ongoing support.
Reach out to Sunrise Integration if you need help with your Shopify POS configuration or installation.
