Many businesses in Bangladesh, especially furniture, custom-made products, wholesale, and high-value retail stores, commonly collect an advance payment before delivering the product. For example, a customer may place an online order worth ৳1,500 but has already paid ৳500 in cash or via bank transfer/bKash before or after placing the order.
Shopify’s Help Center has documentation for Partial Payments:
However, on my store (Basic plan, Bangladesh, Cash on Delivery), the order page only provides “Mark as paid” and does not include the option to record a manual partial payment.
Without this feature, merchants have to:
Keep separate manual records outside Shopify.
Leave orders marked as unpaid even after receiving a deposit.
Use workarounds such as editing order totals or installing third-party apps.
It would be extremely helpful if Shopify allowed merchants using manual payment methods (Cash on Delivery, Bank Transfer, etc.) to:
Record offline partial payments against an existing order.
View the remaining balance due.
Maintain an accurate payment history and audit trail.
Keep sales reporting and accounting accurate without relying on external tools.
This feature would greatly benefit merchants in Bangladesh and many other countries where advance payments and cash transactions are a normal part of doing business.
I hope Shopify considers making this feature available to all eligible merchants, including those in Bangladesh.
Advance or deposit payments are a common part of doing business in many regions, especially for custom made products, furniture, wholesale orders and high value purchases. Being able to record offline partial payments directly within an order would make Shopify much more practical for merchants using manual payment methods such as Cash on Delivery or bank transfers.
At the moment, relying on spreadsheets, external notes, or third party apps creates unnecessary administrative work and makes it harder to maintain an accurate payment history.
Having the ability to:
Record one or more offline partial payments,
Automatically track the remaining balance due,
Maintain a complete payment history and audit trail, and
Keep reporting and accounting accurate,
would be a valuable improvement for merchants in Bangladesh and many other markets where advance payments are a standard business practice.
I hope Shopify considers expanding this functionality beyond the currently supported scenarios so that merchants using manual payment methods can benefit from it as well.
If you found my reply helpful, feel free to mark it as the accepted solution so it can help other merchants following this discussion.
This would be a valuable enhancement, especially for merchants in regions where advance deposits are a standard part of the sales process.
Being able to record manual partial payments for offline payment methods, view the remaining balance, and maintain a complete payment history would improve order management and accounting without requiring spreadsheets or third-party apps. It would also provide a clearer audit trail and more accurate reporting for businesses that regularly collect deposits before fulfillment. Hopefully Shopify considers extending this functionality to more payment methods and supported regions.
Worth checking one thing before this goes further as a regional request, because I think the diagnosis is off and that changes what you should be asking for.
Partial payments is not gated by country. It is gated by plan. The help page you linked states the feature is available to stores on the Shopify Plus plan, and you mentioned you are on Basic, which is exactly why your order page only offers Mark as paid. A merchant in Germany or the US on Basic sees the same thing you do.
Manual payment methods are not the blocker either. Once a store has the feature, bank deposit and cash on delivery are both explicitly supported, and you choose the method at the moment you record the payment rather than up front. So nothing about Bangladesh or COD is what is stopping you here.
That matters for how the request is worded. Framed as make this available for Bangladeshi merchants it reads as a market expansion ask, and it is likely to be closed as already available, because the feature does reach Bangladesh on the right plan. Framed as bring partial payments down from Plus to the standard plans for manual payment methods, it becomes an answerable request and it speaks for every deposit taking merchant on Basic rather than one country. Furniture, custom work and wholesale hit this everywhere, which is a much stronger case.
In the meantime on Basic, the least messy pattern I have seen is a draft order for the deposit amount that you mark paid with your manual method, then the balance as a second order at delivery. It is still two records instead of one, but both sit inside Shopify reporting rather than in a notebook, so your sales numbers stay right even though the payment history is split.
Are you tracking the outstanding balances anywhere at the moment, or is it all in the order notes?
Hey @arghyabanik, partial payments hang off payment terms, so a storefront COD order only ever shows Mark as paid because it doesn’t carry one. Raise these deposit sales as draft orders instead: Orders > Drafts, build the order, then pick a term in the Payment terms dropdown, and hit + Require deposit if you want a set percentage. Collect payment on that draft records the 500 taka against it and leaves the balance owing on the same order. You don’t specify the payment method when you create the draft, so cash, bank transfer and bKash all work fine. After collecting, check the Payment section on the order - it should show a balance due rather than the whole thing unpaid.
@arghyabanik
Even if Shopify keeps advanced payment terms as a Plus feature it would still be helpful if standard plans could at least record informational payment events for manual payment methods. For example being able to log that a customer has paid ৳500 against an order without changing the payment workflow would give merchants a clear audit trail and remaining balance.
That would reduce the need for spreadsheets while keeping the actual payment processing unchanged. It would be particularly useful for businesses that regularly take deposits for custom orders made to order products or pre-orders.