Updated April 16, 2018 20:22:03

Photo: Some customers were told to abandon their shopping in the aisles. (Twitter: Ozzy Mel)

Woolworths checkouts disabled by a nationwide technical glitch are back online, the supermarket says, after an earlier outage forced customers to abandon their shopping in the aisles and some stores to close their doors.

Close to 500 stores were affected by the glitch, which hit just after 4:00pm on Monday.

On social media, shoppers around Australia said they had been told to leave their trolleys and get out of the store.

"Was in Woolworths when the computers went down — poor staff trying to cope and frantic calls to IT," Liz Green wrote on Twitter.

Photo: Checkouts were unavailable in hundreds of Woolworths supermarkets. (ABC News: Jade Macmillan)

At Haymarket, in Sydney, staff shut the store and were turning people away, telling them to "come back in about an hour", with similar stories emerging from across the country.

Woolworths Group CEO Brad Banducci said the outage lasted for approximately 30 minutes in a large number of Woolworths supermarkets and BWS stores.

"This was related to an update to our IT systems. Our systems ultimately self-corrected themselves and we were back and open for trade across most stores by 4:30pm, with all stores now operational.

"This type of incident should not occur and we apologise unreservedly to our customers and store teams for the inconvenience caused."

Woolworths is Australia's largest supermarket chain, with close to 1,000 stores.

Photo: Shoppers were turned away from hundreds of Woolworths supermarkets during the outage. (ABC News: Michael Janda)

Topics: business-economics-and-finance, australia, brisbane-4000, qld

First posted April 16, 2018 16:48:08