Accepting pre-orders in your Netcash Shop
Pre-orders let your customers order products that are currently out of stock. This is a great feature to capture potentially lost demand, or to launch new products in order to gauge their popularity with your customers before production. If you track inventory in your Netcash Shop, you can enable pre-orders for products and product variations with zero stock.
Items that are available for pre-order are marked as such on your storefront, so customers know they’re ordering in advance when they check out. Pre-ordered products then get a special Pre-ordered label on the Orders page in your Netcash Shop admin both on desktop and in the mobile app, as well as in your store’s notifications. You can view the number of pre-orders for a particular product or product variation on its page in Catalog → Products.
Plan availability: Venture, Business, Unlimited.
If you plan to accept pre-orders/backorders, take time and study the rules concerning them in your country. You can describe your policy on pre-orders (payments, estimated shipping & order fulfillment time, returns, etc.) on your stores’ legal pages to keep your customers informed.
How pre-orders work in Netcash Shop
Enabling pre-orders is voluntary. Products available for pre-order are simply your regular products when out of stock. Or, you can create a new product as a pre-order by setting the stock level to “0”.
Once product stock reaches “0”, the product is marked with a special Pre-order label both on the storefront and on the product page, and its “Buy Now”/”Add to Bag” buttons turn into “Pre-Order” buttons:
For product variations, pre-orders work in a slightly different way. When a particular variation is out of stock, then on the product page, it gets a Pre-order label, and its ”Add to Bag” button turns into a “Pre-Order” button. On the storefront, the changes take place depending on the base product stock settings.
When customers click the “Pre-Order” button, the product or product variation is added to cart, and they can proceed with checkout to place a pre-order. The same payment, shipping, delivery, and pickup methods apply to pre-ordered items that are available for them while in stock.
After choosing a shipping, delivery, or pickup method at checkout, customers are reminded that the items are pre-ordered and will be shipped/available for pickup once they are in stock. In case there are both pre-ordered and in-stock items in the order, customers see a notice that they will get all the products together once the pre-ordered items are in stock. If a customer wants to get the available items sooner, they can place a separate order.
You can show an estimated delivery time for pre-orders on a product page. That way, customers will know when to expect the order and are more likely to buy from you.
Once you replenish the stock for a product or product variation so that it’s “1” or more, customers will be able to buy this item on a regular basis again.
Enabling pre-orders for products
To take pre-orders for a product, you need to specify its stock in your Netcash Shop admin and set pre-orders as the out of stock behavior for this product. When its stock reaches “0”, the product will become available for pre-orders.
To enable pre-orders for a product:
- From your Netcash Shop admin, go to Catalog → Products.
- Open the product or create a new one.
- Find the Stock Control block and click Manage stock control.
- Set the actual Quantity in Stock value. To start accepting pre-orders for products that haven’t arrived at your store yet, you can enter “0”.
- From the When out of stock dropdown, select Show and allow pre-order
- Save the changes
That’s it! Now once this product is out of stock in your store, your customers will be able to pre-order it.
To save time on individual product setup, you can set pre-orders as the default out of stock behavior for all the new products in your Netcash Shop. To enable pre-orders for several products in bulk, use the Bulk Product Editor.
If you want to edit the “Pre-order” text on labels and buttons (e.g., turn them into ”Booking”/“Book a service”), you can do that with the Store Label Editor.
Adding an estimated delivery time for pre-orders
If you track your inventory and accept pre-orders, you can show your customers how long it will take to deliver a pre-order. When a site visitor opens a product page of an item that is out of stock, they will see the “Pre-order” label and an estimated delivery date for the pre-order:
To show an estimated delivery date for pre-orders:
1. Set up shipping/delivery/pickup methods for your store and add order preparation time for them.
2. From your Netcash Shop admin, go to Catalog → Products.
3. Open the product or create a new one.
4. Find the Stock Control block and click Manage stock control.
5. Set the actual quantity in stock, select Show, and allow pre-orders from the When out of stock dropdown.
6. Go to the Shipping & Pickup tab.
7. In the Product preparation time section, click Edit next to when out of stock and available for pre-order. If you don’t see the When out of stock and available for pre-order block, try changing product quantity to “0”.
8. Specify how many days it might take to prepare a product when it’s out of stock.
9. Click Save.
10. Turn on the Show estimated delivery date on the product page toggle and save the changes once again.
That’s it. Now customers will see the approximate delivery date for the item that is out of stock.
Enabling pre-orders for product variations
If you track the stock of individual product variations, you can enable pre-orders for them. For example, to keep accepting orders for sold out variations that you know will restock soon while selling product variations that are in stock on a regular basis.
To enable pre-orders for a product variation:
1. From your Netcash Shop admin, go to Catalog → Products.
2. Choose the product.
3. Go to the Options → Variations tab.
4. Find the variation you want to enable pre-orders for, then click Manage.
5. Set the Quantity in Stock value. For variations that haven’t arrived at your store yet, you can enter “0” to start accepting pre-orders right away.
6. From the When out of stock dropdown, select Show and allow pre-order.
7. Click OK and then Save
That’s it! Now when this product variation becomes out of stock in your store, your customers will be able to pre-order it. Other variations will remain available for purchase if they are in stock.
To enable pre-orders for several product variations at once, use the Bulk Product Editor.
Managing pre-orders
All the pre-orders that customers place in your store will be displayed on the Orders page in your Netcash Shop admin along with the regular orders. You can recognize pre-ordered items by a special Pre-ordered label next to them:
If there are several products in the order, click on it to see labels for the pre-ordered items.
To see a list of all orders that contain pre-orders in your store, use order filters on the left.
When you’re ready to ship the pre-ordered items to customers, change the order status to Ready For Pickup or Shipped. Make sure you have the Order shipped and/or Order is ready for pickup notifications enabled in Settings → Notifications if you want your customers to get the corresponding automated notification. You can also contact your customers by email or by phone to let them know that their pre-order is on the way or that they can come and pick it up.
The Pre-ordered labels remain displayed for your items after you replenish their stock. You can use order notes to mark pre-orders that you’ve already processed.
Viewing pre-orders for individual products
You can view all the pre-orders placed for a particular product since the date you’ve replenished its stock for the last time.
To see a list of pre-orders for a product:
- From your Netcash Shop admin, go to Catalog → Products.
- Choose the product.
- Find the Stock Control block and click Manage stock control.
- Click View pre-orders:
5.On the opened page, you will see all the pre-orders for this product that were submitted since the date you’ve replenished the stock for the last time. The list will also include pre-orders for product variations (if any).
The View pre-orders link is available only if there are pre-orders placed for the base product.
To view how many pre-orders there are for a particular product variation, go to the products page in Catalog → Products → Options → Variations and see the number of pre-ordered items in the Stock column:
