Managing preorders

After you have a preorder app installed and set up in your store, you might need to search your orders to manage information about preorders, or customer payment information.

Manage your customers' payment methods

If you sell preorder products and need a customer to update their payment information because of a failed payment, then you can update your customer's profile in the Shopify admin.

Steps:

1. From your Shopify admin, click Customers.
2. Click the customer’s name.
3. In the Payment methods section, click More actions.
4. If you want your customer to update their payment information themselves, then do the following:
   1. Click Send link to update card.
   2. Select the email address that you want to send the email from.
   3. Click Send email.
5. For some payment methods, if you want to update your customer's payment method manually, then do the following:
   1. Click Replace card.
   2. Complete the Replace credit card form.
   3. Click Confirm.
6. If you want to remove your customer's payment method, then click Delete card.

Customers might be asked to confirm their payment method for additional security. Your customer's bank can challenge subsequent billing attempts, which means your customer needs to manually confirm their purchase and payment method.

If a customer needs to confirm their payment method for an order, then Shopify sends your customer an email which includes a link to your store to confirm the payment.

Managing Orders

After you receive preorders, you might need to search your orders to manage information about preorders, or payment information.

You can also put an order's fulfillment back on hold if you want to extend fulfillment time.

Extend fulfillment

You can place an unfulfilled order on hold if it's not ready to be fulfilled. If you place an unfulfilled order on hold, make sure that your customers are informed about the status of their preorder.

Steps:

1. From your Shopify admin, click Orders.
2. Click the unfulfilled order.
3. In the Unfulfilled section, click the ... menu.
4. Click Hold fulfillment.

You can learn more about order fulfillment.

Filtering and sorting your unpaid or unfulfilled preorders

You can filter the Orders page with the Unfulfilled or Unpaid tabs to view preorders that haven't been fulfilled or paid in full.

Changing the payment due date

You can modify the payment due date on a deferred payment to collect it early.

Collect a deferred payment early

If your product is ready to ship earlier than expected, then you can collect the remaining payment earlier than scheduled. You can send an invoice to the customer or you can enter the customer’s credit or debit card details to charge them.

Caution

Make sure that you clearly communicate to your customer if you plan to collect a payment early. If your customer isn't expecting a charge, then it could result in a chargeback.

Steps:

1. From your Shopify Admin, click Orders.
2. Click the order that you want to collect early payment of.
3. In the Partially paid section, click Collect payment, and then click to charge the stored card.

Reserving inventory

Inventory for a preorder is reserved either at the time of sale or fulfillment. You can choose which option you prefer in the setup of some preorder apps. If this option isn't available, then contact the app developer for more information.

Canceling and refunding preorders

You can cancel a partially paid preorder order that hasn’t been fulfilled. If the order has been fulfilled, then you can't cancel the order, but you can issue full and partial refunds for fulfilled items.

If your customer cancels an order, then you might still need to refund the order manually. A message appears on an order when this happens.

After you refund an order from the Orders page, you might need to cancel the order in your preorder app as well.