How to set up backorders on Shopify POS at in-person events?

Shopify currently doesn't officially support pre-orders for Point of Sale (POS). This is a Shopify limitation, not Early Bird's, but you could use backorders as a partial workaround.

In this help article, we'll walk through how to sell backorders at in-person events, how to maintain unified tracking across both online and POS orders, and how Early Bird can help.

Workarounds for selling backorders at in-person events

You have two potential workarounds depending on your event size, no coding required:

Option 1: Place the pre-order/backorder via your online storefront for your customer

This is the simplest workaround to ensure the order is automatically tagged and assigned the correct status, but it's only practical for smaller events where you're processing a handful of orders.

How it works:

1. Make sure your product is live in an active Early Bird pre-order campaign
2. Visit your online storefront on a tablet, phone, or laptop
3. Add the pre-order item to cart as a customer would
4. Proceed to checkout and enter the customer's information for them
5. Complete the payment using their credit card
6. The order processes through your normal pre-order/backorder workflow

Best for:

• Small events with 10-20 customers
• Situations where you have time to manually process each order
• Events where you already have reliable WiFi

Limitations:

• Not efficient for busy markets or large conferences
• Slower checkout process compared to POS

Option 2: Use the "Continue selling when out of stock" functionality

This is the workaround we recommend for most Shopify merchants to capture backorders at events. You'll sacrifice some pre-order features to gain POS compatibility, but it'd still be a more efficient approach than Option 1.

Limitations:

• Customers will need to pay the full amount upfront (no deposit option)
• Your inventory goes into negative numbers to track backorder quantity
• Unable to only sell a limited quantity like preorders
• No access to "Scheduled" order status
• The backorders will not be automatically tagged in the Shopify Admin

See the rest of this help article for the complete workflow to set up backorders on Shopify POS.

Before your in-person event

Step 1: Unpublish any active Early Bird pre-order campaigns

If your products are currently in an active pre-order campaign, you won't be able to add POS as a sales channel. And therefore they won't appear in POS. You'll need to temporarily unpublish the campaign:

1. Visit your Early Bird campaign dashboard
2. Find your pre-order campaign
3. Click "Stop campaign"

This will remove the "Shopify Selling Plan" status from your products (the functionality used for pre-orders, subscriptions and rentals).

Step 2: Enable "Continue selling when out of stock"

This is the critical setting that allows Shopify POS to sell your products as a backorder even when the inventory level is at zero or below.

1. Visit each individual product or variant's settings in your Shopify Admin
2. Scroll to the Inventory section
3. Check the box "Continue selling when out of stock"

Without this enabled, Shopify POS will block the sale when it sees your product has zero inventory.

Using Early Bird to automate this across your entire catalog or for specific products/variants

You can do so with just a few clicks under a minute:

1. Visit the "Back-orders" section in the Early Bird app
2. Click "Configure" and decide the scope
3. Click "Activate back-orders".

Now all the selected products will be available for purchase even when their inventory levels are zero or below.

Step 3: Add POS to your product's Sales Channel

Then we have to make sure your products are available to sell through Shopify POS:

1. Go to Products in your Admin
2. Use filters or checkboxes to select the products you want (you can select up to 50 at a time, or use "Select all" for filtered results)
3. Click "...", then  select "Include in sales channels"
4. Choose "Point of Sale" from the sales channels list
5. Click "Include products"

Step 4: Test in your Shopify POS app

Before your event, confirm everything works:

1. Open your Shopify POS device or POS mobile app
2. You should be able to discover your sold out products and add them as a tile
3. Try adding them to your cart
4. You may see a warning about limited availability - this is expected
5. Confirm checkout can be completed

During your event

When you sell a backorder item through Shopify POS, here's what happens:

1. A warning appears: Your Shopify POS may display "This item has limited or no availability" warning
2. Confirmation required: You'll see options to either complete the sale anyway or return to cart
3. Sale completes: Once the transaction is confirmed, the product's inventory goes negative

This negative inventory number represents your backorder quantity. It tells you how many units you need to fulfill.

Don't forget shipping costs

If customers aren't receiving their items on the spot at your event, you need to collect shipping costs.

You have two options:

Option A: Add shipping at point of sale

• Create a custom product in Shopify called "Shipping Fee"
• Set the price to match your standard shipping rate
• Manually add it to each backorder transaction

Option B: Edit orders afterwards

• Complete the sale without collecting the shipping costs upfront
• Go into Shopify Orders admin later
• Manually edit each backorder to add shipping costs

We recommend Option A - it's easier to collect payment at the event than to chase customers afterwards.

Tag your orders for tracking

This is crucial for managing fulfillment after your event:

1. After the event, visit your Shopify Admin on desktop to add the correct tags to all backorders
2. If you're already using Early Bird, we recommend using "Back-order" tag in this exact spelling to align with your online backorders
3. Otherwise, feel free to tag in however way you prefer
4. You may want to add a second tag specific to your event (e.g., "Conference-Dec-2025")

These tags will help you quickly identify which backorders came from your event versus online sales.

After your event

Step 1: Re-publish your Early Bird pre-order campaign (if needed)

If you want to continue selling pre-orders online after your event:

1. Return to your Early Bird campaign dashboard
2. Re-publish your pre-order campaign
3. Any new online pre-orders will be automatically tagged and correctly assigned with the right status

If you want to continue selling backorders online after your event, just make sure the Backorder feature is already activated across your entire catalog or for specific products.

Step 2: Track all orders for fulfillment

You can view your POS backorders and any online pre-orders all in one place via your Orders Admin.

1. Go to Orders in Shopify admin
2. Click the filter option
3. Filter by your tags ("Back-order" or "Pre-order")
4. You'll see a complete list of all pre-orders and backorders requiring fulfillment

Step 3: Update order statuses (POS orders only)

Here's an important distinction:

• Online pre-orders: Automatically get "Scheduled" status from Early Bird
• POS backorders: Need to be manually set to "On hold" status

For your backorders, unlike pre-orders, they will be assigned the "Unfulfilled" status by default. If you're not sure when you will be shipping these orders, you can manually update them to "On hold" status. This signals to Shopify (and its banking partners) that you're intentionally holding these orders for future fulfillment, not just taking customers' money without intent to ship.

Need help?

Planning to use this workaround for an upcoming event? If you have further questions about capturing backorders on Shopify POS, feel free to use the Help Chat bubble on this page, in-app, or connect with us at support@shopside.com.au!