Shopify Staff How-to Guide

Parts of Shopify

Shopify website backend

The admin side of the Shopify website where you can:

Manage inventory
Manage and process online orders from start to finish
Edit what is shown on the new RedCat.ca (info pages, staff picks, ticket listings, news)
View and print sales reports

Shopify app (iPad)

An app that is used to manage your inventory.

Shopify POS app (iPad)

An app that is used at the point of sale for transactions.

Adding & Editing Inventory

Using the Red Cat Discogs Importer App (iPad)

Open the Shopify app on the iPad.
First, check if the product is already in Shopify’s inventory. Go to the Products tab at the bottom of the screen click on the search bar. Scan or search for your item.

If the item shows up in the results: select it to go to the product page.
Go to Inventory > Quantity and adjust the amount.

If the product is not in Shopify’s inventory, you’ll create a new product using the Red Cat Discogs Importer app. Go to the “Store” tab at the bottom of the screen, and then to Apps > Discogs Importer.
Click “Scan” to scan a product barcode, or search for a product and click “Search Discogs”. If multiple versions show up, compare the listings to find the one you want. Select the product.
More options will show up for you to note the Condition, Quantity, Price, and Supplier. Once you've filled these out, click “Add Product” to create the product record.
You’re not done yet! In order to mark the product as available for sale in the POS or Online Store, you’ll need to update the Sales channel: Click “View Product” and your new Product Page will appear as a pop-up.
Go to Sales channels and apps, and select the sales channels where you want the product to be available for sale (e.g. Online Store and/or Point of Sale).
Save your changes! Now your new product will be available for sale. You continue adding additional products.

Adding products manually

Go to the Shopify app or log into the Shopify website backend
Go to the Products tab and click “+ Add product”
Fill in the name and price. You can always add more info later.
Under Product status, click to change from Draft to “Active”.
Under Sales channels and apps select the sales channels where you want the product to be available.
If you want to track inventory: Make sure you fill in the quantity for the item. Otherwise, uncheck “Track inventory”.
Under Product Type, select an option from within the list of Custom Types. Doing this enables items to be findable through the “Browse by” section on the website homepage.
Note: If you need to make a new custom product type, please do so with caution: Shopify won't let you delete an existing Custom Type (you can only rename it), or re-classify the item.
Under "Tags," add any applicable tags; see existing products for pointers around how tags are formatted. If using a desktop computer, you can search for tags easily.

Adding products with multiple options or variants

Create a new product
From the Product Page, scroll down to Options and select “This product has options, like size or color”
Under Option Name, from the drop-down, select the property that will differentiate the items (e.g. for T-shirts, “Size”) or type your own. This will show up on the website.
Under Option Values, start typing the different variations of the product (e.g. for shirts, “Small,” etc) and it will give you an option to add more values.
Once you add new options, a new section will appear below on the page called Variants where you can edit the details of each variant (price, stock, etc.) in more detail. For more details visit the Shopify Help Centre - Adding & Editing Variants.

Marking products on sale

Log into the Shopify backend or open the Shopify app.
Under the Products tab, search for or scan to pull up your desired product
Under Pricing, copy the original price to Compare at Price, and add the sale price under Price. Save your progress!

Adding a shortcut product button to the POS app

Go to the Shopify POS app.
From the tile grid, select Add tile > Product.
Search for the product you want to add, and click “Add to smart grid”. Click the “Done” button at the top of the grid to save.

Purchases & Discounts

Overall purchase process

Open the Shopify POS app.
Scan or search for items to add them to a new cart.
Check if the customer has any stamp cards or discounts to apply towards their purchase. Apply any discounts.
Once the total is finalized, click “Checkout”.
Ask the customer how they would like to pay. From Select Payment Option, choose the appropriate option. Note: To pay using more than one payment type, use the “Split Payment” button.
Run the transaction through your payment type of choice.
In the POS app, make sure to click “Mark as Paid” or “Done” to confirm. Ask if the customer would like their receipt printed, emailed or texted to them.

Selling gift cards

In the POS app, click the “Add gift card” button and select an amount.
Process checkout and payment normally.
Print a receipt for the customer, which will include the QR code and 16-digit code. Provide an email or text receipt if they wish using the POS buttons.
If customers want a physical gift certificate, take the gift card code from the printed receipt and attach to the gift certificate.
Note: Customers must have their gift card receipt (print, email or text) or code to redeem a gift card. Shopify won’t let the seller apply a gift card without this.

Applying stamp card discounts

Add items to cart.
If one stamp card is being redeemed: Select the “SC” tile button to apply an $11 discount to the cart.
If more than one card: Select “Apply discount” tile.

Go to Discount code tab. The code is “SC” for 1 stamp card ($11), “SC2“ for 2 stamp cards ($22) etc. The code will automatically apply to the cart total.
Note: If you are redeeming more than 5 stamp cards, use the “Amount ($)” discount setting and manually add in the discount's dollar value instead.

Applying other discounts

Add items to cart.
Select the “Apply discount” tile. Choose between taking off a set dollar amount, or a percentage. Fill in the amount and title and save. Continue with checkout.
Note: You cannot add more than one discount code to a purchase.

If a customer is eligible for multiple discounts: (e.g. stamp card + regulars discount), you must calculate the total value of the discount manually, and enter the amount as one discount.

Payment Types

Using multiple payment types

At checkout, under Payment method, select “Split payment”. You’ll be prompted to enter a value for each tender type. Continue with normal payment handling.

Cash, debit, credit card

At checkout, under Payment method, select desired payment type. Handle the payment through existing methods. Return to the POS app and click “Mark as Paid” or “Done” to finish the transaction.

Redeeming store credit

Note: Through POS only — store credit can’t be used towards online orders. Visitors will have to manually place orders over phone/email/in-person to redeem store credit.

At checkout, under Select payment option, select “Store credit.” If the amount of credit is less than the total you’ll have to do a split payment.
Record using existing ledger system, and click "Mark as paid" in the POS app.

Redeeming gift cards

If the gift card was bought using the old system:

At checkout, from Select payment option, select “Gift Card (old)”. If the amount of credit is less than the total you’ll have to do a split payment.
Record the gift card amount change using existing ledger system. Click “Mark as paid” in the POS app.

If their gift card was bought using Shopify.

Make sure the customer has the gift card's QR code or 16-character code ready.
At checkout, from Select payment option, select “Gift Card”. Use the scanner to scan the QR code, or type in the number. It will inform you of the balance.
Proceed with the rest of the transaction.

Cash payouts (from buying used LPs/CDs)

Use existing manual ledger system to track.

Issuing Store Credit & Returns

Store credit

Use the existing manual ledger system to track.

Returning items bought with Shopify (in-store OR online)

From the POS app, click on the icon with three lines in the bottom corner. Click on Orders from the menu.
Click the “Sorting by” button to toggle between POS and online orders.
Search for an order using the order number (found on the bottom of the customer's receipt).
Select the order, then click the “Return” button.
Select the item(s) that are being returned and click “Next”.
Confirm the payment type that is being refunded, and click the “Refund" button. You can issue the refund to a Shopify gift card, or to the original payment method(s).

Note: Returning an item adds it back into inventory. If it’s a damaged product, it will have to be removed from inventory manually using the Shopify app.

Returning items bought from the old store

Since this order won’t be in the Shopify system, this will have to be handled manually without the POS app. Run the payment through the existing payment processor.
Update inventory in the Shopify app manually.

Editing the Website

Editing the Staff Picks product collection

From the Shopify website backend or Shopify app, navigate to Products > Collections > "Staff Picks".
From the collection, under the Products section, search for items by name, and click to add.
Note: only the first 4 items in the collection will show up on the homepage. The rest will be viewable after clicking “View all”.
To reorder: click on the “Sort” dropdown, make sure “Manually” is selected, and drag to rearrange. Your progress will be saved automatically.

Adding a Store Updates post

From the Shopify website backend or Shopify app, navigate to Sales Channels > Online Store > Blog posts.
Click “Add post” and add your title, content, short excerpt. Make sure to include an excerpt as this is what will be visible on the homepage. The full text will be viewable after clicking the post.
Note: Only the 3 most recent posts will show up on the homepage. If want to remove a post from the homepage but not delete it entirely, you can “unpublish” any posts that you don’t want to appear.

Fixing "Browse by Artist" name sorting

Browse by Artist is formatted according to the "primary-artist" tag in the product page. If an artist's name is sorted in the wrong place or formatted incorrectly, follow these steps.

One known situation: when there's a "The [X]" artist name AND multiple artists listed in the primary-artist tag, the artist name may show up incorrect (e.g. the tag "Pleasure Seekers The Featuring Suzi Quattro”). This is a result of the data import but can be manually fixed!

Make a decision about which artist you'd like to file the record under (e.g. in our case above, "The Pleasure Seekers", not "Suzi Quattro"). Note: the full list of artists can stay unchanged in the product title for customers.
When creating a new primary-artist tag, make sure the tag starts with the letter you want to sort the artist under (e.g. since we want to file "The Pleasure Seekers" under "P", we'll write it as "Pleasure Seekers The"). Note: The website will re-format "the [X]" names so it shows up as "The Pleasure Seekers" for customers under Browse by Artist.
In the product page, remove and replace the current primary-artist tag, making sure it follows the "primary-artist:[name]" format (e.g. "primary-artist:Pleasure Seekers The"). Saving and double-checking your work on the live site is key.

Everything else on the Homepage: Go to the Theme Customization page

From the Shopify website backend or Shopify app, navigate to Sales Channels > Online Store.
Click “Themes” from the sub-pages that show up below.
In the main page area, under “Current Theme”: click the “Customize” button. This will take you to a live preview where you can edit parts of the homepage.

Updating the Mixtape

From the Shopify website backend or Shopify app, navigate to Sales Channels > Online Store > Themes and click the “Customize” button.
From the live preview, on the left sidebar, click the triangle icon beside “Mixtape" to show all of the current songs.
To change a song, click on the title. From here, you can add the song title and artist, YouTube link, and staff member (e.g. “Dave’s Pick or “Staff Pick”). Save your changes.
Tip: The mixtape can fit up to 8 songs; the first 4 will show on the A-side and the others will show on the B-side.

Editing the announcement bar

From the Shopify website backend or Shopify app, navigate to Sales Channels > Online Store > Themes > “Customize”.
Click the triangle icon beside “Announcement bar” to expand. Click to edit the announcement text, optional web link and text label. We strongly recommend only having one announcement at a time.

Editing the image banner

Note: The website is designed so that one random image will load during a given visit. The photos do not automatically transition from one to another.

Prepare your image according to our image guidelines:

Aspect ratio of 16:5, high-quality, JPG or PNG format. Images can be cropped to the proper dimensions using an online cropping tool like https://croppola.com
Images should incorporate the tagline “Vancouver’s Community Record Store - Come on in!” if possible.
Text should be large enough that it is fairly easy to read on a phone screen.

From the Shopify website backend or Shopify app, navigate to Sales Channels > Online Store > Themes > “Customize”.
From the sidebar of the customize page, click “Image Banner”. To substitute an image, click “Change” and upload a new image. Add a succinct visual description of the image into the alt text field (255 characters max).

Managing concert ticket listings

From the Shopify website backend or Shopify app, navigate to Sales Channels > Online Store > Themes > “Customize”.
From the left sidebar, click the triangle icon beside “Sidebar” to expand and view all tickets. Click “Add ticket” and it will create a new entry.
Click the new ticket you’ve made to add/edit the ticket information: Artist, Date, Venue, Ticket Price, and Fee. Save your work before exiting.
From the sidebar, you can also hide tickets from view, rearrange the order of tickets, or delete tickets.

Editing store hours

From the Shopify website backend or Shopify app, navigate to Sales Channels > Online Store > Themes > “Customize”.
From the live preview, from the left sidebar, click on "Footer", which will open up settings.
From the bottom of the sidebar, click "Theme Settings" to open up even more settings. Under "Store Hours" you can edit the hours, and the changes will be reflected on both the website header and footer.

Editing all other website pages

From the Shopify website backend or Shopify app, navigate to Sales Channels > Online Store > Themes > “Customize”. Click on the page you want to edit and make your changes.
On “Policies and Shipping” page: Please do not delete the headings for “Selling and Trading Used LPs and CDs”, “Special Orders”, and “Concert Tickets”. On the homepage there are links to these sections, and deleting the heading will break these links.

Note: On a Shopify paid plan, you can send up to five different email newsletters per week, for a total of 2500 free emails sent each month. Beyond that it’s an extra $1 per 1000 emails. For more info about rates see the Shopify Help Center.

From the Shopify website backend, navigate to Marketing and click “Create campaign”.
From the pop-up, select “Shopify Emails.”
Select a template from the options and build our your email update.

For more tips, check out Best Practices for Shopify email.
You can exit the email builder anytime and pick up your draft where you left off.

Once you’re done click the “Review” button. From here you’ll be taken to another screen where you can schedule the email, or send right away.