How to build large draft orders with many line items without breaking shopify

Shopify Discussion

Topic summary

Main issue: Creating large draft orders (~100 line items) in Shopify becomes very slow and glitchy for a B2B wholesaler. Draft orders (manually created orders before checkout) appear to struggle with high line‑item counts.

Observed problems: Deleted line items reappear, inventory quantity updates revert after saving, and the interface/performance is sluggish.

Tried/considered: Contacted a third‑party app, which indicated they would likely face the same processing limitations, suggesting this may be a platform constraint rather than a specific app issue.

Requested next step: Another participant asked for a Loom video to demonstrate the problems in more detail to aid troubleshooting.

Status: Unresolved. No confirmed workaround or app solution yet; awaiting additional details to diagnose and explore options for handling high line‑item draft orders.

Summarized with AI on December 29. AI used: gpt-5.
1

Hello,

We have a b2b wholesale supply company and we are building custom orders for our customers. Currently we use the draft order feature to do so but it seems that once we get to a large quantity of line items the functionality becomes very slow and glitchy. We’re seeing issues such as: deleted line items repopulating, inventory quantity adjustments reverting after updating, and overall very slow functionality. For reference an order i’m working on right now likely has around 100 line items.

I spoke with one app who said they will likely have the same processing issues i’m currently facing. Is there any solution to this through a 3rd party app? I can’t be the whole wholesaler processing and building large orders.

Thank you

2

Can I ask you if you can make a loom video explaining the issue with bit more details if its not too much trouble?