Pickup, Returns and Store Credit for Single-Store Shopify Retailers

This section covers the jobs where your counter and your website have to agree about one customer and one order. A web order picked up at the shop. A web order brought back for a different size. A refund that stays in the store as credit. A gift card bought online and spent at the till. A deposit on a special order. Each one touches both channels, and each one goes wrong in a predictable way when a setting is missed.

Every guide here is written for a single store: one register, one owner doing the marketing, no developer. The answers come from Shopify’s own help pages, read the day each guide was updated, with the source listed on every page. Where Shopify’s built-in route is wrong for a small shop, the guide says so and names the kind of tool that fits better.

Where to start

• Pickup missing at checkout? Start with local pickup not showing. Five causes, in the order to check them.
• Customer at the counter with a web order to swap? Read exchanging an online order in store. The POS Orders screen holds online orders too, and exchanges need POS Pro.
• Want refunds to stay in the shop? Shopify has native store credit online and in POS. Store credit in Shopify covers setup, refunds and the limits.
• Selling gift cards in both channels? Gift cards online and in store covers products, POS tiles and expiry rules.
• Taking deposits or running layaway? Deposits, layaway and partial payments shows the POS partial payment flow and the draft order route.

Two settings that unlock most of this

Two switches come up again and again in these guides. Check them first:

1. Store credit refunds in POS. Turn on Allow orders to be refunded to store credit in the Point of Sale channel settings. Without it, POS returns go back to the original payment.
2. Gift cards as a POS payment method. On each device, open POS Settings > Checkout > Payments and turn on Gift cards.

Canadian and US stores follow the same steps. Where currency (CAD or USD), sales tax (GST/HST, PST or state sales tax) or consumer law changes the answer, the guide flags it.