This week was about the parts of a shop that happen away from the website: the shelves, the bench, the counter and the phone. Most of it came straight from running our own shops on Kaniva.
New this week
Map your shop, then pick in walking order
Draw your real shop to scale (floors, racks, shelving, benches, walls and doors) and Kaniva numbers every shelf spot in the order you walk past it. Picking an order becomes one walk through the building instead of a zig-zag.
- Shelf codes like A-03-2 (rack A, bay 3, level 2), printed as labels in walk order. Codes stay the same when you change the layout, so printed labels stay right
- Put bins on shelves by scanning them
- Pick list for one order, or several at once with a tote letter for each order
- Pick on phone: one stop at a time on a small floor plan. Scan the shelf, then the part
- Two stores in one building can share one layout and one set of shelf labels, while their stock and orders stay separate
Scan anything
A Scan button sits on every admin page. Scan a bin, part, product, order, shipping box or work order with a barcode scanner or your phone's camera, and Kaniva opens it.
- Product, bin and item labels, including from a pocket label printer paired to your phone
- Barcodes and part identifiers (UPC, brand, manufacturer part number) on every product
A real point of sale
The register now does what a store's card terminal does.
- Tap-and-chip card readers, with tips
- Split payments: some cash and the rest on a card
- Voids and refunds with a manager PIN, and a receipt emailed, printed or skipped
- Camera scanning, a Wi-Fi receipt printer and a cash drawer
Automatic dropshipping
Mark a product as shipped by a supplier, and when the order is paid it goes to that supplier automatically, with a packing slip in your store's name and no prices on it.
- The supplier adds tracking through a private link, with no login
- Your customer gets one shipping email, as if you shipped it
- A daily reminder for anything without tracking after two days
Jobs that know when they're ready
Tie an area of the shop floor to a work center. When every part a job still needs has arrived there, the job is marked ready to start and you get a notification.
- The shop-floor board and kiosk show ready jobs first
- Work orders share stock first come, first served
An AI receptionist for your store
Connect your own AI phone agent, which answers order status, products and prices in your store's name.
- Live transfers: your phone shows who is calling and why, and you tap Accept or Decline
- Messages and call-back requests become tasks due today
Simpler plans
Solo at $49 a month and Shop at $129 a month join Pay As You Go. Every plan includes every feature, and product limits are gone. Pick a plan, monthly or yearly, from your Billing page.
A better storefront
- Edit from the storefront: signed in as the owner, every page has an Edit button for what you're looking at
- A Reviews page, and your real rating on the homepage
- A fuller Trailhead theme: header, product finding and About-page blocks
Help, Home and moving in
- Home lists everything waiting on you, with a jump to each
- Help is rewritten as one page per topic, with step-by-step guides, flowcharts and screenshots
- Import customers from Shopify, WooCommerce or a spreadsheet, without emailing anyone
Security and reliability
- Only owners and admins can add, change or remove team members, and nobody can change their own role
- New stores are set up with stricter checks
What's next
Next week: selling on eBay, editing orders, returns, and holding stock for an order until it's packed.