I’m building a tool for my store that lets customers reserve a product for $2 for 24h so you don’t lose them when they say ‘I’ll think about it.’ They get an email reminder 12h before and they get their money back if they buy within the 24h window, otherwise shop owner keep the money.
I sell high value products thus, there must be a fee to prevent abusing the reservation. Is there anything similar to this so I can save sme time building it?
Shopify doesn’t have a native “reserve and hold” feature, but you can approximate it. The closest built-in approach is using draft orders — when someone pays the $2 deposit, you’d create a draft order that reserves that inventory, then send them the remaining balance invoice within 24 hours. The tricky part is handling abandoned reservations… you’d need to manually (or via automation) cancel unfulfilled draft orders after 24h so inventory releases back.
The real question is whether the $2 is refundable or gets applied to the final purchase, because that changes your workflow entirely. Applied-to-purchase is cleaner but means partial payment tracking. Non-refundable is simpler operationally but customers will push back.
Yeah there are a few apps that do deposit or reservation stuff but nothing exactly like what you’re describing with the auto-refund if they complete. The closest thing would be pre-order apps that let you take a partial payment upfront, but those don’t usually have the time limit or forfeiture piece. What’s your average order value and how often are people actually walking away to think about it versus just never coming back?
Hi @armadillo03 
I’d use the mechanic app to custom script this automation, or even shopify flow but mechanic is way better with dynamic scheduling(to release inventory).
e.g. https://tasks.mechanic.dev/?q=reserve , or things likehttps://tasks.mechanic.dev/create-a-draft-order-from-the-cart
Or even possibly bundles but you have to deal with the bad UX of presenting the target product as “free” throughout the checkout process.
There’s alot of moving parts but roughly make a button that’s for a separate product that’s literally called reserve-for-2-dollors or somesuch.
And with it pass in line item properties for the target product.
Then use inventory states when that fee-product is bought to hold back inventory, or release it after a schedule.
Reach out if you need something like that customized with mechanic or a custom app itself.