Welcome to what’s new on Shopfront for January 2023 (and December 2022). We’ve got quite a number of changes that were held back in the last couple of months until the festive season was finished and they’re now available!

Note: Some of these changes are gradually rolling out to stores, some of the changes may not be received in your store for a couple of weeks

Major Features

New Account & Billing UI

As the new year comes in, so does a new UI, the Account & Billing section has had a redesign to be easier and clearer to use.

The new UI allows for the update of payment details separate to the update of plans, makes it easier to define the registers & outlets you’re using and provides additional information on features available on each plan (and why you might not be able to downgrade).

We’ve also added the ability for you to put your Shopfront account “on ice” for when you don’t need active access to Shopfront, but you do need your data to remain on Shopfront’s servers and not be deleted.

Fulfilment API

We’ve also released our brand new Fulfilment API. For developers this provides an easy way for their integrations to inject orders into Shopfront for picking, packing and collecting. For users it provides consistency and an easy flow no matter where the orders come from.

If you’re using an integration that has implemented the Fulfilment API, you’ll now see a new tab at the bottom of the sell screen called Fulfilment, by when you receive an order you’ll get a notification and all existing orders can be found there, simply press the order you want and then follow the prompts to process the order.

If you’re a developer and want to know how to start using this, check out our how-to guide in the developer documentation.

Minor Features

• Integration view model now has a cross in the top right to close the dialog,
• Minor styling changes to location selector to be cleaner and improve usability,
• Returns now appear in the purchase history on the product view page,
• Surcharging schedules now default to using your default tax rate,
• Surcharging schedules no longer require a page refresh to activate / deactivate the surcharge if it has been modified for the current time,
• We now inform you when your computer’s time is significantly different to our server’s current time,
  • If your computer has the incorrect time it can lead to your register closure not balancing
• Additional information safe names can no longer start with a number,
• Cleaned up the express stocktake page when scanning products with a case quantity of one,
• Improved usability of location selector,
• Associating a product on an external stocktake now shows the status of products when searching,
• Improved the visibility of order references in the sales history,
• Prevented changing the type of additional information fields after they have been declared to prevent data loss,
• Added setting to specify how the customer display should be opened (using a kiosk window – default, or using a popup),
• Adjusted routing to allow stores to find the UUID of the outlet currently being edited through the Registers & Outlets page,
• Additional information can now be viewed from the product details panel on the sell screen,
• A warning now appears when you attempt to delete a product which is on a promotion,
• Selecting keys in the product history revision report no longer closes the select options allowing you to select multiple keys easily,
• Pressing the product’s image on the product details in the sell screen displays a larger image,
• Improved usability for the touch numbers when zooming in or using high DPI displays,
• Product revision history report now ignores temporary products,
• If a line on an external stocktake matches multiple products you’re now able to see the all of the products it matches to,
• Added ability to create products (instead of just associate them) when scanning a not found barcode on the order edit page,
• Products now request price when they have no price points set instead of defaulting to $0,
• [IBA] Added support for Super Store promotions,
• [ILG] Cleaned up settings terminology,
• [Hump Club] The customer’s member / mobile number is now displayed while active for the sale,
• [Top Drops] Prevented the integration from losing access when not used for more than two weeks,
• [Xero] Supplier invoices now have the option to be sent to Xero as either Authorized (default) or Draft,
• [Developer] New GraphQL route to view sold & redeemed gift card movements over a period,
• [Developer] Minor styling changes to improve usability

Bug Fixes

• Sync no longer ignores upload queue if the queue takes longer than 10 seconds to process, leading to incorrect register closures for huge amount of offline data uploads,
• Prevented a force sync from being required when the first sync in the sync workers lifecycle fails,
• Viewing statements in dark mode no longer display black boxes in a number of locations,
• Selecting a quick menu option when a blocker (are you sure you wish to leave message) is in place no longer prevents you from leaving the page,
• Fixed touch numbers not working seemingly randomly due to invalid random ID on display,
• Fixed virtual list scrolling in a number of locations,
• Adding a customer to the sale while an integration frame is open no longer crashes the sell screen UI,
• Product wizard no longer caches prices from previous creations leading to incorrect prices being created for a product when multiple products are created in a row (may require your product page rules to be reset),
• Adding the sale table to the customer display idle screen no longer crashes the customer display,
• Printing A4 reports no longer crashes the page on Canary stores,
• Statements that contain both current and overdue amount without using statement periods show a line between the current and the overdue invoices,
• Changing the case quantity from one to another amount and only having a single Outlet no longer results in the cost field appearing with the incorrect amount,
• Pressing the close customer display button now correctly closes the customer display,
• Removed the grouping checkbox when there was no group selected in everyday tickets,
• Forced the user to wait until all of the tickets have loaded when selecting a group in everyday tickets,
• Prevented an error when running sales reports if case text setting is set to a number,
• Refreshing the advanced product import no longer loses styling,
• Cancelling a sale / removing the last product no longer shows the last previously successful sale on the customer display,
• Sales keys can now be saved when a key exists that was created by a revoked integration,
• Changing the sale name of an additional information field no longer removes all of the data stored for that field,
• Placeholders on the receipt template edit page are now visible for the Total Items and Normal Price fields,
• Promotions which contain a deleted product no longer crash,
• Reduced the number of page renders across the POS system,
• Assigning tags to products through the assignment page correctly assigns the tag instead of only updating the local database,
• Performing a sale while offline with a customer created while offline no longer results in a failed upload,
• Clicking on the month of the date picker no longer automatically closes the calendar and instead displays the month picker,
• Searching for actions in the sale key edit page have the correct height when the options are over multiple lines,
• Receipts that contain deleted users no longer show the user’s name as “Shopfront” but instead as the user’s name,
• Improved parsing of tags in the product revision history,
• Prevented an API user from being the last administrator user, at least one user with credentials is required to be an administrator (no role),
• When duplicate barcodes are found when scanning a product in the sell screen, you’re now presented with a dialog to select which one is correct instead presuming a single is correct,
• Prevented an error when viewing an invoice in the Accounts & Billing section which was no generated from Shopfront,
• Public notes now appear in the email body by default when sending an order when the format is not inline,
• [ALM] Order confirmation log is no longer missing gridlines,
• [ALM] Credit notes no longer attempt to send to ALM via i-orders,
• [ALM] Wait for ALM message is no longer displayed if you’ve sent an order and don’t have sending via i-orders enabled,
• [ILG] Errors after sending an order no longer show all previous errors in the log,
• [ILG] Invalid supplier codes (less than 7 digits) now show the correct error message when sending orders,
• [Developer] Fixed numerous broken hyperlinks in documentation,
• [Developer] Adding columns in the middle of a table through the embedded API no longer results in a rendering error,
• [Developer] Improved TypeScript typings of Embedded API bridge,
• [Developer] Pressing the back button when going from the home page to the documentation page for the developer documentation no longer prevents you from using the back button in the browser

Welcome to what’s new on Shopfront for November 2022. With Christmas upcoming we’re winding down releases and instead focusing on system stability (we’re still hard at work over the Christmas period, with a large number of features and fixes being held back until January).

Note: Some of these changes are gradually rolling out to stores, some of the changes may not be received in your store until early next year

Minor Features

• Added manual changes to loyalty points into the security centre,
• Generally improved the styling of dark mode on most pages,
• Account & Billing redesigned for a simpler flow and provides additional clarity of plans and add ons,
• [Developer] Release new Idempotent requests functionality,
• [Xero] Added ability for supplier invoices to be optionally sent to Xero as a draft

Bug Fixes

• Prevented the creation of promotions which contain invalid Outlet IDs,
• Prevented a duplicate sale being created when a sale starts uploading and a new page is opened at the same time,
• Deleting an unlocked customer group through the UI now correctly deletes it from the server,
• [ILG] Order error logs are now attempted to be retrieved multiple times before giving up after sending an order,
• [Xero] Pressing the create new account button no longer loses your unsaved changes

Welcome to what’s new on Shopfront for October 2022. We’ve got a number of minor changes, a new feature for ILG customers.

November will come with a number of changes and will then slow down in December, instead having changes focused on reliability and performance.

Note: Some of these changes are gradually rolling out to stores, all stores are expected to have received them in the next couple of weeks.

Major Features

ILG Ordering

Ordering directly out of Shopfront to ILG has arrived! If you’ve got ILG integrated, you can start using it straight away. Simply head to Setup > Integrations and press the Settings button for the Independent Liquor Group integration and enable the Send ILG invoices setting.

Once enabled, whenever you press the Send button in Shopfront for an ILG order it will be automatically sent to the ILG warehouse, preventing the need for manually processing your order to ILG.

Minor Features

• Customer group and price list columns added to the full customer export,
• Improved how a number of pages look on small devices such as mobile phones,
• Added returns to the product purchase history,
• [Developer] Classification and supplier product assignment pages now trigger the PRODUCT_UPDATED webhook,
• [Developer] Importing products from a CSV now triggers the PRODUCT_CREATED webhook,
• [Developer] Importing customers from a CSV now triggers the CUSTOMER_CREATED webhook,
• [Developer] Added new authentication method for the Embedded API,
• [Developer] Sending orders to all suppliers now triggers the ORDER_SENT webhook for each order which gets created,
• [ILG] Promotion names are now nicer,
• [Xero] Credit notes for transferees now appear with the transferee set to the transferee’s name instead of Shopfront,
• [ALM] Products which fail to send via i-orders due to not having a supplier code are now shown in the ALM log

Bug Fixes

• Prevented empty menu categories from appearing due to having partial permissions,
• Fixed normal price showing the discounted price when a receipt is reprinted from the sales history,
• Adding a note to the register closure and then leaving and returning to the page no longer prevents you from submitting the register closure

Welcome to what’s new on Shopfront for September 2022. We’re rolling out a couple of major changes to stocktaking and price calculations to make your data even more accurate.

Note: Some of these changes are gradually rolling out to stores, all stores are expected to have received them in the next couple of weeks.

Major Features

Advanced Stocktake Confirmation

In order to clarify and guarantee correctness, Shopfront will now ask for confirmation on calculation of stock-on-hand when Shopfront cannot automatically determine the actual stock count with 100% accuracy.

Typically, these events occur when counting your stock live whilst doing sales, especially if stock is in multiple locations within your store.

If Shopfront believes any stock count may be incorrect, it will display the new confirmation screen after the stocktake is completed, but before the stocktake is applied.

You’ll still be able to view your variance and modify your stock count on the finalise screen before applying the stocktake.

Promotion and Price List Calculation taking into account country-specific price rules

Shopfront has introduced a new setting, Price Rounding Mode. This setting allows you to define how Shopfront should handle prices when the calculation would drop to more decimal places than the currency you sell in supports (e.g. price calculation would require three decimal places, but you sell only to two decimal places).

It features two options, Round and Redistribute. By default stores will run on Redistribute mode. For examples and further information, click on the question mark next to the setting in the General Setup.

Minor Features

• Improved speed of Product Revision History Report,
• Reduced the amount of times Shopfront accesses the hard drive when indexing to improve speed,
• Added ID columns to sale reports,
• Added new debug levels so less information is required to be logged unless specified,
• Added ability to group by categories for inventory at date report,
• [Developer] Unparking sales now fire a new SALE_UNPARKED webhook event

Bug Fixes

• Prevented loyalty points appearing in sales reports when there is no customer attached to the sale,
• Fixed colour of report dashboard pie graphs,
• Prevented statements from displaying an Oh No page when no columns are enabled for the actions component,
• Grouped user dashboard reports can now show and hide groupings,
• Added ability to define advanced promotions as one or more when multiple criteria exist,
• Gift Card creation source link is more precise for old sales,
• Integrated payments which fail to reverse are no longer prevented from attempting to reverse again,
• Deleting a product while the everyday tickets page is currently open (and the product is waiting to be printed) now shows a toast when you go to export the tickets

Welcome to what’s new on Shopfront for August 2022. We’ve got a large number of bug fixes and a couple of small features this month.

Note: Some of these changes are gradually rolling out to stores, all stores are expected to have received them in the next couple of weeks.

Minor Features

• New sale key to increase the quantity of a product by the scanned barcode quantity,
• Added ability to analyse all outlets when generating an order by reorder points,
• Search indexing can now be customised to improve the memory usage and performance of the search, especially on lower-end devices or stores that contain 30,000+ customers or products

Bug Fixes

• Generating an order by sales & reorder points while analysing all outlets no longer fails,
• Adding a tag to products from the classifications page now correctly adds into the revision history,
• Fixed some cost revisions not being used in inventory at date report,
• Adding a gift card and a normal product to a sale which has a customer with a custom price list no longer creates a price calculation error,
• Pressing next during the product creation wizard Which Product is it? step no longer skips the rest of the wizard because of a syntax error,
• Times displayed in the product revision history miscellaneous report is now displayed in the local timezone instead of UTC,
• Fixed formatting of PDF supplier orders,
• Reports correctly calculate the sale total when running an unconsolidated product report when there were multiple lines of the same product on the sale (such as when performing sales with consolidate products turned off),
• Prevented an error when receiving a Vendor Connection order when you don’t have a matching product,
• Fixed a rounding issue when multiple loyalty point payment methods were added to a sale,
• Prevented internally incrementing the gift card quantity through the use of the increment sale key,
• Transfers received from a Vendor Connection can now create or associate temporary products,
• Prevented a duplicate parked sale from appearing when unparking and parking the same sale while offline and the sync running before the sale could be uploaded,
• Prevented negative values from being able to be entered into put cash in / take cash out dialogs through Manage Cash,
• Shopfront no longer crashes when receiving a receipt event with no receipt text from an integrated EFTPOS provider,
• [Linkly] MOTO with signature transactions no longer crash Shopfront when printing

Welcome to what’s new on Shopfront for the year of 2022 all the way from January until August! It has been quite a while since one of these has been written, but we’ve been hard at work improving Shopfront.

Minor Features

• Surcharging for Public Holidays,
• Added additional information when an order is unable to be saved,
• Pressing enter on the order reference dialog box closes the dialog,
• Significantly improved everyday shelf ticket loading speed,
• Added open transfers to the outstanding orders list,
• Added ability to merge multiple suppliers together into a new supplier,
• Images now upload into the media centre individually with a new UI to show upload progress,
• Redesigned the location selector to be clearer to the user,
• Added new product revision history miscellaneous report,
• Added case price override discount option in the sell screen,
• Added ability to search for customers on the customer balances page,
• Sale keys and transaction panel can now be flipped on the sell screen,
• Improved speed of finding sales through the sales history through a gift card number search,
• Improved speed of closing the register,
• [Shop MyLocal] Added confirmation dialog to barcode quantity field when an unusually high quantity is detected,
• [Developer] Added webhook signatures to verify a webhook is from Shopfront

Bug Fixes

• Prevented parked sale from deleting itself when recovered with a loyalty payment applied to it,
• When the singular settings for “case” and “single” are set to a plural, saved reports no longer crash,
• Loading a price list that has an override price item correctly displays the profit percentage when within an outlet and global cost is disabled,
• Associating a product to itself on an order (when the product was created in a separate tab) no longer deletes the product,
• Parking a refunded sale no longer results in a failed upload due to a missing refund reason,
• “0” is no longer treated as “blank” when entered into the finalise sale calculator,
• Dragging the scroll bar on a select list no longer closes the select panel after releasing the left mouse button,
• Prevented payment methods from becoming disabled after exiting the refund reason prompt due to ESC key being pressed,
• Adding a product to the sale when show product details is enabled no longer shows the toast “A product is currently adding to sale”,
• Product sales summary now correctly shows all data even when there is a gap in times sold,
• Modified product additional information now appears correctly in the revision history,
• Prevented invoice number reuse after reloading a cancelled sale,
• Adding a product to the sell screen from a sales key category while show product details setting is enabled now correctly shows the product details,
• Inventory at Date export now shows the correct dates in the header,
• Viewing a favourite report with a customer group now correctly shows that customer group’s name,
• Reprinting a receipt that contains a deleted tax rate no longer prints a blank page,
• Prevented the synchronisation from crashing when a sales key page contains no keys,
• Saved large reports grouped by category (with products hidden) now correctly load all data,
• Deleting a price set which is the default on a register now sets the register’s price set to be the default price set,
• Prevented park sale error when a register has been deleted which had an outstanding parked sale,
• Prevented an invoice number length of over 1 quintillion from crashing the sell screen,
• Fixed missing toggles on the create order page,
• Fixed single criteria spend $x get discount off the total worth $y promotion calculation,
• Prevented products, suppliers, customers and customer groups from being modified while offline,
• Prevented multiple open tabs from potentially running two separate unsynchronised sales,
• [Shop MyLocal] The same sale can no longer be marked as sent multiple times before being removed from active orders,
• [ILG] Prevented only the first 20 suppliers appearing in the settings,
• [ILG] Prevented a saving error one one Outlet has the integration enabled and the other Outlet has it disabled,
• [Linkly] Prevented a terminal error when the user’s name contains an ampersand

Welcome to what’s new on Shopfront for August 2021! It’s a light-on month for features and fixes with a large amount of development going towards large features coming out shortly.

Some of these features are still rolling out to stores and should become available within the next couple of weeks.

Minor Features

• Added integration to Thirsty Camel’s Hump Club,
• Added copy criteria button to the promotion edit page,
• Rearranged a few tables in the security centre to look nicer on mobile devices

Bug Fixes

• Prevented a gift card from being redeemed multiple times within the same sale,
• When using the select all checkbox on the promotions page, we now validate that the promotions selected are for the current search, not a previous search (previously searching for “aug” would generate a search for “a”, “au” and then “aug” and could result in “aug” finishing before “a”),
• Saving the register closure tags for a register will no longer remove the tags from other registers,
• Importing customers via CSV now works as expected when specifying the customer_group_id column,
• Reordered the promotional category dropdown on the promotion edit page to be alphabetical,
• Revision history for price lists no longer show the fallback rule as an “unknown item”,
• Prevented a race condition resulting in the customer display occasionally showing the previous sale when the cash drawer had to open to to a payment method requiring it,
• Inventory for a previous date report can no longer be run for today’s date

Shopfront version 2 has had all stores on it for 18 months now and since then we’ve added a huge number of features, brand new and reimagined integrations, consistently improved the speed and improved reliability and now we’re ready to show you the next plans for Shopfront until the end of the year.

This should be used as a guide only, some features may end up with different functionality, be developed at a different time or completely dropped.

More information on each feature will be released closer to the individual feature’s release date.

eCommerce Store

Looking for another channel of sales? Shopfront’s currently building an eCommerce platform due for beta release shortly.

Fulfilment Interface

New Data Merges

Shopfront currently supports merging customers but will shortly be adding the highly requested functionality of merging suppliers and products.

Shopview & Enterprise Management

New Integrations

We’re also constantly adding a number of new integrations into Shopfront (developed by both us and development partners). Recently we’ve added integrations to Thirsty Camel’s Hump Club and Milie ordering system, Myfoodlink has developed an integration to connect your Shopfront store through to their eCommerce platform and we’ve got a couple more new integrations coming this year including integrating with Zen Global’s loyalty system and upcoming integration with some delivery services.

Update 17th of August 2021: These changes have been rolled out to all Vendors, if you’re experiencing any issues, please get in touch with us.

We’re making some adjustments to the way Shopfront interacts with Xero, for most people using the integration you should not notice any changes.

What Changes are Being Made

Currently, the Shopfront to Xero integration works by connecting one Shopfront Vendor (which could have multiple Outlets) to a single Xero account (and through that account to a single Xero tenant).

This change will allow you to connect each Shopfront Outlet to a different Xero tenant (which can be across different Xero accounts).

Through this change, you won’t be required to have the same settings for each Outlet (although, we do recommend it if they are connected to the same Xero tenant).

Alongside this, we’re also bringing a new coat of paint to the settings page, with built in help and a cleaner interface to make configuring and mapping the integration easier.

Why We’re Making the Change

Throughout the years, we’ve had a number of store owners request the ability to connect a different Xero tenant to each Outlet, however we’ve always had the same principle as Xero where one business should be one Shopfront Vendor. However, more and more stores are coming onto Shopfront that wish to share product files, see inventory across locations and more but also have multiple owners and account for each location separately.

When the Changes Will Happen

This change is currently being rolled out to all stores and should be completed by early next week.

What you Need to do

If you’re a Vendor with only a single Outlet, no changes will be required and your integration will continue to work as per-normal.

If you’re a Vendor with multiple Outlets, you might want to change to using our new multi-tenant support. If you do, all that you need to do is go to your Xero integration settings once the changes have been rolled out and change the configuration of each Outlet like you would currently do with all Outlets.

What About the MYOB Integration

Currently this change is exclusive to the Xero integration as there are significantly more uses of the Xero integration and the multi-tenant model of Xero makes it simple to connect multiple Outlets whereas MYOB’s company-file model is a bit more complex.

Whilst there are no current plans to make a similar change, we will consider doing so in the future.