Accept Partial payments on Draft orders or Manual orders

[gio-novo]

I know you can accept multiple partial payments on Shopify POS which is very useful in my business but i would like this same function when doing draft orders or manual orders. I would like to email my customer the draft order and accept a "deposit" or a "down payment" on an order. Currently Square Invoice and PayPal Invoice offer this useful feature, where you can determine what is the initial minimal payment amount ( example 50% deposit) and after the customer either pick up or we deliver the order the customer pays the remaining amount. With square Invoice you can even set up a schedule of payments similar like a subscription but with a defined dates and last payment date. Also with 3D Cart you can record partial payments on offline or manual orders. 

When will we be able to accept or record partial payments on draft or manual orders on Shopify?

Thank you 

[tahirb7]

Hello, I am also here as another voice to mention that this is not an accepted solution, and Shopify needs to prioritize this.

That said, with the help of the comments in this thread I was able to come up with this solution, which works as a workaround:

1. Create draft order 

2. Check Payment due later

3.  Select due on receipt

4.  Open up POS on mobile device

5.  Go to Orders

6.  Select Online

7.  Select the created order

8.  Split payment

9.  Collect initial amount of payment

10.  Go back into the backend dashboard, where the order now shows partially paid

11.  Edit the payment due date to what you would like it to be for the remaining payment

12.  Collect payment at a later date either through the backend dashboard or POS

This works for us as we have a 2-part 50 advance, 50 net 30, payment policy for large wholesale orders, but don't think it would work for multiple monthly payments.

It's a lot of steps, but was pretty quick, and will work until Shopify decides to actually figure this out.  Hope it helps you too

[EllinonK]

Hey Tahirb7,

Thank you very much for taking the time to post this solution, convoluted as it is. You must have spent a lot of time trying to figure it all out. It is, though, the proof that Shopify MUST address our concerns.

Will try it next time we need to.

EK

[mbeffa]

I find all the solutions proposed by Dallas unacceptable. I will offer my 2 cents about how this should work. 

On any existing order, I have an option to split fulfillment

. 

In the Payment Pending section below, there is the option Collect Payment, which opens the following pop-up:

HERE WE NEED A THIRD OPTION:

The Split Payments selection needs to operate IDENTICAL with the Split Fultillment. 

Open a text box where I can enter the payment amount. 

Any future invoice should list the paid amount and the amount due. 

Since I can split fulfillment in any number if lots, I should also be able to split payments the same. 

Oh, but would Shopify ever listen? I think I wasted all this ink.

[George53]

What a great workaround! So much better than using a draft order lookup app! Thank you soooooo much for posting this!!!! Chapeau!!!!

[bdeaw]

Thanks SOOOOO much for this. 🙏 It works perfectly for my situation. This should be the accepted solution so folks can find it without scrolling through all the responses. you can take partial payments multiple times as well. 

It is still unacceptable that it's not possible via the admin.  

[HootySam]

Do not think this is actually solved. We are desperately looking for a solution that allows customers to pay a downpayment from the order cart so our support can serve them later. We are high-ticket items and no one will pay using credit cards. 

[bdeaw]

This is NOT a solution.  A user in May 2023 has posted a better option using Shopify POS. Please update this to direct to their response.  

[NMPP]

This should not be an accepted solution. It in no way satisfies the specified conditions. 

[mbeffa]

This is the worst possible suggestion. 

As fulfillment can be split, payments should be split accordingly.

Just add one more entry to the Payment pop-up. 

It might take a few hours of programming but you would save thousands of users numerous headaches. 

But I think you do not listen.

[iramccully]

This is most certainly NOT solved.

The ability to draft invoices with multiple payments is the very FIRST need I have for my very first product. It is the root of the business logic of credit, deposit, reservation and layaway.  It would be an easier problem if we could ONLY accept multiple recurring  payments with incrementing invoice lines. 

...

Look, I'm new here. My first shopify website is coming up on 4 days old. I have ONE item for sale. If I cannot partial invoice, accept partial payment, deposits increment an invoice and properly track inventory using this system I'm taking my business elsewhere.  

[Matt37]

I'm curious if you consider ShopPay to be a solution for you? 

We starting offering it to our customers, and they were able to setup 12 monthly payments for a table and chairs without a problem.  

[Gist]

Hi there!

I found this thread, and wanted to let everyone know about our application, called Wholster, which allows for true partial payments to be made on draft orders using the payment terms features.

You can check out an overview of how this works here:

https://docs.wholster.com/article/payment-terms-overview/

For more general information about the app, please visit the app listing page in Shopify

https://apps.shopify.com/wholester.

If anyone is interested in this solution, please feel free to reach out to us any time at support@gist-apps.com.

Hope this helps, and looking forward to hearing from you!

[Matt37]

@Gist Wow that might actually be a solution. Thank you!!  I want to go deeper into your product and see how we can set it up. It seems to have more features, so I want to see what else I am paying for. 

Thank you for posting it here. 

Any chance you want to break your payment terms tool out into it's own little app? 

cheers

[Gist]

Hey Matt,

Glad that Wholster looks like a good solution for you.

At this point in time, unfortunately we do not have any plans to break this feature off into it's own application.

[DougR]

While it looks like it might be one of the only solutions, the cost for large ticket items is prohibitive — I'm not discounting the cost of credit card processing, I'm just saying even 1/2 a percent on a 20k purchase is a lot to pay for basic functionality that shopify lacks. This seems like a very viable solution for lower-cost / higher-margin transactions.

[jarrodb291]

This is most certinaly not solved, even on Shopify Plus this BASIC feature is not available and we are directed to the wild west of the app store to find a solution, all of which by the way don't work in one way or another.  SHOPIFY - THIS IS A REQUIRED FEATURE!!!!!

[Koennn]

Please fix! Researching the use of shopify for our store, and would be an absolute dealbreaker if there is no proper way of doing this.

[RachelSim]

Requesting for the same thing need split payments from the draft orders 

[Jewelry22]

I agree, this should be a simple solution and a built in feature. We switched to shopify a little while ago and I HATE that we have to get an app for every single feature, its ridiculous. 

[George53]

No need to use an external app (not sure if you do). Still find it bizarre that we can’t take partial payment in the Admin, but when you use POS for iPad, you can take partial payment. That is how we do it now, we simply open Shopify on the iPad and process first partial payment there, then final payment can be processed in the Admin. Good luck!

[Jewelry22]

If that functionality is available on shopify POS it should also be available on the web version. We do not use shopify for our in person POS, so we cannot use that workaround. 

[DougR]

The problem is that the reporting shows the full payment at the time of the first payment... so if you happen to use sales reports for things like goals or commissions, then..... well, it's not really usable at all and Shopify's answer is to pay for a custom reporting app.

[DougR]

How do you handle reporting? We pay sales commissions — the full order amount shows in sales, while you have to use a 3rd party app (or export and manually run reports) to see what net sales collected are?

[ElanaSadler]

Yes this is such a good point!

[anrdunn]

Another vote for this feature! I've been waiting and hoping for years now that Shopify would add integrated partial payment options with the ability to send updated invoices and invoices requesting remaining payment.

[anrdunn]

We made the switch from Shopify to Odoo. Each platform has its quirks but we've been much happier with Odoo as a package. 

[Adam_Mosley]

It's truly remarkable that people have been asking for this basic feature for years and Shopify is just ignoring it.

[dopher]

Agreed,   QB supports partial payments,   the POS supports partial payments.   What gives?  And we have Shopify Pro version.   

[Kat25]

May 2023 and it appears to still not have been addressed. 

[diana_birsan]

Former Shopifier here: Shopify released new APIs for partners to build this functionality properly and stop all the duplicate inventory and order issues, very few have actually taken these steps. We used these APIs and built out Downpay to handle this properly. Just about to release variant support and more features on storefront. I know it's not ideal for some folks to have another app to do the thing, but but if you want to try it out for free, we're in free beta for another month or more and would love to get some feedback and help you out in the interim. Here's what an order looks like, and you can send an invoice or just charge the credit card on file.


Also: This only works for regular checkout orders, draft orders still doesn't support partial payments APIs which stinks for us too 😭.

hypehound.io/ or install here.

Diana

[DougR]

I'd love to understand the % cost — are you processing credit card fees and that's where the .3% or .18% comes in? 

[EllinonK]

The so called "accepted (by Shopify) solution" is anything but acceptable. I would like to join ALL the other merchants that have been demanding that this feature be BUILT INTO Shopify.

For some (a lot?) of us, who do a substantial amount of custom order business, this feature is 

ESSENTIAL.

Please Shopify, quit stalling--(as I add my voice to this thread) three years after the original post!!!)

Thank you.

EK

[RichardE]

Crickets from Shopify, still nothing has been handled with this and it's asinine that we are still waiting on this to be developed/deployed.

[EllinonK]

FYI, we are using this App: https://apps.shopify.com/preorder-now?surface_intra_position=1&surface_type=partners&surface_version... demand which recently introduced a Partial Payment feature. However, we have not used it yet and can not vouch for it.

Still, as customers of the most popular e-commerce hosting platform, we should N-O-T have to

resort to add-ons of ANY kind. This feature is so fundamental to merchants who sell "expensive" and/or customizable products/services that Shopify should have introduced from Day #1.

Totally, inexcusable.

[Jcvr1920]

We downloaded preorder Now and we did not like it, the partial pay feature
is neat, but an inventory night because it is not a true partial pay. The
app automatically creates two draft orders, one for the current invoice and
a second for the second payment, what they don't tell you is that it pulls
inventory twice, so if you are sold out of an item it shows that on the
second invoice and they cannot check out. Also, on the second draft order
it is very confusing because it does not have the customers name selected
on it, just a reference number. There is not an app out there that can
produce a true partial payment invoice in Shopify. It is on Shopify to
create it and code it. It baffles me that they have not done this yet.
PAYPAL, SQUARE AND OTHER PLATFORMS HAVE THIS FEATURE. It can be done.

[Adam_Mosley]

Yes, the other platforms have the feature, including Shopify POS, which is running on the same Shopify backbone. The only explanation is that Shopify simply doesn't want to offer this feature for some reason. They somehow haven't grown with their customer base. They still think their product is for people selling T-shirts out of their garage.

[Koennn]

One upvote for this feature request. We are selling custom furniture, and our customers expect a 50/50 partial payment. Right now it is always painful to see customers not completing their order because we cannot offer partial payments.

[Stever27]

We also sell some high value items and customized products that are not usually ready for immediate shipment and many customers would rather pay a deposit with the balance payment at a later date.  Right now we just handle these cases manually, but it is error prone and can mess up our store analytics if not done carefully.

[VariousKeytags]

Add us to the list of businesses that really need this functionality!  It was a breeze when we did all our invoicing via PayPal. This missing feature has started to trip us up a bit in sales. 

[Koennn]

Same here! We sell high value custom items, and our competitors offer 10% or 50% deposits with the rest due on arrival. If I would have know this was not able with Shopify I would definitly have picked another platform, we are losing customers to our competitors every day.   

[dopher]

The biggest issue I have is that according to Shopify this issue is solved.   Maybe thats why no one at SF is looking at this problem.

[EllinonK]

It is obvious to all of us on this conversation that Shopify must "do
something about it".

The real question, though, may be this: are "they" (that is, the managers
that help shape the Shopify website development strategy) *aware* of this
burning need?

*Perhaps they are not.* I am saying this because I am amazed at all the new
"bells and whistles" Shopify keeps coming up with every month, i.e., "nice
to have" features here and there but, in the final analysis, they address
the needs of a *particular* industry or sales channel. It is as if they
have taken care of all the basics and they are now looking for the extras.

However, the accept partial payments feature is so *foundational* to every
good e-commerce platform, that it is intuitively obvious to the impartial
observer that it should have been included in the very first Shopify
iteration many-many years ago--way before they became the #1 platform in
the world!

The fact that it was not, supports my argument that they somehow missed it
and continue to miss it because nobody from Shopify is aware of this
ongoing discussion among us merchants: yes--the "users", as software
marketing types, like to call us. They keep looking for these "nice to
have" Shopify features (driven perhaps by what Square is offering) while
this "dah-h-h!" kind of a feature is amazingly eluding their attention!

To put it another way: it is completely *impossible* for a senior Shopify
executive to be alerted of this need and to *consciously* deflect it ("we
have more important things to do").

It is *impossible* because, the fact that so many of us have looked--*in
vain and for so long*--for add-on Apps and other workarounds to do our job,
is further proof that the feature should be tightly integrated in the
Shopify code itself--by Shopify, itself NOT by third parties!

So, what do others on this channel think we should do about it? Perhaps,
start *flooding* Shopify Tech Support, by citing this discussion, and be
persistent about it by not "allowing" the support case, that each of us
opens, to be closed by Tech Support until somebody "in *senior* authority"
responds to *all of us*?

Perhaps a "flood", such as this, may move them!

What do you think?

EK

PS Sorry about this...impolite language, but Shopify's inaction is
exasperating!

[Arundas]

Let's flood! Make a support case as said, and paste a screenshot here to
encourage others.

[Koennn]

Great plan, done 🙌

[SPZO]

Did you get any reply? I'm facing the same problem. I can't believe this isn't solved after so many years. 

[Koennn]

Not a word 😞

[Kat25]

Nope!

[George53]

Nope, nothing

[VariousKeytags]

This seems like an easy add. Really not sure what the downside of adding
this feature would be? It’s pretty confusing after all this time.

[DDemper]

I feel the same way! Our business focuses on selling customized items of great value, and our competitors have the advantage of offering flexible payment including deposits, with the remaining amount due upon arrival. Had I known that this functionality was not available with Shopify, I would have definitely chosen a different platform. Unfortunately, we are witnessing a steady loss of customers to our competitors on a daily basis.