Use case - Shopify POS
How to sell and scan event tickets with Shopify POS
Short answer
How do you sell and scan from Shopify POS?
Set up the event
Create the event and ticket types in the app. The same event backs both your online sales and anything you sell in person.
If it does not work
Someone makes a second event for door sales, and now there are two capacities and two attendee lists for one night. That is the exact split this setup exists to avoid, and you find out when the room is fuller than either list says.
How to undo it
Ticket types, dates and capacity stay editable on the event. A duplicate event created by mistake can be taken off sale by unpublishing its product from the Online Store sales channel.
Sell online and at the register
Customers buy online through your storefront, and staff can sell tickets in person through Shopify POS. Both draw from the same capacity.
If it does not work
Staff search for the event on the register and it is not there. The product behind it has to be available to the Point of Sale sales channel as well as the Online Store, and a product published to only one of the two is invisible on the other.
How to undo it
Sales-channel availability is a toggle in Shopify, so adding or removing Point of Sale takes seconds either way and never touches tickets already sold.
Scan at the door
At the event, scan the QR ticket from the Shopify POS check-in tile, or from the web check-in page if you are not on a POS device.
If it does not work
The tile is not on the POS home screen, and doors are in ten minutes. POS tiles are not added by installing an app: someone has to add one to the smart grid, either from Shopify POS with Add tile or in your admin under the POS app customization screen. Do this the day before, not on the night.
How to undo it
Check the wrong person in and the check-in screen has an undo, which puts that ticket back to unscanned so it still works when the right person arrives.
Watch check-ins in real time
Each ticket is single-use once scanned, and you see arrivals update live, so the door and the back office stay in sync.
If it does not work
The count stops moving while a queue is plainly forming outside. Each scan is recorded as it happens, so a door device that has lost signal fails those scans rather than storing them to send later. Move that device onto a hotspot and rescan the people it refused.
What you get
- A Shopify POS check-in tile for scanning at the door
- Sell tickets in person at the register
- Shared capacity and attendee list across online and in-person sales
- A web check-in page that runs in any phone browser
- Single-use tickets, with check-ins visible in real time
Do you need Shopify POS to run the door?
No. The web check-in page runs in any phone browser and needs no POS subscription, so a volunteer with their own phone can work the door. POS check-in is the better option if you already run POS, because door staff stay in one app instead of two.
In practice, reach for POS when you are also taking money at the door and the hardware is already standing there. Use the web page when you have borrowed phones, casual staff, or a venue where nobody is selling anything.
What stops the door selling a place the website already sold?
Both sides are drawing down the same number. The event is a Shopify product, so a sale rung up at the register and an order placed on your website reduce one inventory count, and there is no second system holding a different figure. Selling some online and some at the door normally means exactly that second system, and you find out the two disagreed at the worst possible moment.
You also get one attendee list rather than two, whether the ticket was bought a week ahead or ninety seconds ago at the register. The door cannot oversell the room, because the register is reading the same number the website is.
How scanning works at the door
Staff scan the QR code on each ticket, either from the check-in tile in Shopify POS or from the web check-in page using the phone camera. There is no separate scanning app for door staff to install and no scanner hardware to buy or charge.
Each code works once. A second scan of the same ticket flags rather than quietly admitting, which is the thing that stops one forwarded screenshot getting four people through. Check-ins update as they happen, so whoever is watching from inside can see arrivals without walking to the door to ask.
What happens if the venue wifi drops?
The door stops, so this is worth planning around rather than discovering. Basements, marquees, old buildings and any room with 400 people on the same network will lose you a connection at exactly the wrong moment.
Each check-in is recorded as it happens, which means the door device needs a live connection at the moment it scans. You can add the check-in page to a phone's home screen and it opens instantly, because the page itself is kept on the phone, but the scan still has to get through.
Three things make this a non-event. Test the signal standing at the entrance, not at the bar, before doors open. Keep one phone on a mobile hotspot as the fallback device. And export the attendee list to your phone beforehand, so if everything fails you can check names off a list and reconcile afterwards.
What if someone turns up without their ticket?
It happens at every event, usually because the confirmation went to a spam folder or the buyer sent someone else in their place. Attendee management has search, so staff look the person up by name or email on the door device and check them in without a code.
You can also resend a ticket from the admin while the person is standing there, which is often faster than arguing about which email address they used.
What you actually need on the night
Less than most people prepare. A charged phone per door, the event open on it, and a plan for what happens if the network goes. That is the whole list.
- A phone or POS device per entrance, charged, with the check-in screen already open
- At least one device on the web check-in page if the venue signal is unknown
- Someone with admin access who can resend a ticket on the spot
- A printed or offline copy of the attendee count, so you know the room number without a lookup
How do you sell a ticket to someone at the door?
Ring it up in Shopify POS the way you would any other product. Card, cash and whatever else you accept work as normal, and the sale lands in the same reporting as the rest of the night's takings, so you are not reconciling a separate ticketing float afterwards.
For the full flow from creating an event to sending the ticket, see how to sell event tickets on Shopify.