Shopify POS / Improvement

Store staff can now see a customer's
abandoned online cart right in POS

Search for a customer in POS and you'll see what they left sitting in their online cart. Answer sizing and product questions on the spot, and close the sale in store. Available from Shopify POS v11.14.

On this page
  1. What's changing (in 30 seconds)
  2. How it works: from store visit to purchase
  3. The 4 conditions for it to show up
  4. What you can and can't see
  5. How to enable it (3 steps)
  6. Before vs. after
  7. 5 key points for developers
  8. 3 practical use cases
  9. A one-line summary for your pitch

1What's changing

Store staff with the right permission can nowview the items in an identified customer's abandoned online checkout directly in Shopify POS.
It's built to turn that into service on the floor: talk through sizing, answer product questions, and complete the purchase right there in the store.

Before: invisible in store

Store staff had no way of knowing what a customer had added to their cart online and was still deciding on. They had to pitch products from scratch to the customer in front of them.

Now: POS shows what they're still deciding on

Search for the customer in POS and their online cart items appear. You start the conversation already able to say, "We have that size in store."

Available from Shopify POS v11.14 .The "View abandoned checkouts" permission must be turned on, so it isn't visible to every staff member by default.

2How it works: from store visit to purchase

Left behind online Cart is abandoned (purchase not completed) The same customer visits the store Customer search in POS Customer is identified (email address required) Show the contents of the online cart Product A / undecided on size Product B Product C Browsing history is not shown Assist in store → purchase completed
The in-store actions the announcement lists are 1) help with sizing questions 2) answer product questions 3) complete the purchase on the spot — three in all. The aim is to use face-to-face service to move along a decision that had stalled online.

3The 4 conditions for it to appear

The online cart won't appear unless all four are met. If someone says it "doesn't show up" during a demo or a test, check these first.

The customer is identified
A customer is attached to the POS session
An email address is on file
An email is saved on the customer record
There is a qualifying abandoned cart
An "eligible" abandoned checkout exists
Location on the POS session
The session carries location context
The specific criteria for an "eligible" abandoned checkout (age, order value, inventory status, and so on) arenot documented. How far back abandoned carts qualify needs to be confirmed on a real device.

4What's visible / what isn't

Visible

Items in the online cart

Only the items in the checkout the customer abandoned. This is the starting point for the conversation.

Not visible

Browsing history

What the customer browsed is not shown. Only items added to the cart are shared. This is a key point to cover in any privacy explanation.

browsing history

5How to enable it (3 steps)

1
11.14

Update POS to v11.14 or later

This feature ships in Shopify POS v11.14. Update the app on your device.

2

Open POS roles

In Shopify Admin, go to Settings > Users > Roles > POS roles > Customers .

3

Turn on "View abandoned checkouts"

Only staff in a role with this permission can view the online cart.

The permission is named, in English, "View abandoned checkouts". The admin path is Settings > Users > Roles > POS Role(s) > Customers.

6Before vs. After

ItemBeforePOS v11.14 and later
Seeing the online cart in store Not possible Relied on the customer telling you Possible Shown on the customer screen in POS
Staff who can view it — Only roles with the "View abandoned checkouts" permission
Scope of information visible — Cart items only (browsing history not included)
Required app version — Shopify POS v11.14
Customer-side prerequisites — Identified + has an email + has a matching abandoned cart

75 points developers should know

1. Off by default = permission design is prep work

Nothing happens unless you explicitly turn on "View abandoned checkouts".Deciding which roles get itis the practical first step of any rollout. Note that everyone in a granted role can see cart contents.

2. Four display conditions, all ANDed together

Identified customer, email on file, a matching abandoned cart, and location context. Miss any one and nothing appears.First-line triage for "it isn't showing up" starts with these four checks.

API ?

3. No mention of APIs or webhooks

The announcement covers only the POS screen feature and permission settings. How this can be accessed from the Admin API or POS UI Extensions isnot documented. If you're building automation or external integrations, you'll need to verify separately.

4. Location context is part of the requirements

The POS session must have a location attached.Multi-location stores with loose location setupshould start by sorting out which devices map to which locations.

5. Only "what's in the cart" is shared = an easy line to explain

The docs state explicitly that browsing history is not included.For customer-facing explanations and internal privacy reviews, this "cart items only" boundary is the explanation. Conversely, this feature won't let you act on products a customer was browsing on the web.

83 use cases you can put to work

M L
USE CASE 1

Apparel: turn size-hesitation abandonment into a fitting-room decision

Challenge
Online, shoppers can't decide on a size and leave the item sitting in their cart. Even when they come into the store, staff have no idea they were on the fence, so the conversation starts from zero.
What to do
Look the customer up in POS at the start of the interaction and check the items in their online cart, then walk them over to try those items on, talk through sizing, and close the sale on the spot.
Impact
The conversation starts with the item they were hesitating over already known, so suggestions land more often and average order value goes up. Demand that stalled online gets captured in store.
Technical notes
Because the customer has to be identified with an email address,the in-store customer lookup routine(member search and email capture) has to be applied consistently.
POS roles Store manager : can view Seasonal staff : cannot view
USE CASE 2

Multi-store operations : build the permission design and the privacy explanation together

The problem
There's no standard for which staff get to see how much of a customer's online cart. Turning it on uniformly across all stores won't clear an internal privacy review.
What to do
Audit your POS roles and limit "View abandoned checkouts" to specific roles (for example, full-time staff and store manager roles only). At the same time, spell out in the service manual that staff see only the items in the cart, not browsing history.
Impact
You can roll the feature out without hurting the customer experience. Because the scope of disclosure is written down, you can give customers a consistent answer when they ask.
Technical notes
The permission is Settings > Users > Roles > POS Role(s) > Customers. Since it's granted per role,your role design is effectively your design for what information gets disclosed.
Abandoned cart recovery rate
USE CASE 3

Omnichannel : make "in-store abandoned cart recovery" a KPI

The problem
Abandoned cart efforts lean entirely on email and ad retargeting, so the advantage of having physical stores never shows up in the program.
What to do
Run the feature at the stores where you've granted the permission, set things up so you can track whether items that were in an online cart got purchased in store, and compare across stores.
Impact
In-store service becomes a measurable abandoned cart recovery channel. Roll out the talk tracks from the stores that perform well and the tactic becomes repeatable.
Technical notes
On how to measure it, there isno guidance. If you build it, plan for writing your own aggregation that matches POS orders against that customer's abandoned checkout items.

9A one-line summary you can use in a pitch

The items a customer walking into your storeleft sitting in their online cart, still undecided,are now visible to store staff in POS.
All it takes is Shopify POS v11.14 + the "View abandoned checkouts" permission on the role, and with that,
you can turn abandoned carts from something you chase by email into something the customer decides right in front of you."