One way conflict for websites vs locations and handhelds in categories

[ZDGrp]

I have several independent websites on my account as well as in person POS terminals for those entities. While building shopping pages I noticed a pretty terrible omission in the way programming is done for item locations and categories. 

When creating a category the option is given for 'Channels' Points of Sale, Websites. This function works as expected, categories are isolated to the websites they're intended for and all is well. However every POS terminal now has the categories and listed items for every single location. 

The next obvious step was to select 'Customize channels by location' an option inside the Channels selector. However if you do this the system now forces every category to every website and this is a ONE WAY option. There is no way to fix or revert back without deleting the entire category and starting over.

So it seems I am forced to choose between appropriate categories on the websites but with every location's products on every POS -OR- every website is forced to have every other site's categories to have the POS terminals hold the proper data for that location. The only portion which still functions is the ability to hide items from the wrong sites albeit leaving empty categories strewn about most of which are irrelevant and make the site look broken and unprofessional. 

This is unacceptable. It should not be difficult for the system to see a location and default to the website associated with that location or keep the website selection portion in the same menu. 

[Ellie_]

Hi there, @ZDGrp,

Thank you for outlining this so clearly, we understand how frustrating this setup is when you’re managing multiple independent websites and POS locations. You’re correct: once “Customize channels by location” is enabled, the behavior changes and cannot be reverted, which can result in categories appearing more broadly than intended. We recognize that having to choose between clean website categories and accurate POS location data isn’t ideal. We’re escalating your feedback to our product team, as your use case highlights an important gap in how channel and location visibility interact. In the meantime, we’re happy to review your current configuration with you to help minimize category overlap and reduce empty categories on your sites as much as possible.