This article is for functional stakeholders, solution consultants, and implementation partners who need to explain how buyers can work with more than one shopping cart in the storefront. Use it to understand when separate carts are helpful and what buyers experience when they add products to an existing cart or start a new one.
What multi-cart workflows are for
Multi-cart workflows let a buyer keep different purchasing scenarios separate without leaving the storefront product journey. Instead of placing every product into one running cart, the buyer can decide where each product belongs at the moment they add it.
This is useful when buyers need to:
- separate products by project or job
- keep replenishment orders apart from one-time purchases
- organize draft orders for different internal requestors
- start a new cart from the current product journey without first leaving the page to manage carts
Where buyers start the flow
When multi-cart selection is enabled, the add-to-cart flow lets the buyer choose whether to add the item to an existing cart or create a new cart. This behavior appears in these storefront experiences:
- product detail ordering experience
- product list and product tile experiences that use the standard product ordering action
Instead of adding immediately to the current cart, the buyer first sees a selection dialog. In the current storefront UI, the dialog header is shown as Select basket to add the product to.
What the buyer sees in the selection dialog
The dialog shows the buyer's available shopping carts in a selectable list. For each cart, the buyer can review key details before deciding where to add the product, including:
- cart name or description
- number of products
- total price
- cart owner
- whether the cart is currently active
The dialog includes these actions:
- Add: adds the product to the selected existing cart
- Add to new: creates a new cart and adds the product there
- Cancel: closes the dialog without adding the product
If the buyer does not select a cart, Add remains disabled.
If the product has optional add-ons, the buyer may see the add-on selection step after choosing the destination cart and before the item is finally added.
Add to an existing cart
When the buyer selects an existing cart and chooses Add, the product is added to that cart.
The active cart does not automatically change just because the buyer added an item to another existing cart. This matters when the storefront header, cart page, or other cart-aware components still reflect the previously active cart after the add is complete.
Use this path when the buyer wants to add a product to a saved draft or project cart without switching the rest of the storefront context.
Create a new cart from the same flow
When the buyer chooses Add to new, the storefront creates a new shopping cart as part of the add-to-cart operation and places the selected product into that new cart.
After the new cart is created, that new cart becomes the active cart for the current storefront context. This means cart-aware experiences can immediately start reflecting the new cart after the add succeeds.
Use this path when the buyer wants to start a fresh draft order and continue working in that new cart right away.
Active cart behavior
The distinction between active cart behavior is important:
- adding to an existing selected cart does not switch active cart context
- creating a new cart through the add flow sets the new cart as the active cart
This allows buyers to either add quietly to another saved cart or intentionally switch to a newly started one, depending on the task.
Is there a dedicated cart switcher?
The add-to-cart flow itself does not expose a standalone cart switcher. The cart choice happens inside the selection dialog during add-to-cart.
If buyers need ongoing cart management outside that flow, use the Shopping Cart - List View component to review, activate, and delete carts from a storefront page.
What happens when the feature is off
When multi-cart selection is not enabled, the storefront keeps the standard behavior:
- the buyer selects Add to Cart
- the product is added immediately to the current cart context
- no cart-selection dialog is shown
This fallback is useful for storefronts that want a simpler single-cart ordering experience.
Related articles
- Enable multi-cart selection and new-cart creation
- Shopping Cart - List View
- Shopping Cart Widget