Receiving & managing pre-orders

When an order contains at least one pre-order product, the order is defined as a pre-order.

Visitors can use any payment gateway activated on your ShopWired account to pay for a pre-order, but if you use ShopWired Payments or Stripe, you can select to not charge customers' cards immediately when they create a pre-order and instead defer charging until you are ready to dispatch the order.

When selecting to not charge customers' cards immediately, you'll be able to select to charge the customer's card when viewing the order (this process is described below).

For all other payment gateways, pre-orders are treated as normal orders and the customer's card is charged when the order is created.

When using ShopWired Payments, to select when pre-orders are charged for:

1. Navigate to ShopWired Payments > Settings
2. Navigate to the Transaction processing options section
3. For the Pre-order payment processing setting
   • Select defer processing payments for pre-orders until the order is ready for dispatch to not charge customers' cards immediately
   • Select charge for pre-orders immediately when the customer places their order to charge customers' cards immediately

When using Stripe, to select when pre-orders are charged for:

1. Navigate to Checkout > Accepting payments
2. Navigate to the Stripe section
3. For the Pre-order payment processing setting
   • Select defer processing payments to not charge customers' cards immediately
   • Select charge for pre-orders immediately to charge customers' cards immediately

At checkout, customers are informed of the date that they will receive delivery of their order using the furthest away ships-on date, i.e. ShopWired assumes you dispatch all items in an order at the same time.

When a pre-order is created, it will be assigned an order status that corresponds with the default order status for pre-orders.

You should ensure one of your order status is mapped to the default pre-orders status. Read more about mapping order status to default order status.

Orders containing at least one pre-order product will appear on the Orders page in the same way as any other order.

In the table of orders, pre-orders appear with a P indicator next to the order total.

You can use the order filters feature to select to only display pre-orders by selecting the filter.

You can use the more filters option to filter orders based on the ships-on date. Once applied, the filter will only display pre-orders with a ships-on date within the selected period. Where a pre-order contains more than one pre-order product, the filter checks all pre-orders for matching products.

When using the ships-on date filter, the table of orders will display a Ships on date column. This column displays the latest ships-on date for each order.

To permanently display a Ships on date column in the table of orders, navigate to Orders > Order settings and in the Orders table columns section select the Display a ships on date column setting.

When viewing a pre-order, an additional Pre-order actions section is displayed.

For pre-orders where the customer's card was charged immediately, you can select the mark as ready for dispatch option to transition the pre-order to a normal order:

• The order status will be changed to the corresponding default order status for paid orders
• The pre-order P indicator will be removed from the order table
• An entry will be made in the order timeline

For pre-orders where the customer's card was not charged immediately, you can select from one of two options:

• Select mark as ready for dispatch and charge card to initiate the charge on the customer's card and mark the pre-order as ready for dispatch
• Select mark as ready for dispatch (don't charge card) to not charge the customer's card and mark the pre-order as ready for dispatch

Important notes about charging a customer's card:

• You can only initiate a single charge against a customer's card
• It is not possible to charge a customer's card for more or less than the original order value
• When selecting not to charge the customer's card, you will not be able to initiate a charge at a later date

If you select to edit the products in a pre-order, the newly created order is not given a pre-order status.

Consequently, the new order cannot process charges against the customer’s card.

The original order does, however, retain its pre-order status and can process charges against the customer’s card, but only for the original order value.

When a customer places a pre-order and the order is not charged for immediately, the funds on a customer's card are not reserved and therefore successful payment is not guaranteed.

If you select to charge a customer's card and the payment fails for some reason:

• The order status does not change
• The orders pre-order status is preserved
• You can attempt to charge the card again

You will need to contact the customer directly to obtain payment for the order, you should consider using ShopWired's suggested workaround for pre-order payment failures.

You cannot create a pre-order through your ShopWired account.

If you add pre-order products to an order created through your ShopWired account, the created order behaves in the same way as a standard order. If you need to manage the order as a pre-order, you should assign the order to the pre-order status manually.

When a customer creates an order containing at least one pre-order product, the standard order confirmation email is not sent and instead the customer will receive the Order confirmation (pre-orders) email.

This email contains the ships-on date for each pre-order product contained in the order. The Twig variable used is product.shipping_date.

The contents of the order confirmation (pre-orders) email can be customised by following these instructions.

When you create an order containing at least one pre-order product,the standard order confirmation email is sent and the customer will receive the Order confirmation email.

For all of ShopWired's accounting apps (Xero, Quickbooks, Kashflow, Clearbooks and Sage):

• When a pre-order is paid for immediately, it is exported like any other order
• When a pre-order is not paid for immediately, it is exported as an invoice but a corresponding payment is not sent. Once the card is successfully charged, the payment is exported

For ShopWired's shipping apps (Click & Drop and ShipStation):

• Pre-orders can be sent to ShipStation with an on hold status by mapping the pre-order status on ShopWired to on hold in ShipStation
• When pre-orders transition to standard orders, their status on ShipStation can be updated by mapping your ShopWired paid order status to awaiting shipment in ShipStation
• The export of orders to Click & Drop depends on their status; since pre-orders start with a different status than standard orders, they will only be exported to Click & Drop once their status changes to the one that triggers the export