How do I access my Shopify pre-order payments before fulfilling orders?

If you're selling pre-orders on Shopify with fulfillment dates more than 30 days away, you've probably discovered that Shopify Payments won't release your funds until you've fulfilled the pre-orders.

This is a Shopify Payments policy, not a limitation of Shopify pre-order apps. It's designed for consumer protection - Shopify's banking partners require proof of fulfillment before releasing funds to merchants.

This article presents a workaround using Shopify partial payments/deposits and is confirmed by the internal team based on Shopify Payments policies. We've successfully implemented this for Early Bird app's merchants through their pre-order campaigns.

Important note: We strongly recommend against marking orders as "Fulfilled" before actually shipping as an attempt to access pre-order funds earlier. This violates Shopify's terms of service and can result in your store being suspended, or worse, legal issues if customers dispute charges.

The Solution: Capture deposits instead of full payments

The workaround is to capture a deposit upfront, then collect the remaining balance later. This way you can access your pre-order funds partially.

How Deposit Payments work with Shopify Payments

When you capture deposits through a Shopify pre-order app like ours (Early Bird), you're utilizing Shopify Selling Plans (the same platform functionality used for subscriptions and product rentals).

This creates two separate payment captures:

Initial deposit: This is paid out immediately according to your store's regular payout schedule
Remaining balance: This is paid out only after you have fulfilled the orders

This payout structure is tied to Shopify Payments processing and does not depend on fulfilling orders.

While we've run our own experiments on this before and have also successfully helped our merchants to implement this, we wanted to get an official confirmation from the Shopify team.

This is confirmed by Shopify Support:

Setting up deposits in Early Bird

When setting up a pre-order campaign, you have complete flexibility with deposit amounts:

Percentage-based: 25%, 50%, 75%, or any percentage
Fixed dollar amount: $10, $50, $100, etc.
$0 or 0% deposit: This acts as a reservation (though not helpful for your cash flow needs)

When to capture the remaining balance

Early Bird lets you capture the remaining balance:

At a specific, fixed future date: e.g. March 15, 2026 (this is commonly used for product launches)
After X number of days: e.g. After 60 days (Commonly used for ongoing/made-to-orders)
Upon fulfillment (This can be done via Shopify Flow automation)

See our article: How to collect payment upon fulfillment for Shopify pre-orders?

Important note: Many 3PLs don't recognize Shopify's "Scheduled" order status. However, Early Bird has a bulk status change feature that lets you convert all Scheduled orders to the "Unfulfilled" status when you're ready to fulfill, so they'll flow through to your 3PL without issues.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: Will Shopify flag my account for using deposits this way?

A: No, this uses Shopify's official Selling Plans API. As long as you have clear customer communication and documentation with your manufacturer, you're compliant with their policies.

Q: What if a customer disputes the charge?

A: Keep all documentation: product pages showing pre-order details, customer communications, and manufacturer updates. This protects you in disputes. (This is where using a Built-for-Shopify pre-order app like Early Bird helps too!)

Q: Can I change from full payment to deposits after launching?

A: Yes - you can update your pre-order campaign settings anytime. Your existing orders will keep their original payment structure, and new orders will use the updated settings.

Q: What about using Stripe instead of Shopify Payments?

A: Shopify no longer supports Stripe as a payment gateway (since it competes with Shop Pay). Your options are Shopify Payments or PayPal - these are the only ones that Shopify supports for official pre-orders for now.

Q: Do I need Shopify Plus to use partial payments/deposits?

A: No, Early Bird's deposit feature works for Shopify stores of all types, and is available on all paid tiers (starting from $19/month).

Need help?

If you have further questions about capturing partial payments/deposits for your pre-orders to access funds earlier, feel free to use the Help Chat bubble on this page, in-app, or connect with us at support@shopside.com.au!