How do I sell an item in store that isn't being fulfilled?

[TravelingBags]

Sometimes, customers place special orders for items that are not stocked at our store or that we are temporarily out of.  How can I sell the item and mark it as unfulfilled so we know that we owe this customer their item?
We use the POSlite, not the full-blown POS ( right now, the cost is too high to make the switch for the added benefits).
Any suggestions/ideas would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks 

[PaulNewton]

For POS either find an app, build an automation, use draft orders, or more clunky direct them to an online-store checkout experience with preorders customization or preorders feature. 

AKA preorders aka back in stock, while plenty of existing topics on this for onlines-sales channel not so much for POS and most search results you'll find are polluted with unrelated noise to POS if it's even about "preorder", "pre order", or "pre-order" etc.

Alternatively just don't,

---

@TravelingBags wrote:

 ( right now, the cost is too high to make the switch for the added benefits).

---

If POS pro, etc can enable business revenue for some merchandising scheme do the actual accounting:

If your selling something you don't have that doesn't make money to pay for the process of managing that thing then don't sell the item.

If selling something that makes money to pay for the process of managing that thing, then pay for the process to make more money.

[TravelingBags]

Thanks.cor the reply but not really helpful. Especially the "Just Don't"  

As a "Shopify Partner / Developer" I find your answer less then helpful and am.suprised you really didn't offer any constructive help.

I'm proud of our small family owned brick & mortar business which passed the 500K in sales last year.  We sometins simply run out of things and not being the "A" we can always stock everything. Trying to help.cusomters means doing special orders.  Customer s happily understand and our more than willing to pay for the item(s) knowing the will get them.  We just want/need a way to make sure we don't forget tonfulfill the item, that is why I asked.

I have been looking for an app. If you have a suggestion I would love to hear it. 

Thanks again for the reply.  

Wish you well.

[DDMusicGeek]

Hi,

To be honest I'm not sure if this will be beneficial, as I'm now looking to swap back to Shopify POS after using other POS systems, but I believe you can change a setting in the POS to stop marking orders as fulfilled. Of course, this then means you'd have to manually change fulfilled orders, and maybe use the order notes, but it could be a cost effective way, without additional cost.

I also have requests for items that aren't always in stock or are delayed which customers want to pay for before receiving them. I believe that is just part of the customer service.... it would appear some of the "Shopify Partners" just want you to throw cash at them to solve a small problem and don't actually understand the retail side of things.

Hopefully this helps, or gives you ideas, and good luck!

Dave, DDMG

[TravelingBags]

You have hit the nail on the head multiple times with your answer.
I know we can do it manually I just fear we lose track of something and
forget.

Thanks for the Reply

[DDMusicGeek]

Yeah, it's not ideal. I'm still looking at how to achieve various thinks with the POS system before I swap over so if I find a better solution I'll update!!

Good Luck!!