Pre-order Subscription Policy

[mpayne]

Hello, 

We're looking to start selling a subscription through the new Shopify Subscription API. We'd like to 

1) Capture payment at the time of order. (Pre-order)

2) Not charge the customer again until 30 days after the product ships. (A date unknown in the future)

3) Continue to charge 30 days from the initial ship date monthly.

Questions

• Is this allowed? 
• Is this possible?

[jbourassa]

Hey mpayne,

This is allowed, but Shopify doesn't know about pre-orders, thus will generate an order and a subscription contract as if it wasn't a pre-order. More precisely:
- The order's fulfillments will be "open" for work
- The subscription contract will be created with an initial `next_billing_date` of `checkout_time + 1 month`, and active.

As a workaround, you could update the subscription contract and mark it as paused. When the pre-order product ships, you can then update the contract to active and set the next billing date accordingly.

I hope that helps.