Handling Shopify preorders with Cleverific

This article will show you different ways to use Cleverific to create and manage preorders for products that are not yet available for fulfillment. 

Manually create preorders through your Shopify Admin

You can create preorders in the backend for your customers and only collect payments when the product becomes available.

Steps

1. Create a new order with the preorder product in your Shopify Admin. Make sure to select "Payment due later".

2. Leave the product unfulfilled.

3. Once the product becomes available, collect payment for this order.

   You can do so by opening the order page and clicking More Actions > Send Payment Request or clicking Send Invoice on the order page. You can also mark the order as paid if you've received the payment outside of Shopify.

4. Once the payment is received from your customer, ensure the payment has been captured and fulfill the order.

Create a preorder Manual payment method

You can create a Manual payment method and instruct your customers to select this payment gateway.

Steps

1. Go to Shopify Settings > Payments and create a Manual payment method called "Preorder." Customers will see this payment option on your checkout page.

2. Advise your customers through the product listing page (under Description) to select the "Preorder" payment gateway upon checking out (only necessary if you are not collecting a deposit). See example below:

3. Once the product becomes available, collect payment for this order.

   You can do so by opening the order page and clicking More Actions > Send Payment Request or clicking Send invoice on the order page. You can also mark the order as paid if you've received the payment outside of Shopify.

4. Once the payment is received from your customer, ensure the payment has been captured and fulfill the order.

Use product variants to accept deposits

You can create a preorder variant to collect the cost of the deposit and then perform an exchange for the full-cost variant when the product becomes available.

Steps

1. Create a variant for the preorder product on your Shopify product page called "preorder". Set the price to the desired deposit amount and the quantity available.

   The full-cost variant should have 0 available quantity and Continue selling when out of stock setting disabled.

2. When an order is created with this preorder product variant, leave the item unfulfilled.

3. Once the product becomes available, adjust the inventory quantity for the full-cost variant.

4. Open the order page and click More actions > Edit Order.

5. In Cleverific, exchange the variant of your preorder product for the full-cost variant.

6. Click Save > Send Payment Request to collect the outstanding amount. Your customers will only be required to pay the difference between the deposit for the preorder variant and the full-cost variant.

6. Once your customer has paid the order, fulfill the order.