How to Collect Remaining Payment for Pre-Orders with Kaktus Preorder App

[YukoY]

I’m going to use the Kaktus Preorder app in my Shopify store to allow customers to pre-order products with a partial payment upfront. My question is:

What is the easiest or the best way to collect the remaining payment after the initial partial payment is made?

I’d appreciate any detailed steps or recommendations for apps that can help with collecting the remaining balance.

Thank you!

[Jo_EarlyBird · Accepted solution]

Hiya Yuko,

Some pre-order apps like ours (Early Bird) helps you automate capturing the remaining payment on a specific date of your choice.

(For your reference: Without an app, you'd only have a 7-day window to capture the remaining payment if you're using Shopify Payments. After 7 days, you'd have to get authorization from your customers again.)

Listing detailed step-by-step below of how you can auto-collect final payment for pre-orders, using our app:

1. Set up a Pre-order campaign (sell as many dartboards as you'd like, or only in limited quantities)
2. Option for your customers to pay in full now (you can offer discounts separate from Shopify's promo codes)
3. Option for your customers to pay a partial deposit first (% or $ amount), and the rest later
4. Select the final payment due date (after X days or at a specific date & time)
5. Select expected fulfilment/shipping date (A specific date or just set as ASAP/Not sure yet)
6. This info will be displayed to your customers throughout their purchase journey. i.e. On the Product page, View cart, Checkout etc. 
7. You can choose to reserve your stock when the pre-order is placed, or when it's fulfilled
8. Our app will auto-capture the final payment and auto-send your customers the invoice receipt on your selected due date
9. If you'd like to manually capture a specific customer's payment before the automated capture date, you'll still have control to do so
10. If the supplier has shipment delays, just update the estimated shipping date in your pre-order campaign, and our app can auto-send a pre-order delayed email for you to inform your customers

Would love to hear your feedback, as I'm always learning what different businesses need when managing pre-orders.

If this is relevant to what you need, happy to send you some screenshots of what we've done for other waitlist customers (we've just opened up for early private access), or share two 5-minute videos to show you what the partial deposit payment end-to-end process looks like.

[YukoY]

Thank you so much for the detailed information and the helpful tip about the 7-day window for capturing remaining payments with Shopify Payments. Congrats on launching the Early Bird app! It sounds like a great solution, and I'll ask my team to look into it. Thanks again!

[Ryan871]

Hello, I replied to another post of yours but I will also reply to this one. Let's say I have 5 pre order items in one order and each pre order items arrives 1 week apart from the next.  This app will charge the 5 payments of each of the 5 items at the 5 different pre order dates?

Also if one or more of the items never arrives, I can cancel this payment from being collected?

[Jo_EarlyBird]

Hi Ryan,

Sorry I didn't get notified about your question as I was auto-logged out from the forum!

Are you wanting the above because your use-case is for wholesale? (Capturing remaining payment upon each pre-order's fulfilment/delivery?) 

Saw my co-founder had already shared the link to Split Shipping at Checkout new feature with you. (Seems to be available now to some stores.)

I know you mentioned you can't/don't want to force customers to create separate orders for each pre order item. But that's probably the best temp solution before you've setup Split Shipping at Checkout. Most stores are using this approach, if not a mixed cart warning.

The key is to set clear expectations across their customer's purchase journey, before they place a pre-order:

1. Recommend your customers place separate orders; let them know otherwise they'll be charged all pre-orders on the same date.
2. Add the recommendation info above the Pre-Order Now button. (Our app can help.)
3. Add the same info in your Shipping Policy
4. Add the same info in your Order Confirmation email
5. Mention this in your usual marketing assets (EDM, social media, ads etc.)
   
   

You should let them know upfront it's not your store's limitation. This way they're less likely to complain about shipping and would be more understanding (based on our other Shopify merchants' feedback anyway).

My suggested copy:

If you combine multiple pre-order items with different shipment dates in one order, by default we'll ship everything altogether once all the pre-order items have arrived. We highly recommend placing separate orders if you would prefer earlier shipment of pre-order items that arrive first. Please note this will incur additional shipping charges. All your deferred payments will be charged on the same date as there's currently not possible to support payment upon separate order fulfilments. It is unfortunately beyond our control. Thank you for understanding.

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This way, most customers by default (hopefully) would wait for items to be shipped altogether. If not, you can manually send them an invoice to charge them for the additional shipping.

Edit: Did some digging. To setup Split Shipping at Checkout, make sure you have fulfillable inventory settings and local delivery is NOT activated.