| | Hello there. The Fall '26 Edition is still unpacking itself in the changelog. Thursday brought a way to forgive the last few dollars on an order, a variant editor that finally lives on the product page and barcode checks against the official GTIN registry. Developers also get a heads-up about order edits that can change totals. In today’s newsletter, we’ll get into: - You can now waive an order's outstanding balance from the payment card on the order page, with a new staff permission and a Write-offs by order report.
- Variants move onto the product page with search, filters, grouping and bulk edits; Plus stores can test it now and are opted in on December 12.
- Shopify now checks barcodes against the GS1 registry and suggests marking real ones as GTINs, which helps channels like Google match your listings.
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| | 🧾 Waive what is left on an order. When you decide not to collect the rest of an order's payable balance, you can now waive it from the payment card on the order page, and undo it there too. Shopify adjusts waived amounts during edits, refunds and returns, and buyers see them in accounts, checkout and emails. Staff need the new Waive order balances permission. The waived balances changelog also covers the new write-off report. 🧩 Variants now live on the product page. Variant management moves into the product page, so the rest of the product stays in view while you edit. You can search, filter and group variants by option, switch between detail and table views, and bulk edit price, shipping and other core fields. Plus and higher plans can try it in Test Drives and are opted in on December 12, with a gradual rollout to everyone from December, per the variants changelog post. 🏷️ Shopify checks your barcodes against GS1. When you type a barcode that looks like a GTIN, Shopify now looks it up in the GS1 registry and marks it as a GTIN if it is registered. Saved custom barcodes that look like GTINs get a suggestion you can accept or dismiss, one by one or in the bulk editors. Nothing changes unless you accept, and the GTIN suggestions notes explain the registry warnings. 📊 Your apps now report into Shopify Analytics. Supported apps can now send events into Shopify Analytics, so marketing emails sent, loyalty rewards redeemed and similar activity show up in the reports you already use. Pick metrics and dimensions from the new App Events category, compare the same metric across apps, or query them with ShopifyQL. What you see depends on which installed apps support it, as the app events changelog notes. | |
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| | 🛍️ Is Shop Pay worth turning back on? One merchant switched Shop Pay off because many of their products sell as preorders, and Shop Pay buyers were not getting clear word that shipping would be delayed. That caused customer service problems, and now they are asking whether to bring it back. If you sell preorders, weigh in on the Shop Pay question and check what your Shop Pay buyers actually receive. | |
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| | 💳 A chargeback two hours after checkout. A store owner had a customer file a chargeback just two hours after ordering, before anything shipped. They want to know whether refunding and sending proof of the refund in the dispute response avoids both the chargeback fee and losing the order amount. It is a common situation, and the chargeback refund thread is collecting answers from other merchants. 🧮 Tax exemptions that apply to some products only. A community request points out that Shopify applies a customer's tax exemption to every taxable purchase, with no way to limit it to certain products or collections. For businesses selling both wholesale and retail, that creates a tax compliance problem at checkout. If you run mixed B2B and retail, add your case to the tax exemption request. | |
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| | 🤖 Sidekick now sees inside your apps. With app extensions, Sidekick can draw on supported apps, such as who is waiting on a restock or which subscription renewals failed overnight, and surface them as recommendations on your admin Home page. Developers can also open Sidekick from inside their app with a pre-filled prompt through the new Sidekick Launch API. The Sidekick app extensions post shows partners already using it. ⚙️ Manage Flow workflows from an outside AI agent. Through Shopify's AI Toolkit you can now ask an agent of your choice to create, update, delete, turn on or turn off your own store's Flow workflows, and to list them. Third-party apps cannot use the underlying APIs directly, and calling them yourself needs the write_automations scope, which Shopify must approve. Setup steps are in the Flow AI Toolkit changelog. 🛠️ Order edits will recalculate the whole order. Shopify is changing order editing so taxes and totals stay accurate: an edit will use all line items and discounts, which can change tax on items you did not touch. Adding a $0 item may shift tax on the rest. For app integrations this starts with Admin API version 2027-04. If an app expects totals to stay put, read the order edit notice and test first. 🎨 Themes can now ship with their own apps. Theme developers can build storefront apps with theme app extensions and bundle them with their Theme Store listing, priced through Shopify App Pricing. Merchants see the add-ons on the theme page and can install theme and app in one flow. Shopify's examples include product customizers, subscriptions, filtering, search and wishlists. Details are in the theme app add-ons announcement. | |
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| | Three remote roles posted in the last two weeks, each linked to its own posting with the source named. Each posting is linked from the source named on its line, with the date it was posted. Check the details on the posting itself. | |
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