Out of stock product can be sold as Pre orders in Shopify. You can do this by changing the payment settings and creating new product template.
Note: Check that the theme you are using is Sectioned or Non Sectioned. You can find this out by going to the theme’s Edit HTML/CSS page. If you could find out files in Sections directory, then you are using a Sectioned theme otherwise it’s a Non Sectioned theme.
Click Sectioned Theme button, if you are using Sectioned Theme otherwise select Non Sectioned Theme Button for Non Sectioned Theme and follow the below instructions:
Authorize Pre order Payments
Do not capture payments for pre orders immediately until a customer is aware that the product they are ordering is out of stock. You can allow the payments without capturing funds until you have the product ready to dispatch.
- Go to Shopify Admin, click Settings, then click Payments
- Search for Payment Authorization Section
- Click Manually capture payment for orders
- Click Save
Note: The authorization period for Shopify is 7 days. For longer duration, use third part payment gateway.
Create a pre order product page template
A new product template is created to change the Add to cart button for the pre order products
- Go to Shopify admin, click Online Store, then click Themes
- Click Actions for the theme you want to edit, then click Edit Code
- Templates directory —-> Add a new Template
- Select product from the dropdown menu, and name the template as pre-order
- Click Create template. Your new pre-order.liquidtemplate will open in the code editor.
- Look for the code:
{% section ‘product-template’ %}
Change it to:
{% section ‘product-pre-order-template’ %}
- Click Save.
- Section directory —-> Add a new Section. Enter product-pre-order-template in the field given
- Click Create Section. Code editor will open. Delete all the default to empty the file
- Section Directory —-> click product-template.liquid —-> Copy all the content —> Paste to product-pre-order-template.liquid
- Search for Add to cart button text, in the product-pre-order-template.liquid file and change it to as below:
Search for this code:
<span id=”AddToCartText”>{{ ‘products.product.add_to_cart’ | t }}</span>
Change it to:
<span id=”AddToCartText”>{{ ‘Pre-order’ | json | remove: ‘”‘ }}</span>
Then, in the same file find:
addToCart: {{ ‘products.product.add_to_cart’ | t | json }}
Change it to:
addToCart: {{ ‘Pre-order’ | json }},
- Finally, click Save
Assign Template to a product
- Go to Shopify admin —-> Click Products
- Click the name of the product you want to make available for pre-order.
- Go to Theme Templates section, Change products to product.pre-order
- Click Save
Edit Inventory Levels
To edit the inventory level of the product, that has inventory amount 0, but you still want customers to purchase it as pre-orders. Then follow the following steps:
- Go to Shopify admin —-> Click Products
- Click the name of the product you want to make available for pre-order.
- Click Edit
- Click Allow customers to purchase this product when it’s out of stock
- Click Save
