Can a Customer Create a Draft Order in Shopify?

Shopify Discussion
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Topic summary

Core Question: Whether customers can create draft orders directly in Shopify.

Answer: Draft orders can only be created by store admins through the dashboard or via the Shopify API with custom development. Theme code alone cannot enable this functionality.

Workaround Discussed: Custom middleware could allow customers to submit information that triggers draft order creation through the API, but this requires development work.

Business Use Case: Multiple users need customers to create draft orders on the frontend that store owners can then review, modify (especially for inventory confirmation and freight costs), and send back for payment—essentially a quote-to-order workflow.

App Suggestions:

  • Draftable and Draft Order Invoice Lister were mentioned but confirmed as insufficient
  • “Quotify” was suggested as a potential solution

Status: The discussion remains unresolved with participants still seeking a suitable app or solution for customer-initiated draft orders.

Summarized with AI on October 30. AI used: claude-sonnet-4-5-20250929.
1

Is there a way for customer to create a Draft Order in Shopify? If so, how? I don’t see a button for this.

Or only Admin can create draft order in the backend?

I am using Impulse theme, not sure if that matters.

1 Like
2

A draft order is something that the Admin has a dashboard for. There is an API available as well so with some custom development information could be sent by the customer to an app (middleware) and that tool creates the draft order via the api. It’s not something theme code can do alone but is possible.

This (very old) blog post has some info on it - as would the dev docs.
https://www.shopify.com/au/partners/blog/introducing-shopify-s-draft-orders-api

3

Hi, @vincentpoont2 .

Rio here from the Shopify Community team. As Jason shared, a draft order can only be created via the admin or an app.

Do you want customers to be able to create draft orders or are you looking to investigate one that’s created in your admin? If so, you can go to the order, and scroll to the order details section to see if it was created by an app.

4

Rio, what apps allows customers to create draft orders? We have a need for this.

1 Like
5

Hi, @umeworks .

You could check out the following apps to see if they meet your business needs:

6

Hi Victoria, No, neither of these do what we need. We want authorized customers to be able to create a draft order on the website that is sent to /retrieved by the Store Owner. The Store Owner will then confirm/update the order as needed* and add freight cost. The updated order will be sent to the Customer. Store Owner will fulfill the order and the Customer will then pay (online preferred, but even offline is acceptable).

*Inventory is quite fluid and these are volume orders so Store Owner needs to confirm manually vs. using inventory control via website.

4 Likes
7

We’re also looking for the same solution, the Shopify support team hasn’t been helpful in giving us any ideas on how to make something like this work. We’ve talked to Draftable and PayFy and both apps don’t do that.

1 Like
8

You might wanna look into apps like “quotify” I believe

9

interesting app! might be just what I am looking for. have you tried it?

10

Have you found a solution for this?