Setting up pre-orders for Shopify Fulfillment Network

If you want to sell inventory that's currently out of stock in Shopify Fulfillment Network (SFN), then you can set up pre-orders.

When a pre-order is placed on a product that has an inventory amount of 0 in the SFN app, the order is placed on hold and listed as having Insufficient inventory. These orders are automatically processed when SFN receives new inventory for the product. If you stock the product at multiple fulfillment centers, then the first fulfillment center to receive new inventory from you begins processing all of your pre-orders.

Before you begin

Before you set up pre-orders, you need to configure the following settings:

  • To prevent adjustments to your available inventory, activate inventory override sync for your store.
  • Deselect Continue selling when out of stock for each variant that you don't want to sell. When this setting is selected, you can't modify your inventory reservations. Any pre-orders that are made before you select Continue selling when out of stock will continue selling without any limitations to the amount of pre-orders that can be purchased.

Set up pre-orders

  1. From the SFN app, click the Inventory tab, and then select a product.
  2. In the Available for sale section, click Edit.
  3. In the Adjust by section, enter the inventory quantity that you want to change. You can use a negative number to subtract from existing available for sale quantity.
  4. Click Save.

After you save the amount of stock that you want available to preorder, this quantity is added to the Available quantity for the product in your Shopify admin.

If a preorder quantity sells out, then the product doesn't automatically reset to 0 in SFN when new units of the product are received. If you don't want to oversell a product, then you need to manually reset the preorder value to 0.

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