A retail order management process involves tracking and coordinating orders from purchase to inventory allocation, fulfillment, delivery, returns, and exchanges. US retailers generated about $7.52 trillion in sales in 2025, a quarter-trillion-dollar increase over the year before.
That sounds like growth every retailer gets to share in, but that total is split across roughly four million retail establishments. This means the increase is concentrated in the businesses set up to capture more orders without failing.
Ahead, you’ll learn which order management system (OMS) capabilities are imperative, how Shopify supports the process, and when—or if—your business may need dedicated retail order management software.
What is retail order management software?
A retail order management software solution gives retailers one place to capture, track, and coordinate customer orders across ecommerce sites, physical stores, contact centers, and other sales channels. The platform tracks inventory, processes payments, routes orders to the right location, and updates stock levels across every channel a retailer sells on, in real time.
Say a customer buys two items online for next-day delivery. One is sitting in a warehouse, and the other is available in a nearby store. The order management solution decides whether to split the shipment, route both items from one location, hold one for pickup, or offer the customer another option.
Then, it sends the work to the right store, warehouse, or fulfillment partner, updates inventory and order status, and keeps the customer-facing promise in sync.
How is retail order management different from ecommerce order management?
The difference is mainly one of scope.
While ecommerce order management focuses on orders placed through digital channels, retail order management must also account for stores—as places where sales happen, but also as inventory locations, pickup points, fulfillment nodes, and returns desks.
That changes the job considerably. A unit sitting in a store may serve a walk-in customer, be delivered to a pickup customer, or fill an online order. When it moves, you need to keep every channel updated and decide which demand gets it.
That broader view can help retailers put more of their inventory to work. According to Manhattan Associates’ 2026 Unified Commerce for Speciality Retail benchmark report, retailers with real-time inventory visibility report higher inventory turns, with gains of 50% in North America, 45% in EMEA, and 27% in Latin America.
Take Fauchon, for example. Their boutiques could not display the brand’s full range, and associates previously had no way to order unavailable products for customers. After unifying their ecommerce and store operations with Shopify, staff could check inventory in real time and place an order before the customer left the store.
Their checkout also became 50% faster.
“Shopify POS has completely changed how we operate in-store. If a product is unavailable, we can now place an order immediately, providing an additional service to the customer,” says Marianne Tanguy-Rossé, marketing director.
Why do you need a retail order management system in 2026?
The customer journey has splintered, and the order journey has followed.
The Boston Consulting Group (BCG) makes the case for a new “influence map,” since the traditional funnel no longer reflects how people shop. Their streaming, scrolling, searching, and shopping now overlap throughout the journey. A shopper might see a product on social video, check it in a retailer’s app, and complete the purchase at a register. Or reverse that sequence entirely.
Here’s how order management software keeps you in lockstep with customer expectations:
Centralized order visibility
If an order can start almost anywhere, a business needs one system that can answer where it started and where it needs to go, regardless of the path a customer took to get there.
Digital Commerce 360’s 2026 Omnichannel Report found that the top drivers of a positive fulfillment experience were wait time upon arrival (39.1%), a pickup free of confusion (38.4%), and same-day product availability (33.2%). None of that is achievable without a single source of truth for inventory and order status.
Asphalte ran into this situation when they opened their first physical store on top of an existing pre-order model. Their staff needed full visibility into a customer’s online orders, in-store purchases, and pre-order history from one system, since a sale in the store didn’t always mean the item was in stock yet.
Now, with Shopify POS centralizing that order data, they earned a Net Promoter Score (NPS) of 75 within seven months of opening.
“We needed to provide a flawless in-store experience for our customers, even for pre-order items. … Shopify helped us make this process very smooth and easy,” says Benjamin Mateo, chief revenue officer.
Retail stores are now supply chain nodes
The store itself has become part of the order journey. GreyOrange CEO Akash Gupta says in Supply Chain Management Review: “Store and supply chain are very, very connected ... there is a lot of intelligence that you can bring all across,” with stores increasingly serving as ship-from-store fulfillment points where the exact location of inventory is known.
For instance, Anián manages roughly 10,000 inventory variants across two flagship retail stores, more than 150 wholesale locations, and their online store, tracking every unit from the moment it enters the warehouse to the moment it reaches a retail shelf or a customer’s door with Shopify.
“Having one system to track all outgoing inventory makes it easy to see where inventory moves across our supply chain,” says Paul Long, president.
Promise what you can deliver
A product can appear available online while sitting in somebody’s basket, waiting behind the counter for pickup, or missing from the shelf altogether. That chasm between recorded and usable inventory is now a board-level concern.
Zebra’s global study of more than 4,200 shoppers, associates, and retail decision-makers found that 84% of decision-makers feel strong pressure to synchronize real-time inventory across channels. Nearly 8 in 10 shoppers want a seamless connection between store and online experiences.
Better order routing reduces shipping costs and speeds fulfillment
Once a system knows where inventory sits, it can route orders intelligently instead of defaulting to whichever warehouse is easiest. ShipBob found that 44% of surveyed brands planned to add fulfillment centers in 2026, and the same proportion planned to ship to new countries. Element Brooklyn, for example, was shipping heavy, liquid-filled products from warehouses in New York, Florida, and Arizona. The West Coast orders were manually assigned to the Arizona warehouse and East Coast orders to Brooklyn, but if one location ran out of stock, checkout would break entirely.
After switching to Shopify’s smart order routing, the company now delivers 94% of orders next day, saves $1.14 per order in shipping costs, and cuts delivery time by an average of 1.2 days, according to founder and CEO Andrew Nicol.
The key features to look for in retail order management software
Gartner’s analyst research and G2’s buyer-review data describe the same core capabilities from different vantage points. Gartner defines the category at the analyst level: three mandatory features that any legitimate distributed order management (DOM) system has to have, including order orchestration, enterprise inventory, and end-to-end order visibility.
G2’s category criteria, drawn from what real buyers evaluate, break each of those down into the more granular, practical capabilities you’ll likely see listed on a vendor’s feature page. They cover the workflows and connections retailers should expect beneath each one, including multichannel routing and returns, real-time stock visibility, consolidated channel data, bottleneck detection, fulfillment integrations, and reporting.
1. Order orchestration
Gartner defines order orchestration as optimizing order routing and inventory allocation, determining the best fulfillment location based on service level and cost.
G2’s buyer criteria break that down into two practical capabilities to look for:
- Can it route, process, and handle returns for every sales channel and fulfillment center the same way? The system should treat an order the same way whether it came from your online store, a marketplace, or a register—routing it, processing it, and handling any resulting return through one consistent workflow.
- Does it automatically detect bottlenecks in the fulfillment process? The system should flag where orders are getting stuck before it becomes a service failure.
Shopify’s order routing applies rules in sequence to automatically assign online orders to fulfillment locations. The default setup tries to keep the order within the destination market, minimize split fulfillments, and ship from the closest eligible location. You can change the order of those rules, prioritize particular locations, or use location metafields such as warehouse capacity and fulfillment speed for more advanced routing.
Once the order’s assigned, Shopify also supports changing its fulfillment location, splitting or merging fulfillments, and fulfilling only part of an order. Shopify POS can turn stores into fulfillment nodes by letting staff prepare ship-from-store and pickup orders, while online and in-person orders can be accessed for refunds or exchanges from the POS order record.
Shopify Flow can extend that orchestration with workflows tailored to your business operation. Mandaue Foam, which sells online and through 28 physical stores, created a workflow that notified a location carrying the ordered product as soon as an online order was placed.
They’ve since seen a 222% increase in online orders and a 16% increase in returning customers, since orders are now fulfilled faster and more reliably.
Mejuri, the jewelry retailer, on the other hand, shows what more advanced routing can achieve. They replaced their custom OMS with Shopify, which met 80% of their order management and routing requirements through standard features while leaving room for extensions through fulfillment APIs.
They began routing UK orders through their London store instead of sending products back through Toronto, cutting delivery times from seven to nine days to one to two days and reducing monthly shipping costs by more than $100,000. The brand has since expanded store fulfillment to five North American locations.
“The platform has improved cross-functional collaboration through features like order timelines, notes, and tags. We have better visibility across teams and can make decisions faster,” says Rohit Nathany, chief digital officer.
2. Enterprise inventory
Gartner describes enterprise inventory as available-to-promise and available-to-ship visibility across the entire supply chain, with inventory allocated based on on-hand, in-process, or in-transit stock.
As before, G2’s buyer criteria break that down into two practical capabilities to look for:
- Does it give real-time stock visibility across every inventory source, not just the warehouse? A system that only tracks warehouse stock will still let customers order items that are out of stock at a store, in transit, or reserved for another channel.
- Does it consolidate data across marketplaces, POS systems, and every other channel feeding into the same inventory pool? Your inventory numbers should be identical wherever they’re pulled from.
Simon Pearce ran three separate systems, including ecommerce, point of sale (POS), and business to business (B2B), all bolted onto an outdated enterprise resource planning (ERP) system. Inventory updated only once a day, leaving store staff unable to confidently tell a customer whether an item was actually in stock. After consolidating retail, direct to consumer (DTC), and wholesale onto Shopify’s unified commerce platform, inventory moved from daily batch updates to real-time tracking across every channel.
“Publishing a product or updating product details shows up on the web for customers to see, in our customer service team’s UI, and in the point of sale,” says Kyle Tuttle, director of technical products.
“It’s one update that hits all channels, which gives the team more confidence about where a product can be found, whether it’s in a specific store or warehouse or anywhere else.”
Shopify POS syncs orders and inventory across retail locations, the online store, and other active sales channels. In your Shopify admin, you can also see inventory states as available, committed, unavailable, on hand, or incoming.
3. Order visibility
Gartner’s third mandatory capability is order visibility: tracking an order throughout the supply chain and communicating its status to the systems, teams, and customers that need it. The order record should stay intact as payment is processed, inventory is allocated, items are split between locations, fulfillment begins, delivery starts, or a return is made.
According to G2, that means two things:
- Does it integrate with distribution software so order status updates automatically? Your staff and customers shouldn’t have to manually check a separate shipping platform to find out where an order actually stands.
- Can it turn order activity into useful reporting? G2 expects retail distributed order management (DOM) systems to identify fulfillment bottlenecks and include dashboards and analytics.
Shopify brings order activity into a central Orders view, where you can search and filter by criteria such as payment status, fulfillment status, return status, sales channel, and date. Each order also has a timeline recording its detailed history, including payment events, internal comments, cancellations, restocking, and refunds.
Anián works directly with FedEx to ship their products, using Easyship to keep order and shipping data synced between Shopify and the FedEx app. On the reporting side, Paul Long, president of Anián, says the company relies on Shopify’s dashboards to pull the numbers that matter for both operations and accounting.
“Shopify’s reports and visualizations are awesome,” he says. “We work with a number of different accounting firms, so being able to pull relevant data, like our cost of inventory, is very helpful.”
Between the two, Anián has a live view of where an order stands and a historical view of how their fulfillment operation is performing.
Blu Technology, meanwhile, shows the value of bringing marketplace orders into the same operational view. Before using Shopify Marketplace Connect, their team had to manage separate dashboards for channels such as Amazon and Walmart.
Marketplace Connect brought product listings, orders, fulfillment, inventory, shipping, and channel reporting into Shopify, where the team could track and fulfill marketplace orders alongside its other sales. Blu Technology estimates that this centralization saves 10 person hours each week.
“Shopify is our day-to-day breath. We sell on Amazon, we sell in Walmart and on Shopify’s Shop app, and a couple miscellaneous channels. Everything flows right into Shopify,” says Corbin Collet, president and CEO.
What’s the best order management software for retail?
The right choice depends on how many locations you run, how many channels you sell on, and how much of your fulfillment you handle in-house versus through a 3PL. So, the answer is: It depends.
But Gartner’s Distributed Order Management market lists Shopify alongside vendors like Fluent Order Management, SAP Order Management Services, and Microsoft Dynamics 365 Commerce as one of the platforms retailers evaluate in this category.
Use those lists to build an OMS shortlist:
Do you need a separate OMS?
Start by comparing your requirements with what your commerce platform already handles across the three capabilities above: orchestration, enterprise inventory, and order visibility.
For many retailers, Shopify already covers much of that ground:
- Mandaue Foam uses Shopify Flow to notify one of its 28 stores carrying the ordered product, so the location can process the order without headquarters manually coordinating the handoff.
- Mejuri replaced their custom OMS with Shopify, which met 80% of their order management and routing requirements through standard features.
- Simon Pearce brought retail, ecommerce, and B2B onto one platform, replacing once-daily store inventory updates with real-time visibility.
- Blu Technology centralized their Amazon and Walmart orders, inventory, shipping, and channel reporting in Shopify Marketplace Connect, saving an estimated 10 person-hours each week.
Shopify brings order management, inventory, shipping, delivery, returns, and refunds into the same platform. You can view orders in one index, track inventory across multiple locations, route fulfillment work, manage pickup and local delivery, and process returns and exchanges without automatically adding a standalone OMS.
The examples above show why the first step should be a gap analysis.
“Engage with relevant stakeholders, such as industry experts, policymakers, and practitioners, to gain insights into practical gaps and real-world needs,” says Aaron Orendorff, previously the editor in chief of Shopify Plus, now the VP of marketing at Common Thread Collective.
Can teams find orders that need attention?
Look for filters, alerts, saved views, and clear ownership of the next step. Your teams should be able to search by factors such as fulfillment status, delivery method, destination, or product and then act without reconstructing the order history across several systems.
Shopify’s order index lets teams filter, sort, search, tag, and add notes to orders. You can create saved views for the work they check repeatedly and monitor delivery status to follow up on failed or delayed deliveries.
Does it cover what happens after checkout?
Evaluate the entire order life cycle rather than stopping at shipment. The system should support edits, cancellations, partial fulfillment, refunds, exchanges, return tracking, restocking, and customer notifications while preserving a clear record of what happened.
Shopify lets teams edit orders before shipment and manage self-serve returns, return rules, shipping status, restocking, fees, refunds, and exchanges from the platform.
Can it remove manual processes meaningfully?
Ask which triggers, conditions, and actions your teams can configure. Can the software automatically tag and route orders, update inventory, notify staff, or surface exceptions? Just as importantly, can teams review workflow runs and trace the history of an individual order when something goes wrong?
Shopify Flow can automate fulfillment and inventory workflows, while bulk actions let teams fulfill, request fulfillment, cancel orders, and print shipping documents at scale.
For example, after expanding across several international sites, Rest’s operations team was manually filtering and categorizing growing order volumes, while staff had to manage inventory data by hand during peak periods.
They used Shopify Flow to automate inventory management and order processing. Rest reduced manual management by 40%, cut staffing needs for multisite management by 20%, and reported a 30% reduction in operational complexity.
“Our Australian and US sites are two separate systems, allowing us to easily view orders and inventory in different regions, all under the same brand,” says Rick, Rest’s cofounder.
Retail order management software FAQ
What is the difference between CRM and OMS?
A customer relationship management (CRM) system tracks customer interactions, sales activity, and service history. An order management system (OMS) coordinates orders across multiple channels, from purchase through fulfillment, delivery, returns, and exchanges. The two can integrate to give customer service teams both customer context and current order information.
Is RMS an ERP system?
Not necessarily. A retail management system (RMS) typically covers retail-specific functions such as POS, ecommerce, inventory, orders, customers, and store reporting. An ERP has a broader remit, managing core business functions such as finance, procurement, supply chain, and human resources.
What is the difference between ERP and OMS?
An ERP manages company-wide processes and financial records. An OMS specializes in capturing, routing, tracking, and helping fulfill customer orders. An OMS may connect with ERP, warehouse management, payment, and shipping carriers while handling the operational decisions surrounding each order.
What is OMS and IMS?
An OMS manages the order journey, while an inventory management system (IMS) handles inventory tracking, stock movements, and inventory levels. Inventory management software tells the OMS what stock is available; the OMS decides how that stock should be allocated and fulfilled.
Which OMS is best?
The right order management system depends on your channels, locations, fulfillment network, routing rules, and existing technology. Gartner Peer Insights lists vendors including Shopify, Manhattan Associates, IBM, Fluent Commerce, and others.
Shopify may suit retailers that want unified commerce and native order, inventory, returns, and fulfillment tools; more complex networks may require a dedicated distributed OMS. The best fit should reduce operational friction and boost customer satisfaction without creating another disconnected system.
