Hi - I’m running a preorder and didn’t set up anything ahead of this in Shopify. Now I realised I should’ve used a PREORDER app. I’ve got orders sitting there that need fulfilled but I know they cannot be fulfilled yet (the customer also knows.) Is there a solution to this to avoid my processing time being skewed? Somewhere I can move them to or change status?
Thank you!
You should be able to place those fulfillments on hold, as long as the customer is aware of the delay in processing time. As you mentioned, it would be a good idea to add messaging to your products, checkout, emails etc. to ensure customers are informed that they are purchasing a preorder.
We thought about this a lot when building our preorder app, Early Bird. We have Pre-order badges, clear purchase option names and an additional note on product pages, as well as showing this information on the cart and checkout. We’ve also created help articles with information around pre-order policies, messaging you can add to your confirmation emails, and other considerations when offering pre-orders.
The other great thing about using an app, is it automatically marks the fulfillment as Scheduled, and places it on hold until the selected fulfillment date (and even supports partial payments upfront, with the balance automatically charged later).
Let me know if you wanted to chat about the app, or just pre-orders in general. We’ve helped a lot of other stores improve their processes around this, so always happy to help! We also have a free plan with no commission fees to get started.
Thank you! Customers are aware but it would be useful to have a better process for preorders in future. I am actually setting up a new preorder this week - would like to explore if your app is a good fit?
No worries! We’d love to help you setup your preorder this week and see how the app works for you. You can install it for free here, and check out our getting started video for pre-orders here for some step-by-step instructions.
[REDACTED]
If you let me know your store URL once you’ve installed the app, I can also do a quick audit for you to make sure everything is correctly integrated with your theme, and adjust any styling/layout needed.
Thanks, speak soon!
Jay.
@whitedaisyuk Aside from using a Preorder app - which I highly recommend for future orders - you can definitely fix your current issue right away. You don’t need to install a third party app; install Shopify Flow and set up a workflow that looks like this -
You can specify a reason for the hold and activate the workflow. Then, select orders in bulk from Shopify admin > More actions > Run ‘Flow’ automation > Select the workflow. It will automatically place all your orders on hold that you run it against, and that means Shopify won’t nudge you to fulfill them.
Then when you’re ready to fulfill, release the hold on the order to change their status to “Unfulfilled”.
If you need help with the exact Shopify Flow setup, let me know and I’ll be happy to help. You can modify the flow to add tags to the order so it’s easy to identify them and much more. 