Most of a pop-up checklist never changes. The part that does lives in your card reader, your staff roles and your Shopify settings, and that is the part to re-check before every event.
Keep one checklist for every pop-up, split into three parts: setup in your Shopify admin, selling at the booth, and teardown. Packing, the cash float and the signage barely change, so they can stay as written.
Four things do change between events, and they are the ones to re-check every time: whether offline card payments are switched on, what each staff member's role allows, which location the device is set to, and whether stock has been moved to the pop-up.
Shopify's offline payments page says Tap to Pay on iPhone, Tap to Pay on Android, card swipes and manually typed card numbers aren't supported offline. Only specific card readers can take cards without a connection. If your pop-up runs on a phone and the venue Wi-Fi drops, you can take cash and nothing else.
Shopify lists the readers that do work offline: Verifone Victa (Countertop and Mobile), POS Go, POS Terminal, Tap & Chip, Chipper 2X BT, Wisepad 3 and the Chip & Swipe Reader. The Shopify POS app also has to be version 9.14.0 or later. Check both a week before the event, not at the venue.
Do these in order, before the stock leaves the warehouse:
How Shopify permissions work, and why a procedure should name the exact ones rather than "admin access".
In Shopify POS, what each person can do is set by their POS role. A seasonal hire on a role missing one of these gets stuck mid-sale, usually when there is a queue.
| POS permission | What it allows at a booth |
|---|---|
| Accept offline credit and debit payments | Taking card payments while offline. Needed for offline cards to work at all |
| Switch device to offline checkout | Turning on offline checkout during a connection problem. On its own this covers cash and custom payments |
| Apply discount codes | Using your event codes |
| Apply custom discounts | Giving a one-off discount on a cart or an item |
| Return and exchange orders | Handling a return or exchange at the booth |
| Switch device's location | Pointing the device at the pop-up location |
| Start and end payment tracking sessions | Opening and closing the register session |
| Manage transfers | Receiving stock in and sending it back |
You do not have to choose between allowed and denied. Many POS permissions can be set to Approval required, which means a manager enters their PIN to approve the action. For a booth, that is often the right setting for custom discounts and returns.
A return taken at the booth still becomes a refund in your store, and should follow the same procedure as any other refund.
The refund steps that apply whether the return came in online or at an event.
Try it on one of your own procedures.
Record a process once, AI writes the structured SOP. 3 free SOPs, no credit card.
Offline payments is an optional Shopify feature that lets a compatible card reader take credit and debit cards with no internet connection. The payments are actually charged once the device reconnects.
When you turn it on, you set two limits. The device daily limit caps the total of offline card payments on one device. The transaction limit caps a single order. If an order is over the limit, the customer can pay the rest in cash.
Set both low. The customer walks away with the goods before the payment goes through. Shopify is clear that offline transactions aren't sent to the payment processor, so you might not know a payment failed until you reconnect. If a card is declined later, your only route is to contact the customer using the email or phone number you collected.
Offline payment settings and limits apply to all your store locations, not just the pop-up. You cannot give one event a tighter cap than the rest of the business.
A few more things worth knowing before the event:
When the device reconnects, three things happen automatically: the offline card payments are processed, the orders sync to your Shopify admin, and the customer details entered at the booth attach to the right orders.
The count rarely matches exactly. Settling the gap between what Shopify says and what is in the crate is the same job as any stock reconciliation.
How to settle the difference between what your system says and what is physically there.
Shopify keeps less of a record than most people assume. There is an activity log for Shopify POS that shows high-risk register actions such as voids, refunds and manual discounts.
The general store activity log has firm limits. It is view-only, it can't be exported, and it shows at most 250 entries, so a busy store sees only a short history. And if a staff member is deleted, the log may show Shopify as having deleted them rather than the person who did it.
So write down the judgement calls yourself: a free item, a manual discount, a return without a receipt. Put them on the checklist the crew worked through, not only in Shopify.
The physical steps stay the same: packing, the cash float, the booth layout. The four software steps can change without anyone touching the checklist. A new staff member gets a different role. Someone changes the offline limits for the whole store. A card reader gets replaced with a phone. The checklist still reads correctly, and it is now wrong.
Why a procedure can go wrong without anyone editing it, and how to catch it early.
This is where ReccordSOP helps. Record yourself doing the pre-event setup in the Shopify admin once, and it becomes a step-by-step SOP with a screenshot of each step and the clicked button highlighted. Before the next event, send it to whoever is setting up as a checklist run, which records which version of the SOP they followed. Record the setup again when something changes, and ReccordSOP shows which steps changed instead of overwriting the old version. What it will not do is check your card reader or Shopify settings for you.
The free plan includes 3 SOPs in total, which covers pre-event, on-site and teardown. Team is $19 per user per month, with a 3-user minimum.
Three parts. Before the event: set the pop-up up as a Shopify location, move stock to it, test every card reader, turn on offline card payments if you need them, and check staff roles. At the booth: the payment and return rules. After: check the Orders tab for declined offline payments, end the register session, move stock back and reconcile the count.
No. Shopify says Tap to Pay on iPhone, Tap to Pay on Android, card swipes and manual card entry aren't supported offline. Only listed card readers, such as POS Go, POS Terminal and Tap & Chip, can accept cards without a connection, and the POS app must be version 9.14.0 or later.
No. The device daily limit and transaction limit apply to all your store locations, and convert automatically to local currencies for locations in other countries. A pop-up cannot have a tighter cap than the rest of the business.
You find out only after the device reconnects, when the order shows a Card declined badge. Shopify's advice is to contact the customer using the email or phone number collected for the order and collect the payment. Reconnecting within 24 hours reduces the risk of declines.
Accept offline credit and debit payments, which can only be set once offline payments is turned on in your Shopify admin. Switch device to offline checkout is a different permission that covers cash and custom payments.
3 free SOPs to start. No credit card required. See if drift detection keeps your docs honest.
Start for freeI built ReccordSOP after watching too many DTC ops teams lose months to undocumented workflows. These SOPs are battle-tested with Shopify operators running $1M to $50M brands.
Last reviewed October 9, 2026
"Needs admin access" is not a prerequisite, it is a shrug. Shopify's permissions are granular enough that a refund SOP can name exactly what the person running it requires, and vague enough at the top that most teams grant far more than the task needs.
Your stock count drifts the same way your SOPs do. The difference is this one oversells products you don't have.
A refund starts in your helpdesk and ends in your store. The seam between them is where refund procedures quietly break.
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