Accept Partial payments on Draft orders or Manual orders

Payments + Shipping & Fulfilment

Topic summary

Merchants are requesting the ability to accept partial payments (deposits/down payments) on draft orders and manual orders, similar to functionality available in Shopify POS, Square Invoice, and PayPal Invoice.

Core Need:

  • Accept initial deposits (e.g., 50%) when sending draft order invoices to customers
  • Collect remaining balance later via email link or follow-up invoice
  • Properly track partial payments within a single transaction for accounting purposes

Current Limitations:

  • Partial payments work in Shopify POS but not in admin/draft orders
  • Shopify support suggests creating multiple separate draft orders for each payment installment
  • This workaround creates accounting reconciliation issues and inflates transaction counts

Workarounds Mentioned:

  • Opening draft orders through POS on iPad to process partial payments
  • Third-party apps: Wholster, Downapy, Manual Partial Payments
  • Processing deposits outside Shopify (QuickBooks, PayPal) and marking orders as “paid outside of Shopify”

Status:
This remains unresolved despite years of merchant requests. Multiple users express frustration that this “foundational” e-commerce feature hasn’t been prioritized, with some considering switching platforms. The discussion reflects ongoing dissatisfaction with Shopify’s response to what merchants view as basic B2B functionality.

Summarized with AI on November 1. AI used: claude-sonnet-4-5-20250929.
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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

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