Creating draft orders
You can create a draft order on behalf of your customer and then send them an invoice for the order. By default, the invoice contains a link to a checkout, where your customer can pay for their order.
Draft orders can contain the following information:
On this page
- Create a new draft order
- Duplicating an existing order or draft order
- Add products to a draft order
- Reserve items in a draft order
- Add discounts to a draft order
- Add shipping to a draft order
- Add tags to a draft order
- Add or remove taxes from a draft order
- Add, change, or remove a customer from a draft order
- Set payment terms for payments due later on a draft order
- Local currency on draft orders
- Change the market for an order
- Delete a draft order
Create a new draft order
You can create a new draft order from the Drafts page of your Shopify admin. New drafts have no pre-filled order information, so you need to add all draft order details manually.
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Duplicating an existing order or draft order
When you create a draft order, you can save time by duplicating an existing order or an existing draft order. Review the following examples when duplicating an existing order might be useful:
- You often manually create orders for returning customers.
- You want to change or edit an existing order.
When you duplicate an existing order or a draft order, a new draft order is created with the following duplicate information:
- Products. The duplicate line item contains the latest information for that product. If a product has been removed, then it won't be included in the duplicate draft order.
- Custom items.
- Customer information. If the customer has been deleted, then a customer is created based on the email, billing, and shipping addresses.
- Email, billing, and shipping addresses.
- Notes, note attributes, and tags.
- The market.
Discounts and shipping rates aren't duplicated in the draft order.
Duplicate an existing order
You can create a draft order by duplicating an existing order in your Shopify admin.
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If you save your order as a draft, then you can update it later from the Drafts page in your Shopify admin. When you accept payment for your draft order, an order is created for it on the Orders page.
Duplicate an existing draft order
You can create a draft order by duplicating an existing draft order in your Shopify admin.
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If you save your order as a new draft, then you can update it later from the Drafts page in your Shopify admin. When you accept payment for your draft order, an order is created for it on the Orders page.
Add products to a draft order
You can add products and product bundles to your draft order.
You can also choose whether or not to reserve the items in the draft order to ensure that the inventory can't be purchased by other customers.
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Reserve items in a draft order
When you Reserve items in a draft order, those inventory units are put in the Unavailable inventory state and can't be purchased by other customers. The items that you reserve are dedicated to that particular draft order. If you don't reserve items, then the quantities stay in the Available inventory state and can be purchased by other customers. You can learn more about inventory states.
To reserve an item, inventory tracking must be activated for that product.
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Add discounts to a draft order
You can apply discounts to a draft order in the following ways:
- Add an existing discount code to the order, along with eligible line items.
- Add all eligible automatic discounts.
- Add a custom amount off discount to the order.
- Add a custom amount off discount to individual line items.
Learn more about applying discounts to a draft order.
Add shipping to a draft order
If the current order requires shipping, then you can choose a preset shipping rate, create a custom rate, or choose local delivery or pickup in store.
To use a location-based shipping rate, you first need to add a customer and a shipping address to the draft order. After you add a customer, you can choose from the shipping rates in your store's shipping settings.
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Add tags to a draft order
You can organize your orders beyond whether they're captured, paid, and fulfilled by adding tags. You can filter orders by tag, and then save the order view for that tag so that you can quickly access those orders in the future.
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Add or remove taxes from a draft order
By default, draft orders include taxes based on your store's tax settings and the customer's shipping address. If you don't have a shipping address on file, then taxes are based on the customer's billing address instead.
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Add, change, or remove a customer from a draft order
You can add a customer, change the customer's information, or remove a customer from a draft order.
Add a customer to a draft order
You can add a new or existing customer to a draft order. Adding a customer is necessary when you want to use a location-based shipping rate for the current order.
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Change a customer's contact information
You can modify a customer's information from a draft order.
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Remove a customer from a draft order
You can remove a customer from a draft order. This won't remove the customer from the customer list in your Shopify admin.
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Set payment terms for payments due later on a draft order
Payment terms let you set the date that payment is due on an order. You can set payment terms on draft orders, or you can add them to existing orders that have a Payment pending status.
You can choose from the following options when setting the payment terms:
- Due on receipt: Use this option to set the payment as due on the date that you send the invoice to your customer.
- Due on fulfillment: Use this option to set the payment as due on the date that you fulfill all items in the order.
- Net term: Use this option to set the payment as due within the specified number of days from the issue date. For example, you can choose Within 30 days, and the payment due date is set to 30 days after the issue date. By default, the issue date is set to the current date, but you can change the issue date after you select a net term option.
- Fixed term: Use this option to set the payment as due on a specific date.
If an order isn't paid by the due date, then the order status becomes Overdue.
After you set the payment terms, you can send an invoice or accept payment for the order.
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Local currency on draft orders
If you use International to sell internationally, then the local currency, pricing, taxes, and duties are determined by the market that's associated with the order.
The market that's associated with the order is determined by the shipping address of the customer. Adding a customer to the order updates the pricing and displays your customer's local currency.
On draft orders that display a local currency other than store currency, the foreign exchange rate is calculated when you create the draft order. This rate is fixed and used on the invoice regardless of whether the exchange rate changes. However, if you save the order as a draft and edit it afterwards, then pricing on the whole order is updated with the foreign exchange rate that's current at the time of the edit.
If you want to use different pricing and currency for a draft order, then change the pricing and review the following impacts of changing the pricing on an order:
- Taxes are included or excluded from item prices. For example, orders with the United States market exclude taxes from prices, but orders with the Germany market include taxes in prices.
- Tax rates vary by market. At checkout, if a customer changes the shipping address to an address that's outside the market, then the correct tax rate for the customer’s shipping address is charged, but the market on the order, with its tax included or excluded setting, is unchanged.
- If you use a third-party service to determine the foreign exchange rate for a market, then pricing on an order is determined by the service’s exchange rate. However, the rate that Shopify Payments uses to calculate your payout is based on the market that's selected in Shopify. Therefore, the amount charged on the order can differ from the amount you receive in payment. For more information, refer to currency conversions and exchange rates.
- Manufacturer Suggested Retail Price (MSRP): If you are obliged to sell a product at the MSRP in a customer’s market, then you could be in breach of contract if you switch markets and use an alternative market price.
Change the market for an order
If you use Shopify International and you want to change the pricing and currency for your order, then you need to change the pricing. The Market section for your order is displayed only when a market other than your primary market is activated. If you want to change to particular market pricing, then you need to activate that market and local currency for the market.
Before you change the pricing, make sure to review the impact of changing the pricing.
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Order pricing is displayed in the customer's local currency except when you make the following custom changes to the order:
- If you add a custom line item or order discount, then the Discount value displays in store currency.
- If you add a custom shipping price, then the Price displays in store currency.
- If you add a custom item, then the Price displays in store currency.
After you make these custom changes, they're displayed on the order in the customer's local currency.
Delete a draft order
You can delete draft orders whether the draft order is open or completed. Deleting a completed draft order doesn't delete the order created from the draft.