Executive summary
- What: Shopify POS v11.14 lets authorized staff look up an identified customer and see the items in that customer's abandoned online checkout.
- Why: It closes a long standing gap in clienteling, where the associate on the floor had no visibility into what the shopper had already chosen online.
- Who: Retailers running POS alongside an online store, particularly Plus merchants with assisted selling or high abandoned checkout volume.
What changed
Shopify POS can now surface a customer's online cart on the POS cart screen. The mechanics are worth knowing before you promise the capability to a store team. An abandoned checkout is created when a shopper enters an email address during online checkout and leaves it incomplete for ten minutes. Once that record exists, adding the customer's email to the POS cart displays an Items in online cart note. POS shows up to three products with a View all option, and staff can add them to the in store cart.
Four conditions must all hold: the customer is identified, has an email address, has an eligible abandoned checkout, and the POS session has location context. The feature is off by default. Enable View abandoned checkouts under Settings, Users, Roles, POS Roles, Customers. Only cart contents are exposed, never browsing history. Online carts expire 90 days from creation or 30 days from last update, and adding items to the POS cart does not close the abandoned checkout, so the note persists after purchase.
Why it matters
Assisted selling works when the associate knows something useful about the person in front of them. Until now that knowledge stopped at order history, which describes what a customer bought rather than what they are deciding between. The live consideration set changes the opening from a generic offer of help to a specific question about the two jackets the shopper compared last night.
It also recovers demand that email recovery flows never reach, because the shopper is in your store rather than waiting on a reminder. The permission itself deserves a deliberate decision. Cart contents are customer data, and granting the role across a franchise network or a seasonal workforce is a different risk posture from granting it to trained clienteling specialists.
Role-specific impact
- Marketers: abandoned checkout recovery now has an in store path, so attribution models crediting the recovery email should account for baskets completed at the counter.
- Developers: no build work is required, but confirm the v11.14 rollout across every device and check that custom POS extensions or abandoned checkout reporting still behave once staff convert those checkouts in person.
- Store admins: own the permission. Decide which POS roles receive View abandoned checkouts, brief staff on raising the topic without sounding like surveillance, and confirm location context on every device.
Use-case example
Real-world scenario
A Plus furniture retailer with 18 showrooms sees most customers research online and buy in person. Roughly 2,400 abandoned checkouts a month carry an email address, and the recovery email sequence converts about 9 percent. After enabling the permission for showroom specialists only, an associate greeting an identified customer sees the sofa configuration and fabric selected at home, then walks them to that piece. A realistic target is converting an additional 2 to 3 percent of those checkouts in store, tracked as POS orders containing at least one item from the online cart. Run it for a quarter against showrooms where the permission stays off.
Implementation checklist
- Confirm every POS device is running v11.14 or later.
- Decide which POS roles hold View abandoned checkouts, and record the reasoning as a data access decision.
- Enable the permission under Settings, Users, Roles, POS Roles, Customers for those roles only.
- Verify location context is set for each POS session, or the online cart will not display.
- Test end to end with a staff account, an identified test customer, and a deliberately abandoned online checkout.
- Write a short script for associates on referencing the online cart naturally, and add it to store onboarding.
- Brief staff that the Items in online cart note persists after purchase, so it is not treated as outstanding work.
- Add a reporting view flagging POS orders that contain online cart items, so the lift is measurable.
FAQ
Q: Can staff see what the customer browsed but did not add to the cart?
A: No. Only the products in the eligible abandoned checkout are visible. Browsing history is not exposed in POS, and this permission does not extend to it.
Q: Why does the online cart note stay on screen after the customer buys those items in store?
A: Adding items to the POS cart does not complete or close the abandoned checkout in the admin. The record stays open until it expires, so no further action is needed in POS.
Resources
Adding a customer's online cart items to the Shopify POS cart
Need guidance? Talk to Makro.