---
title: "How do I manage pre-orders after they're placed?"
description: "Find, filter and export pre-orders, collect balances, move balance dates, cancel, release for fulfillment and email customers, one by one or in bulk."
url: "https://smart-preorder.com/help/preorders/manage-preorder-orders"
updated: "2026-11-02"
product: "SMART Preorder & Back in stock"
section: "Help center / Pre-orders"
---


# How do I manage pre-orders after they're placed?

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.

## 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](https://smart-preorder.com/help/preorders/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](https://smart-preorder.com/help/preorders/preorder-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

1. On the **Orders** tab, tick the orders, or use **Select all** for every order matching your filters (up to 250 per action).
2. 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.
3. 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](https://shopify.dev/docs/apps/build/customer-accounts)).

## 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](https://smart-preorder.com/help/preorders/preorder-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 SMART Preorder & Back in stock on the Shopify App Store](https://apps.shopify.com/smart-preorder-back-in-stock).

## Frequently 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.