How do I manage pre-orders after they're placed?
Updated · SMART Preorder & Back in stock (E-TRADE PARTNER)
Open Pre-orders in the app and switch to the Orders tab. It lists every order with a pre-order item, with status tabs, search and filters, and lets you collect balances, change balance dates, cancel, send shipping updates, resend confirmations and release orders for fulfillment, one order at a time or up to 250 at once.
SMART Preorder & Back in stock is a free Shopify app for pre-orders, deposits, and back-in-stock alerts.
Try it freeOn this page
Find orders
- Status tabs: All, Open, Balance due, Payment failed, On hold, Scheduled, Fulfilled, Cancelled.
- Search by order, email, product or campaign. Filter by Campaign, Payment type (Deposit or Full payment) and date placed (last 7, 30 or 90 days). Sort by date, total or order number.
- From a campaign, the editor's Orders button opens this list filtered to that campaign.
- Click an order to open its page in the app. Open in Shopify takes you to the Shopify order.
Payment statuses
| Status | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Paid | Paid in full at checkout, or the balance has been collected. |
| Balance due | A deposit order whose balance is still to be charged, including between retries. |
| Charging | A charge is running; Shopify hasn't confirmed it yet. The app updates within 15 minutes. |
| Payment failed | Every charge attempt failed. See How balance charges work. |
| Cancelling | Shopify accepted the cancellation and is processing it. Nothing is charged meanwhile. |
| Cancelled | The order was cancelled. No balance will be charged. |
Actions
| Action | Where | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Collect balance | Order page (main button), bulk | Charges the remaining balance to the customer's saved payment method now. Optionally emails the payment link if the charge fails. |
| Change balance date | Order page, bulk | Moves the balance due date, from tomorrow, charged at 12:00 PM store time. Shopify's payment terms move too, the reminder goes out again, and a failed balance gets fresh attempts. |
| Cancel pre-order | Order page (More actions), bulk (Cancel pre-orders) | Cancels the whole Shopify order, restocks the items and notifies the customer. Choose Refund to the original payment method or Keep the payment (refund manually later if needed). |
| Send shipping update | Order page, bulk | Emails your message about the ship date. See Pre-order emails. |
| Resend confirmation | Order page, bulk | Sends the Pre-order confirmation again, for example when the first one landed in spam. |
| Release for fulfillment | Order page, bulk | Makes the order ready to ship now: lifts the app's hold and any scheduled date. Holds from other apps stay. |
| Change fulfillment date | Bulk | Changes the date scheduled orders become ready to ship. Orders without a scheduled date are skipped. |
Bulk actions
- On the Orders tab, tick the orders, or use Select all for every order matching your filters (up to 250 per action).
- Pick the action. The dialog explains it and says how many orders will be processed; orders the action doesn't apply to (paid, cancelled, already fulfilled) are skipped with the reason.
- Confirm. The action runs in the background, so you can leave the page. A banner shows progress and the result, and Retry failed tries the failed orders again.
Export CSV downloads every pre-order matching your status, search, campaign, payment type and date filters, up to 5,000 orders.
The order page
- The balance, its due date and status, the deposit paid (excluding tax and shipping) and the payments received so far.
- The pre-order items, and the other items under Also in this order (not pre-ordered) on a mixed order.
- A Timeline of what happened: charges, holds, emails, date changes and cancellations.
Use the app for balances, not Shopify's Capture payment
Shopify's bulk Capture payment can mark deposit orders as paid without charging the card. Use Collect balance in the app, or let the automatic charge run. Cancelling or refunding in Shopify is fine: the app sees it and stops charging.
Customers cancelling their own pre-orders
- Settings > Deposits and cancellations has Let customers cancel pre-orders that haven't shipped, on by default.
- Customers cancel from the order in their customer account (Cancel pre-order), or from the cancel link in the confirmation, shipping update and payment failed emails, while nothing has shipped.
- It always cancels the whole order, with a full refund to the original payment method; items are restocked and Shopify emails the customer.
- The account button works with Shopify's current customer accounts; legacy customer accounts don't support app extensions, so those customers use the email link (Shopify developer docs).
An order is missing from the list
An order counts as a pre-order only if an item was bought with the campaign's purchase option (on Simple checkout campaigns and for B2B buyers, with the app's hidden pre-order note). Orders placed with the app embed off, on POS or another channel, or as a draft order are normal orders, like a plain backorder (Pre-order vs backorder): no deposit, hold, tag or limit count. If the app missed an order because Shopify's notification didn't arrive, Shopify retries for 4 hours and the app also checks for missed orders every hour.
All your pre-orders in one list
Balances, dates, holds, cancellations and customer emails, one by one or 250 at a time. Free on the Shopify App Store.
Install free on ShopifyFrequently asked questions
›If I deactivate or delete a campaign, what happens to its orders?
Nothing changes for them. Balances are still charged on their dates, reminders still go out and holds are still released.
›Can I cancel only the pre-order item and keep the rest of the order?
Not with Cancel pre-order: Shopify cancels whole orders, so every cancel in the app cancels the whole order, and the dialogs say so first.
›Can I stop customers from cancelling pre-orders themselves?
Yes. Untick Let customers cancel pre-orders that haven't shipped in Settings > Deposits and cancellations. The account button and the email cancel links then stop working.