Pre-orders let you sell a product before you have it in stock: your buyers reserve today and the goods ship when they arrive, on the estimated date you set. It works for launches, imports in transit and made-to-order production.
New store only. If the top bar shows STORE instead of EDIT STORE, you are on the classic store and the pre-order switch does not appear on your products. Ask support for the upgrade.
Step by step
- In the side menu, go to Catalog → Products and open the product.
- On the General tab, Visibility card, turn on the Pre-order switch.
- Enter the Estimated delivery date. This is what the buyer sees.
- Optionally, write your own Pre-order text for the badge, for example "PRE-ORDER". Blank uses your store's default text.
- In Pre-order cap, enter the units in the batch that is coming. Blank means no limit. The units already committed are shown beside it.
- If the campaign has a window, fill in Pre-order opens and Pre-order closes. Outside those dates the product stops selling as a pre-order on its own.
- Tap Save.
There is no store-level pre-order switch. Flagging the product is enough: pre-orders are always active in the new store.
Quota per variant
On a product with variants, Pre-order cap is not entered on the General tab. As soon as you flag the product as pre-order, the table on the Options tab gains a Pre-order quota column: there you set each size's or color's batch, and each row shows its committed units.
The wording the buyer sees
The store-wide default badge and button are edited in the editor: tap EDIT STORE, go to Taxes & pricing and scroll to the Pre-orders section. There are two fields, Badge text and Button text. A single product's Pre-order text overrides the general badge for that product.
What the buyer sees
- The pre-order badge on the catalog card and on the product page, replacing the promotion one.
- The buy button with the text you chose, and the estimated delivery. If you did not enter a date, it shows "Delivery date to be confirmed".
- A pre-order product with 0 stock is not shown as sold out: zero stock is expected.
- If the campaign has a cap, once 10 units or fewer remain it shows "N left". When the cap runs out the product goes to "Pre-order sold out" and stops being buyable. On products with variants only the exhausted variant is disabled.
- In the cart, each pre-order line carries its badge and its date. If the cart mixes stock and pre-order, a notice says the pre-order products ship separately. Before confirming, the country's legal notice appears.
- If the cart is all pre-order, no shipping is charged at that moment: it is added when you release the delivery.
When the goods arrive
Open the order and use Release selected: you release every pre-order line or just some of them. The system emails the customer that their pre-order is ready, and the lines become available for dispatch.
Held pre-order lines do not appear on the assembly order, because the goods have not arrived. They are assembled after you release them.
Tracking orders with pre-orders
In Sales → Orders, orders with pre-orders carry a traffic-light style badge based on the nearest estimated date: pending, Upcoming (7 days), Overdue, and Released once nothing is held any more. You can filter by With pre-order, Awaiting delivery, Overdue, Upcoming (7 days) and Without pre-order.
The Pre-order demand panel adds up the pending reserved units per product and per variant, with their estimated date. That is what you use to build the purchase order to your supplier.
Pre-orders do not touch your stock
Pre-order lines do not draw down stock when sold and do not return it when cancelled. The count is kept by the Pre-order cap with its committed units, and that is what prevents overselling.
If you cannot find it
- You cannot see the Pre-order switch on the product: your store is the classic one. Pre-orders are a new-store feature.
- You cannot see the Pre-order cap field on the General tab: the product has variants. The quota is set per variant, in the Pre-order quota column of the Options tab.
- It warns you that the window is invalid: Pre-order opens ended up after Pre-order closes, so the campaign would never be active. Fix the dates before saving.
- You are looking to load pre-orders by spreadsheet: the bulk importer does not handle pre-order fields. They are set product by product.