Accept Pre-Orders

Customers may place pre-orders for products that are presently out of stock. These might be items that are temporarily out of stock or ones that you want to introduce. If your business tracks inventory, you may offer pre-orders for products and product variants that have no stock.

Pre-order items are labelled as such in your business, so consumers know they're purchasing ahead of time when they check out. Pre-ordered items are subsequently marked with a special label on the Orders tab of your store control panel and in your store's alerts. Go to the Catalog and select Products to see the number of pre-orders for a certain product or variant.

When your regular products are out of stock, they are available for pre-order. Allowing pre-orders is entirely optional.

When a product's supply hits zero, it is labelled with a special Pre-order label on the Store and Product pages.

Enable Pre-Orders

To allow for product pre-orders:

1. Click eCommerce in the editor's sidebar, followed by Manage Store.
2. Click Catalog, followed by Products.
   
3. Click Edit Product next to the product you want to allow pre-orders for.
4. (Optional) You may allow pre-orders for certain product variants if you monitor stock. Click Options, then the Variations tab.
5. Click Manage under the Stock Control box on the right.
6. Set the product's actual Quantity in Stock. Enter 0 to begin taking pre-orders for products that are not yet available.
7. Select Show and allow pre-order from the When out of the stock drop-down menu.
8. Save is located at the top of the page.

Tip

Pre-orders may be configured as the default stock behaviour for all new items to save time on each product setup. Use the Bulk Product Editor to allow pre-orders for several products at once.

Manage Pre-Orders

All pre-orders placed by clients in your business appear alongside regular orders on the Orders tab in the store management panel. Pre-orders are marked with a Pre-ordered label.

Click the order to view the labels for the pre-ordered products if it contains several products.

Change the order status to Ready For Pickup or Shipped when you're ready to send the pre-ordered products to clients. If you want your customers to get the corresponding automated notification, make sure you have the Order delivered and/or the Order is available for pickup alerts activated in Settings → Notifications. You may also notify your clients through email or phone that their pre-order is on its way or that they can come and pick it up.

After you replenish your products' stock, the pre-ordered labels stay visible. Order notes may be used to highlight pre-orders that have already been processed.

View Pre-Orders for Individual Products

You may check all pre-orders made for a certain product since the previous time you replenished its supply.

To see a list of a product's pre-orders:

1. Click eCommerce in the editor's sidebar, followed by Manage Store.
2. Click Catalog, followed by Products.
3. Click Edit Product next to the product you wish to see.
4. Click Manage under the Stock Control box on the right.
5. CLick View pre-orders.
6. On the opened page, you will see all of the pre-orders for this product that have been submitted since the previous time you restocked the stock. Pre-orders for product variants will also be included (if any).

Note

The View pre-orders link is only accessible if the base product has pre-orders.

To view pre-orders for a particular product variant, click Options and then the Variations tab on the product. The products that have been pre-ordered appear in the Stock column.