Sending invoices for draft orders

When you create a draft order for a customer, you can share a link to the checkout page for the order so that the customer can enter billing information, select a shipping method, and submit payment. After the customer completes the checkout process using the link, the draft order becomes an order in the Orders page and is automatically marked as Paid.

There are two ways to share checkout links with your customers:

• Send an invoice to your customer, which contains a link to the checkout page.
• Share a checkout link directly with your customer in a social media app or direct message.

Considerations for sending invoices for draft orders

Before sending an invoice for a draft order, review the following considerations:

• Be careful not to mark the draft order as Paid before receiving the customer's payment, or else the link in the invoice won't work, and the customer won't be able to complete the checkout process.
• If you send an invoice to a customer and the invoice includes products with no available inventory, then customers trying to check out are notified that the item is out of stock and can't complete the sale. You can take one of the following actions to complete a checkout for a draft order that doesn't have available inventory:
  • Add the required inventory to the product, and then reserve the products for the draft order.
  • Process payment for the draft order in the Shopify admin by either marking the order as paid or entering a credit card number.

Send invoice for an order

You can send an invoice to your customer with a link to the checkout page. Your customer can use the link in the email to enter billing information, select a shipping method, and submit payment.

If you use International to sell internationally, then the currency on the invoice is determined by the market that's associated with the customer's shipping address. You can change the currency by changing the market.

You can also send invoices for orders with a Payment pending status. In one situation, you can't send an invoice when you set payment terms: if the draft order is in a local currency other than your store currency, then you can only collect payment by credit card or by marking the order as paid.

Caution

If you add a product to an order after you send an invoice, then any shipping rates that were calculated for that order won't automatically update to display the cost of shipping the new product.

Steps:

Desktop

1. From your Shopify admin, go to Orders > Drafts.
2. Click an existing draft order or click Create order to create a new draft order.
3. From the Payments section, click Send invoice.
4. In the Send invoice dialog, enter the message that you want to include in the invoice.
5. Optional: To allow customers to add discount codes to the draft order, select Allow customers to apply discounts when paying an invoice.
6. Click Review invoice.
7. In the dialog, review your invoice, and then click Send invoice.

Share direct checkout link for an order

You can create a draft order and then share a link to the checkout page with your customer. This option is helpful for responding to customer requests initiated on social media apps or direct messaging.

Note

You can't activate the option to allow customers to apply discount codes themselves during a draft order checkout when you share a direct checkout link from a mobile device. You must use a desktop device to activate the option when sharing a checkout link.

Steps:

Desktop

1. From your Shopify admin, go to Orders > Drafts.
2. Click an existing draft order or click Create order to create a new draft order.
3. Click Share.
4. Optional: To allow customers to add discount codes to the draft order, select Allow customers to apply discounts when paying an invoice.
5. Click Copy link.
6. Go to the social media platform on which you want to share the link.
7. Craft your message to include the copied link, and then send your message to the customer.