After the shipping cutoff: show store stock on Google

Once the shipping cutoff for Christmas has passed, the customer’s question changes: no longer “When will the parcel arrive?” but “Where can I still get this today?”. Retailers with physical stores can answer it where the question is asked, in Google Search. The format for this is called local inventory ads: they show people nearby which item is in stock at which store. For “pick up today” to be true, stock from the till and the inventory system has to reach Google Merchant Center daily and per store. Since 30 September 2026, Google has also required pickup costs and minimum order values for pickup products in the United Kingdom, Switzerland and the EEA, provided the shop charges them (Google Merchant Center Help). This article describes the data path from the till to the ad, the required attributes, the update cycle and how to keep it in line with click and collect in your own shop. The technical basis is a clean Google Merchant Center integration.

What still sells after the shipping cutoff

The end of the year is the most important time of the year for retail: in 2025 it generated 18.5% of its annual sales in November and December (HDE). For these two months of 2026, the German Retail Federation expects retail sales of €129.2 billion in total (HDE) and Christmas sales of €23.1 billion in online retail (HDE). By that arithmetic, the larger part of forecast sales does not fall to online retail (own calculation from the HDE figures).

Customers buy in both worlds. 73% of Germans aged 16 and over said they would order Christmas gifts online in 2025 (Bitkom). One in five planned to buy gifts roughly half online and half in local stores (Bitkom), and 15% intended to buy all their gifts in a store (Bitkom). For retailers with stores, this means the search often starts online and the purchase can end in the store. After the shipping cutoff, this link becomes the main thing: a parcel no longer helps, an item on the shelf around the corner does.

Local inventory ads: what Google needs

Local inventory ads are Shopping ads with a location. They show people searching near a store that an item is in stock there, and lead to the shop’s product page or to a page for the store hosted by Google. Merchant Center Help lists Germany and Austria among the countries where retailers with physical stores can use the format (Google Merchant Center Help). The prerequisite is a physical location where customers can view and buy the goods (Google Merchant Center Help).

To be clear about scope: this article covers paid local inventory ads. What the removal of free product listings from Google Search in the EEA means for Shopping is covered in our article on the removal of free product listings in the EEA. For planning the Christmas season, this article only counts on the ads.

The data path: from till and inventory system into the feed

Stock per store is not created in the shop but where sales and bookings happen: at the till, which records every sale in the store, and in the inventory system, which keeps track of goods received, transfers and stocktakes per location. How the till and the shop keep one shared stock figure instead of two separate ones is described in Connecting a POS system to the online shop. Google adds a third view: a table with one row per item and store.

Whether this table comes from the inventory system, the shop or a separate middle layer depends on where store stock is most reliable. With a JTL-Wawi integration or an ERP such as Microsoft Dynamics, it usually sits in the inventory system; the shop then often only knows a total across all warehouses. The feed, however, needs the quantity per location.

1. Read stock per location: quantity per item and store from the inventory system, plus the sales the till has reported since the last booking.
2. Subtract reservations: items set aside for click and collect are no longer for sale.
3. Subtract a buffer: a safety stock per store and item group against shrinkage, display items and counting errors.
4. Derive availability: determine the value for availability from the remaining quantity.
5. Write the row: item ID, store code, availability, quantity and, if needed, store price and pickup time.
6. Hand over and read the response: file or Merchant API, then evaluate the diagnostics in Merchant Center.

id      store_code      availability    quantity        price   pickup_sla
SKU-10421       MITTE   in_stock        4       24.90 EUR       same day
SKU-10421       NORD    out_of_stock    0       24.90 EUR       
SKU-20877       MITTE   limited_availability    2       12.50 EUR       next day
SKU-31002       NORD    in_stock        7       19.95 EUR       next day

Three rules from the specification decide whether the rows arrive. The item ID (id) must be the same as in the primary data source, otherwise Google finds no product for the stock row (Google Merchant Center Help). The store code is case-sensitive and must match the code in the Business Profile; it can be up to 64 characters long, the item ID up to 50 (Google Merchant Center Help). And outside the US and Canada, prices go into the feed including VAT, so for Germany with value added tax (Google Merchant Center Help).

Store code: the key between profile and feed

The store code is the least conspicuous field and a common cause when local products do not appear. Google uses it to connect the stock row to the location in the Business Profile. After linking the accounts or after a changed code, syncing the locations can take up to 24 hours; Google recommends uploading the inventory file only afterwards (Google Merchant Center Help).

It pays to set the code once and then leave it unchanged: short, without spaces, maintained in one place and taken from there into the Business Profile, the inventory system and the feed. If a store is called “Mitte” in the till and “MITTE” in the profile, Google cannot assign the stock rows to a location; the store stays without local products.

Update cycle: how fresh “pick up today” has to be

Google states a clear minimum cycle for local inventory data: it should be refreshed daily (Google Merchant Center Help). If you provide the file at an address that Merchant Center fetches, you get a sync every 24 hours (Google Merchant Center Help). If you submit a missing local inventory source or correct its settings, Google says to allow 24 to 48 hours for processing (Google Merchant Center Help). In everyday business, the daily cycle is often enough; in the days before Christmas, when an item can sell out by noon, it is tight. More frequent changes can be sent through the Merchant API, which according to Google offers more flexibility for frequent changes to inventory data (Google Merchant Center Help). If you are planning the move to the Merchant API anyway, you can include the local inventory source right away.

What matters is how Google reads quantity and availability. From 3 units an item counts as in stock, at 1 to 2 as limited availability, at 0 as out of stock (Google Merchant Center Help). If you submit quantity and availability together, the lower of the two values determines the classification (Google Merchant Center Help). This leads to a simple rule for the Christmas weeks: subtract the safety stock before the export rather than explain an empty shelf in the store. What stock sync without overselling looks like is described in the article on real-time inventory sync across channels.

Pickup cost and minimum order value: what has applied since 30 September

On 28 April 2026, Google announced a new attribute for pickup costs in Merchant Center (Google Merchant Center Help). Since 30 September 2026, the rule is: if the shop charges pickup costs or a minimum order value for pickup products, the respective value must be in Merchant Center in the United Kingdom, Switzerland and all EEA countries (Google Merchant Center Help). If pickup costs are missing, the product can be disapproved according to the local inventory data specification (Google Merchant Center Help).

If you copy attribute names from announcements, look closely: the announcement spells the attribute for the minimum order value as “minium_order_value” in one place. The spelling in the specification, minimum_order_value, is the one that counts (Google Merchant Center Help).

Pickup costs are required for in-store products for any of the United Kingdom and EU and EFTA countries if you charge pickup costs on your website for in-store pickup.

Google Merchant Center Help, Pickup cost [pickup_cost]

• Pickup cost (pickup_cost): a flat rate via the sub-attribute pickup_cost_flat_rate, optionally a threshold above which pickup is free (pickup_cost_free_threshold) (Google Merchant Center Help).
• The same amount everywhere: the value must exactly match the pickup fee shown on the product page or at checkout (Google Merchant Center Help).
• One value per product, not per store: Google advises against submitting pickup costs per location; they belong in the product data (Google Merchant Center Help).
• Range: for euros, the attribute accepts values from 0 to 1,000 (Google Merchant Center Help).
• Minimum order value (minimum_order_value): required for pickup products if the shop requires a minimum spend to buy or reserve for pickup; the sub-attribute surface with the value local limits it to local offers (Google Merchant Center Help).

If you charge neither a pickup fee nor a minimum order value, there is nothing to add. If you charge either, check before the shipping cutoff that the amount is the same in the feed, on the product page and at checkout. Regardless of this, pickup in the feed requires a pickup time (pickup_sla), which Google expects as one of 8 fixed values, from “same day” to “multi-week” (Google Merchant Center Help).

“Pick up today”: pickup time and product page

Google shows the note about same-day pickup through the “pickup today” feature. For every product that takes part, the retailer must offer pickup on the same day or the next day after the order (Google Merchant Center Help). According to Google, the value “same day” requires the item to be reported as in stock (in_stock) at the store and the account to be approved for product pages with in-store availability (Google Merchant Center Help). The product page or checkout must show this option, state clearly when the goods will be ready, show any pickup fee and allow the purchase or reservation through the website (Google Merchant Center Help). When the order is ready, Google requires a notification, for example by email or SMS (Google Merchant Center Help).

Important for planning: Google reviews the example URL you provide before the feature is enabled and names up to a week for this (Google Merchant Center Help). Anyone applying shortly before the shipping cutoff loses that week in the decisive period. Shortly before closing time, Google already shows next-day pickup instead of same-day pickup; the opening hours in the linked Business Profile apply (Google Merchant Center Help). Special opening hours on the Advent Saturdays and on Christmas Eve therefore belong in the profile in good time.

With product pages with in-store availability, the ad leads to your own product page, where stock and location per store can be looked up. A product only counts as available in store there if customers can get it at the store today or tomorrow (Google Merchant Center Help). The page must be crawlable by Google StoreBot, and the availability after selecting a store must match the inventory data for that store (Google Merchant Center Help). If you use the store page hosted by Google instead, you need an impressum in Merchant Center for Germany and Austria (Google Merchant Center Help). In a Shopware shop, store selection on the product page can be built as a custom extension; which route fits depends on how many stores and items there are.

Keeping it in line with click and collect in the shop

Local inventory ads and store pickup in the shop are two views of the same stock. If the ad says “pick up today” but the shop reports “cannot be reserved” for the same store, the retailer loses exactly the customers it has just reached. The article Click and collect as a well-designed process describes reservation window, pickup deadline and notification chain in the shop; for Google, what matters is that both sides use the same rules.

• A reservation in the shop reduces store stock in the next export, not only after pickup.
• Expired reservations release the stock again and appear in the following export.
• Pickup time in the feed and at checkout come from the same setting.
• Pickup fee and minimum order value show the same amount in the feed, on the product page and in the cart.
• Display items and damaged goods do not count towards sellable stock.
• Stores with changed opening hours are updated in the Business Profile.

For the weeks before Christmas, a dedicated promotion category in the shop is also useful: after the shipping cutoff it groups the items that can be picked up at a store.

Roadmap to the shipping cutoff

Setting this up involves several review steps at Google that cannot be sped up. The order of the steps matters more than the exact date.

1. Profiles and codes: check the stores’ Business Profiles, enter opening hours for Advent Saturdays and Christmas Eve, set store codes.
2. Link accounts: connect Merchant Center and Business Profile; Google names up to 24 hours for syncing the locations (Google Merchant Center Help).
3. Build the feed: set up the export from inventory system and till, first for one store and a manageable group of items.
4. Set up pickup: maintain pickup time and, where applicable, pickup cost and minimum order value, submit an example URL for “pickup today” and allow for the review time of up to a week (Google Merchant Center Help).
5. Check the campaign: decide in Google Ads whether online and store offers get separate budgets; for this, Google recommends reviewing the campaign settings and adjusting the inventory filters (Google Merchant Center Help).
6. From the shipping cutoff: shift budget and bids to store offers, increase the export frequency, check the match with the till daily.

How the shop handles price promotions before the shipping cutoff is covered in the article on sale prices in Merchant Center for Black Week. The local feed adds the days on which shipping is no longer an option to this plan.

Measuring whether store stock gets through

Whether the data path holds up does not show in a successful upload but in the result. Three places are worth a daily look.

• Diagnostics in Merchant Center: disapproved or limited local products, missing inventory data, messages about stores not found. Among the causes, Google names a missing local inventory source, mismatched store codes and item IDs that do not match the primary data source (Google Merchant Center Help).
• Reports in Google Ads: in Shopping campaigns, clicks can be segmented by click type; clicks on local products appear there separately from clicks on online products (Google Merchant Center Help).
• Spot check in the store: once a day, compare a handful of items from the feed with the shelf. It is the same check Google requires for inventory verification, only smaller.

In the end, the measure of success is not the click-through rate but the number of pickups and store visits that can be attributed to an ad. This requires a clean link between reservation, pickup and till receipt in the shop.

How we support the integration

We connect inventory system, till and shop to Google Merchant Center and set up the local inventory source so that it is fed from the same data as the shop and the store. Google decides on approval of the ads; you check pickup fees, prices and mandatory information before release. Depending on the starting point, the feed is created in the inventory system, in a dedicated integration or in custom programming between the systems.