For brands with physical stores, managing inventory quantities is essential for generating revenue. You need enough stock on hand to sell products. If you don’t have the item your customer wants, then you can’t make the sale.
But managing stock quantities can feel like a complicated (but necessary) balancing act—even more so with supply chain disruptions and lead times on the rise. On one hand, you don’t want to dedicate too much store square footage to storing inventory or overstock certain items. On the other, you don’t want to risk understocking and potentially losing sales.
That’s where Shopify POS’s order fulfillment comes in. With Shopify POS, you’re not limited to only selling the stock you have in store. Rather than lose a sale to stockouts, you can close sales on-the-spot and ship purchases to customers from your warehouse or another store location that carries the item.
Shipping directly to customers is an easy way for Shopify retailers to confidently dedicate more store space to displaying products while maximizing retail store conversions.
What does it mean to ship to customer?
Ship to customer is a delivery method that lets shoppers browse and discover products in-store and then have purchases sent to any shipping address. This makes it easy for retailers to fulfill in-store orders from their warehouse and virtually eliminate the need to have inventory on hand for every product they sell.
With ship to customer, a retailer is no longer limited to selling products you have in stock. Sell products in-store and ship them to customers from a warehouse or another store location with inventory.
For retailers, shipping ensures they can continue selling even when they’re out of stock in stores. They can allocate less precious square footage to storing inventory, dedicate more store space to the showroom and displaying products, and send purchases to a customer’s shipping address from their warehouse.
Shipping is especially useful for retailers who sell large items, like furniture, or have limited square footage in their retail store’s stockroom. It’s also beneficial for retailers whose products have high turnover rates, making it challenging to continuously have inventory on hand.
For retail staff, shipping lets them easily sell products they don’t have in-store but carry at another store location or in their warehouse. Rather than lose the sale altogether, store staff can look up inventory availability in their point-of-sale (POS) system, like Shopify POS. Shopify POS allows staff to take payment in-store, and send an order confirmation and tracking information to the customer at in-store checkout. . Note this functionality is only available to retailers using Shopify POS Pro.
Rather than create another process altogether, shipping orders follow the same shipping logic as online orders and can be fulfilled the same way. All that makes shipping another powerful fulfillment tool that unifies the process of online shopping and physical stores, without adding operational complexity.
📌 GET STARTED: With Shopify, you can close sales for out-of-stock items and ship them to customers from your warehouse or another store with available inventory. To turn on ship to customer fulfillment, go to your Shopify admin.
Benefits of shipping products to a customer
Shipping ensures your store conversions stay high—even if you run out of inventory. When the transaction is complete, shipping sales are attributed to the physical store where the sale occurred and the store associate who placed the order.
Let’s dive into the benefits shipping offers both you and your customers:
Prevent stockouts from blocking sales
Stockouts can harm a retail store’s revenue. After all, if you have no products—how can you make sales?
With shipping, retailers can rest easy knowing that, if their store runs out of stock, they can still make sales and ship the items to customers from either their warehouse or another store location with inventory of that item.
Increase store conversions
Brands like Allbirds use buy in-store, ship to customer to keep store conversions high, despite carrying limited products and variants.
In fact, Allbirds uses ship to customer to transform its store into endless aisles. If a customer arrives at one of its store locations seeking an uncommon product—like a yellow pair of wool runners in size 14—an Allbirds store associate can process the transaction on the spot, take payment, and communicate with its warehouse to ship the shoes directly to the shopper.
Shipping allows for a much higher conversion than if we tell them to go back home and order it online.
Carry less stock on hand at stores
Retailers can use shipping to maximize their stockroom space. For example, furniture brand Kroft reserves most of its stockroom space for smaller items. Kroft displays larger items, like cabinets, in the showroom, and spare inventory is stored at the warehouse.
"With shipping, I can take orders in-store, fulfill the order from our warehouse, and ship the order directly to customers," explains Dustin Kroft, the brand’s founder.
“That’s huge for us because we’re not always going to have stock on hand—especially for larger items that take up a lot of space in our back store—but can still transact in-store and offer customers next-day delivery.”
Shipping helps retailers make the most of their square footage and embrace showrooming without losing sales to stock shortages. Showrooming is a practice where customers view products in a physical store but purchase them online, often at a lower price. By offering efficient shipping options, retailers can counteract this trend and capture sales even when items aren't immediately available in-store.
Attribute revenue to POS locations
Ship-to-customer provides retailers with a more comprehensive view of their stores' impact on sales. By connecting online and in-store channels through an integrated POS system, retailers can accurately attribute sales to the physical store locations where transactions are completed, rather than solely to the online store.
With ship to customer, sales reports show how much revenue your store really makes. You’ll understand the full value of each physical location and can allocate resources more effectively based on a store’s total influence on sales, not just its direct transitions.
Reward staff for in-store sales
When store staff close a sale using shipping, they're credited with making the sale in Shopify POS staff reports. This gives you a more complete picture of store staff’s performance.
Staff reports in Shopify POS count the sales they make using ship to customer toward important performance metrics, like average order value, items per order, and gross sales.
If you use a commission wage structure, staff can use shipping to make more sales and get rewarded. Review your staff reports and give kudos with confidence knowing they reflect the complete scope of your staff’s performance.
Convenient order fulfillment
Not all shoppers want to leave a store with products in hand. For example, if they’re purchasing a large piece of furniture, shipping helps them get their order without needing a vehicle or arranging transportation. They can simply find a product that matches their needs in-store, pay for it, and have it delivered to their shipping address.
If your customer is a tourist, opting for shipping ensures their luggage weight respects airline restrictions. They don’t need to pack items in their suitcase, and they can have the order shipped the same way an online order would.
How to ship to customers from your retail store
If you want to deliver products to in-store shoppers, there are some essential considerations and steps to take:
Choose a POS system
If you want to offer retail shoppers ship to customer fulfillment, you’ll need a POS system that can handle that. Shopify POS is one great option, especially if your ecommerce website is already on Shopify.
Shopify POS Pro subscribers can use ship to customer features, along with other upgraded functionality. Plus, it offers seamless integration with Shopify Shipping for discounted and efficient shipping options all in one place.
Configure your shipping settings
Once you know which POS you’ll use, you must set up the shipping settings. It’s important to consider who will pay for the shipping cost—are you planning to offer free shipping to in-store shoppers? If not, maybe you’ll offer flat-rate shipping for simplicity. Make sure these settings are updated in your chosen POS.
In Shopify POS, you can your staff profiles have the following permissions in their POS role set to Allowed if you want them to be able to do this:
- Checkout > Ship to customer
- Customers > Add customers > Manage customers
Build the customer’s cart
Once the shopper finds products they want to buy, store associates can add those items to their cart in Shopify POS, just like they would for a traditional sale.
💡 PRO TIP: If the product is out of stock at your store, select View Details to see if it is in stock at another location or warehouse and available to ship.
After the customer’s cart is created, store staff can select Ship all items in Shopify POS. Then they can select Add customer to either create a new customer or select an existing one to associate with the order.
If it’s a new customer, you’ll need to add their shipping address. If it’s an existing customer profile, the primary shipping address will automatically be used to fulfill the order. And if the customer wants the order shipped to another address, you can modify the shipping address for that order.
Select a shipping method
Next, you need to select how to ship the order. Shipping methods and rates are pulled from the shipping profiles you set up for your online store. You can take advantage of Shopify Shipping to save money, convert more buyers, and fulfill orders fast with built-in shipping software.
Ask the customer which shipping option they want to use, and select that. If you want to provide a custom shipping rate, like offering free shipping, you can do so by selecting Custom shipping rate.
📌 GET STARTED: Before offering shipping, ensure you’ve set up shipping profiles in Shopify admin. The shipping locations, rates, and methods you set up will be selectable when you select shipping, making checkout quicker.
Process the payment
When the customer is ready to pay, you just need to proceed to checkout and take payment like you normally would to complete the sale.
Fulfill the order and add shipment tracking
After you complete the sale, shipping orders are marked as unfulfilled in Shopify admin. Since the order wasn’t fulfilled in-person, you can fulfill the order the same way you would fulfill any online order that requires shipment.
This means packaging the item, coordinating with shipping carriers, and ensuring the item is delivered to the customer. It’s also a good idea to include a tracking number so customers can see when it will be delivered by the shipping carrier.
When a shipping order is processed, it’s marked as Unfulfilled in the Orders section of Shopify admin and can be fulfilled the same way regular online orders are.
Tips to make ship to customer more efficient
Now that you know how shipping works, let’s cover some tips to make using shipping a great experience for both your customers and your staff.
Determine which store locations will fulfill which orders
Shipping follows the same order fulfillment logic as online orders. With that in mind, it’s important that you determine which store location, fulfillment center, or warehouse you want to ship online orders from.
Small businesses may not have big distribution centers, which makes it easier to sort out the logistics. But if you have more than one store and multiple inventory locations, it can be a bit more time consuming to sort through these logistics while providing an exceptional customer experience.
The store locations or warehouses you set up to fulfill online orders will be the same that fulfill shipping orders.
Get started by first setting up fulfillment locations in Shopify admin. If there’s a particular store or warehouse that carries the bulk of your inventory, consider setting it as your top priority fulfillment location.
💡 PRO TIP: You may want the inventory at certain store locations to be reserved exclusively for in-person sales. In this case, prevent that store location from fulfilling online orders from Shopify admin.
Configure shipping profiles
Shipping profiles help you set shipping rates for specific products and charge different amounts based on where you’re shipping to and from. You can even set up shipping zones and rates for each store location or warehouse that fulfills shipping customer orders.
By default, each Shopify store is created with one general shipping profile that contains general shipping rates. But if you have multiple locations in different countries or regions, we recommend creating custom shipping profiles to ensure shipping costs and a product’s regional availability are accurate.
💡 PRO TIP: If you have multiple store locations, consider setting up shipping zones to specify which regions those stores will fulfill orders for. This ensures customers get the cheapest and fastest order fulfillment strategy available.
Add a shipping tile to your smart grid
To speed up your store’s checkout process for shipping orders, consider customizing the Shopify POS smart grid. You can do this by tapping Add tile on the Shopify POS home screen and then Action and Ship all items.
Adding a ship-to-customer tile to your smart grid helps store associates select it as a delivery method in fewer clicks and check out customers quicker.
Make a habit of creating customer profiles
Shopify’s customer profiles allow retailers to save shoppers’ names and contact information—and track customer loyalty at the same time.
This is especially useful for shipping because, rather than manually adding their contact information and shipping address, you can add their customer profile to the order and those details are pulled automatically.
💡 PRO TIP: Customer profiles also store shoppers’ online and in-store purchase history, average transaction value, total lifetime value, and more. Use customer profiles to build segmented email lists and fuel your retention marketing.
Use shipping to make sales even when you’re out of stock
One of the biggest challenges retailers with physical stores face is inventory management. Ensuring your store has enough inventory on hand to fulfill demand is essential for making sales.
But with shipping options for in-store shoppers, retailers can worry less about managing inventory between multiple stores and warehouses, and focus more on what matters: their customers.
Shipping helps you get customers the products they want without having to wait, while also helping retailers dedicate more of their store’s square footage to displaying products—rather than storing them.
The result is a unified shopping experience that blends the experience of discovering products in-person with the convenience of having them shipped to your home. And Shopify POS helps retailers of all sizes deliver on the promise of ship to customer.
Read more
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- 5 Strategies to Future Proof Your Brick-and-Mortar Store
- Lightspeed vs Shopify POS: The Best of All Lightspeed Alternatives
Ship to customer FAQ
What is a ship to customer?
Ship to customer is the person or business that the product is shipped to. This is usually the person or business who will be the end user of the product.
How do I ship something to a customer?
- Choose a POS system that offers ship to customer, like Shopify POS
- Configure your shipping settings
- Build the customer’s cart
- Select a shipping strategy
- Process the payment
- Fulfill the order and add shipment tracking
What is the difference between ship to customer and sold to customer?
Ship to customer is the person or business that the product is shipped to. This is usually the person or business who will be the end user of the product. Sold to customer is the person or business who is purchasing the product and is responsible for payment. This may or may not be the same person or business as the ship to customer.
