Learn about commercetools InStore and how it works.
What is commercetools InStore
commercetools InStore is a solution that extends your existing commercetools implementation into physical stores and helps you do the following:
- Take physical payments, including card-present credit and debit cards, stored-value and gift cards, pay on account, digital wallets, cash, and more.
- Manage the payment ecosystem and physical devices, including safes, cash drawers, most printer models, payment devices (PEDs), and scanners. It supports usage monitoring, search, remote activate/inactivate, and more.
- Accept returns and issue refunds based on business rules when handling receipted (retrieved) and non-receipted item and mixed Carts of merchandise purchased in any channel.
- Manage cash as inventory, including performing cash counts with denomination details, transfer tracking with reason codes, over/under reporting, printed bank deposit slips, and more.
- Provide a highly customizable frontend experience for in-store colleagues and deliver transaction and payment information to your Project, payment providers, receipts, and other downstream systems. Match the look and feel of your existing in-store experience to speed adoption by staff.
- Meet fiscal requirements, including flexible receipt customization and on-demand, inspection-ready dynamic reports for use during in-store audits.
InStore provides these capabilities through a number of InStore components and secure APIs that follow commercetools norms.
A commercetools InStore implementation consists of:
InStore components
InStore is made up of the following components:
- InStore APIs: the microservice tier through which the InStore application fetches Carts, manages payments and returns, and tracks session activity. You can use the InStore APIs to customize many aspects of the InStore POS experience, including translations and advanced UX customization.
- InStore core functionality: a foundational core application that provides the base InStore functions of payments, refunds, device management, and cash management.
- InStore POS application: made up of seamlessly interlocking composable modules that provide core InStore functionality for checkout, discounts, customer lookup, transaction lookup, refunds, cash management, device management, and more. The InStore POS application is hosted and maintained by commercetools.
- The InStore Center application: a business-facing administration portal where your administrators configure global and location-specific settings. Certain functionalities of the InStore POS can be turned on, turned off, or customized by setting administration parameters in the InStore Center. Additionally, the InStore Center provides insights, metrics, and troubleshooting tools through its dashboard, transaction reporting, and cash audit functions.
Your Project
You must have an existing Project to manage or fetch the product catalog and create Carts for InStore consumption. The Project also supports payment information and other essential functions.
Third-party integrations
The InStore POS is already integrated with two global payment providers: Stripe and Adyen. You can implement custom integrations with other providers by setting up payment extensions and building payment components. If you operate in a fiscal country, you will need an account with Fiscal Solutions, our fiscal integration partner. If you have questions about implementing additional third-party integrations, contact your commercetools representative.