Shopify POS Now Runs Stock Counts and Local Delivery

If your brand sells online and from its own stores, two jobs have always sat awkwardly between the shop floor and the admin: counting stock, and delivering an item the customer cannot carry home. On 28 September 2026 Shopify moved both into POS. Staff can now run stock counts on the floor and create local delivery orders at the counter. This guide covers what changed, what you need to use it, and the setup mistakes that make both features less useful than they should be.

Everything below is from Shopify's changelog, Help Centre and India pricing page, checked on 29 September 2026.

What did Shopify add to POS?

Two features, released the same day and with the same requirements.

Stock counts in POS. According to the changelog entry, "Shopify POS now lets store staff run cycle and full stock counts directly in POS, making it easier to count inventory on the sales floor while keeping planning, review, and approval in Shopify Admin."

Local delivery orders in POS. The second entry says "staff can now create local delivery orders at checkout in Shopify POS. When a customer can't take an item home, you can arrange delivery in the same sale."

What do you need to use them?

Both features need POS Pro and Shopify POS version 11.16 or later. Local delivery also needs local delivery already set up for the store's location.

POS Pro is available in India. Shopify's India POS pricing page lists it at Rs 7,000 a month per location, billed yearly, and includes inventory counts among its features. That is Shopify's published price at the time of checking, so confirm it for your own account before budgeting. The version requirement is easy to miss: if the POS app on a store's device has not been updated, the features will not appear there.

How do stock counts work in POS?

Planning happens in the admin, counting happens on the floor, and nothing changes in your inventory until someone approves it.

1. Create the count in the admin. Shopify says you "create and schedule a stock count, select the location where the count will take place, and choose the products to include."
2. It appears in POS at that location, under Products and then Stock counts.
3. Staff count "by scanning barcodes or entering quantities manually."
4. Review before applying. "Submitting a stock count from POS doesn't immediately update inventory quantities." Someone with the right permissions reviews the discrepancies and approves the adjustment.

That last step is the important design choice. A miscounted shelf does not overwrite your inventory the moment someone taps submit, which is exactly what happens when stores count on paper and someone types the totals straight into the admin.

Should you run cycle counts or full counts?

Both, for different jobs. Shopify supports both types in POS.

Full counts check everything at a location. They are thorough and disruptive, which is why most stores do them rarely, often before a financial year end or after a known problem.

Cycle counts check a small set of products on a rotating schedule. For a D2C brand with one or two stores, a sensible pattern is to count fast sellers and high value items often, and slow movers less often. The value is that errors are caught in weeks rather than discovered at the annual count.

Counts matter more when stock is shared between channels. When the website and the store sell from the same inventory, a wrong store count is also a wrong online count, and that is where overselling starts. We cover how shared inventory goes wrong in our guide to multiple warehouses without overselling.

How should you run your first count?

Small, on purpose. The first count is a test of your process, not a stocktake, so treat it that way.

1. Pick one category at one location, ideally something that sells steadily and has a manageable number of variants.
2. Count at a quiet hour. Items sold or returned while the count is running are the most common source of false discrepancies.
3. Review every discrepancy before approving. On the first run, do not approve the adjustment just because the numbers came back. Find out why each one differs.
4. Write down the causes. They usually fall into a few groups: stock received but not entered, returns accepted but not restocked, transfers between locations recorded late or not at all, damaged items left in inventory, and loss.
5. Fix the process that caused the largest group before the next count.

The causes are the valuable part. A discrepancy corrected by an adjustment comes back next month if the process that created it is unchanged. A receiving step that now happens in Shopify, or a returns routine that restocks correctly, stops it at the source.

Once the pilot runs cleanly, widen it to the rest of the location on a rotating schedule, then to the other stores. Keep the same approver per location, so there is always one person who knows what normal looks like for that store.

If a count reveals that online and in-store numbers drift apart between counts, that is not a counting problem. It points at how orders, returns or transfers are recorded, and it is worth fixing before festive season traffic multiplies it.

Why will scanning be slower than it should be?

Because of barcodes. Counting by scanning only works well when every variant has a barcode in Shopify that matches the label on the product. Missing, duplicated or outdated barcodes turn a scan into a manual search.

Before the first count, check that every variant you plan to count has a barcode, and that the barcode printed on the stock is the one in Shopify. Shopify added support for multiple barcodes per variant earlier this month, which helps when the same product arrives with a manufacturer barcode and your own label. We explain how to set that up in our guide to multiple barcodes on variants.

How do local delivery orders work in POS?

Staff add shipping to the cart. If the customer's address is inside one of your delivery zones, local delivery appears as an option. They select it, confirm the customer's phone number, add delivery instructions and complete the sale.

Three rules from the changelog shape how you use it:

• It uses your existing zones and rates. "Local delivery uses the delivery zones and rates you already set up for your online store." If those zones are wrong online, they are wrong in the store too.
• Everything physical in the order is delivered. "You can't mix local delivery with shipping or pickup in one order." A customer who wants to take one item and have the sofa delivered needs two orders.
• Delivery stays in the same country as the location. Gift cards and digital items can still be included.

Permissions changed too. Creating these orders needs the "Create shipping and delivery orders" permission, and fulfilling them needs "Fulfill shipping, pickup, and delivery orders." Check staff roles before launch, or the first delivery sale will stall at the counter.

For stores selling furniture, appliances, large decor or anything bought in bulk, this closes a real gap. Before, staff either took the order on a separate device, wrote the address on paper, or asked the customer to order again online. Each of those created a second record to reconcile later, and a chance for the delivery to be missed. Keeping the whole sale in one POS order removes both.

What should you set up before using either feature?

• Update POS on every device to 11.16 or later.
• Confirm POS Pro on each location that needs the features.
• Fix barcodes for every variant you will count.
• Review delivery zones and rates, since the store will now use the online settings. If you promise delivery windows online, make sure the store can keep them. Our guide to delivery promises covers how to set realistic ones.
• Set staff permissions for counting, approving adjustments, creating delivery orders and fulfilling them.
• Decide who approves counts. One named person per location, so submitted counts do not sit unreviewed.

If your online and store inventory already disagree before you start, fix that first. Counting on top of a sync problem just records the problem more accurately. Our inventory sync diagnostic helps you find where the mismatch starts.

Want your stores and website running on one inventory?

Free omnichannel review. Get in touch or email hello@exactwhy.com with the subject "POS review", your store URL and how many physical locations you run. We reply within 4 hours with what needs fixing before stock counts and local delivery will work cleanly for you.

Setup and integration. We clean up barcodes and inventory data, configure locations, delivery zones and staff permissions, and connect POS inventory to any warehouse or ERP system you already use.