Why do my Shopify pre-order products show as sold out when selling internationally?

If you're selling pre-orders internationally on Shopify for the first time, you've likely run into this issue. The good news is that it's almost always fixable once you understand how Shopify routes inventory across locations and markets.

In this article, we'll walk you through the most common reasons why your pre-order products appear sold out or unavailable to customers in different countries, and how to fix each one.

Important note: Before you begin, please make sure your store supports location-specific inventory tracking (see the prerequisite section below). Without this, Shopify shows the same inventory status across all markets regardless of where your actual stock is.

Prerequisite: Does your Shopify store have location-specific inventory tracking enabled?

⚠️ This is a critical requirement if you're selling internationally with different product availability.

How to check:

  1. Go to Settings > Shipping and delivery
  2. Look for the "Only show fulfillable inventory" setting
  3. If you see this setting, you're good to go.

If you don't see this setting:

Your store is likely created before April 2024 and uses the legacy fulfillment system. This means Shopify shows the same inventory status across all your markets (either all in-stock or all out-of-stock), regardless of where your actual inventory is located. You can't sell internationally with different product availability per market until this is enabled.

Check out our other help article here for a step-by-step on how to contact Shopify Support and request their help to activate it. Once it's enabled, you can come back to this help article and continue with the checklist below.

Checklist: Why your pre-order product is showing as sold out

Let's go through a 4-step checklist to see if your pre-order product is showing as sold out for any of the following reasons:

Step 1: Is the product published to your Shopify (international) Market?

Your product must be explicitly published to each Shopify Market to be available in that region.

Check this:

  1. Go to Settings > Markets > Select the Market
  2. Click Catalogs
  3. Filter by "Excluded" to see products not published to this market
  4. If your pre-order product appears here, you need to publish it

If this is the issue: The product either doesn't appear in your store or shows as unavailable when customers try to access it directly.

Shopify Markets products list showing C3Strom Astro Pro Electric Bike with price in AUD, with tabs for Included, Excluded, and All products.
Use the "Included" and "Excluded" tabs to verify your pre-order product is published to the correct market.

Step 2: Is at least one location configured to fulfill online orders for that market?

Even if your product is in stock somewhere, Shopify needs at least one location set up to fulfill online orders for that specific market.

Check this:

  1. Go to Settings > Locations
  2. For each location, find the toggle: "Use inventory at this location to fulfill online orders"
  3. Make sure at least one location that stocks your pre-order product has this enabled
  4. Next, go to Settings > Markets > Select the Market
  5. Under Order routing and fulfillment, verify that a location with this toggle enabled is assigned to fulfill orders for this market

If this is the issue: The product shows as sold out or unavailable because Shopify has no location set up to handle orders from that region.

Shopify location details for Warehouse 1 showing fulfillment settings with toggle
The fulfillment toggle must be ON for at least one location that stocks your pre-order product.

Step 3: Is your product variant assigned to a location that fulfills orders for that market?

A pre-order product variant needs to be "stocked" at a location for that location to fulfill orders for it.

Check this:

  1. Go to Products > Find your pre-order product
  2. Click on the specific variant you want to sell
  3. Scroll to Inventory and look at the locations listed
  4. Your variant must be assigned to at least one location that fulfills orders for your market
  5. Select the locations that should be stocking and selling the selected variant
Shopify dialog showing
Your product variant must be checked (stocked) at locations that fulfill orders for your international market.

Important note: The "Continue selling when out of stock" setting (which enables pre-orders before you receive stock, or backorders when sold out) applies per variant globally, but it doesn't override the requirement that your variant be assigned to a location. Your variant still needs to be stocked at a location that serves your international market.

If this is the issue: The product shows as sold out because it's not assigned to the location should fulfill the international order. If your product is already sold out but you can't add pre-order to cart, it's because your Continue selling when out of stock isn't enabled.

Step 4: Are shipping rates configured for the customer's destination?

If a location already has inventory (or has enabled Continue selling when out of stock to sell while sold out), but has no shipping rates configured for the customer's country, Shopify can't complete the order and the product becomes unavailable.

Check this:

  1. Go to Settings > Shipping and delivery
  2. Find the shipping profile used for your pre-order product
  3. Verify that shipping zones and rates are configured for all countries your international customers are in
  4. If a customer's country is missing from your shipping zones, add it with a shipping rate
Shopify shipping profile management showing fulfillment locations (Snow City Warehouse App, Warehouse 1 in Austin Texas, Warehouse 2 in Brisbane Australia) and shipping zones configured for UK with Standard and Express shipping rates.
Make sure your shipping profile has fulfillment locations assigned and shipping zones configured for your international customers' countries.

Important note: Check the shipping profile specifically assigned to your pre-order products, not just your default profile. You may have custom shipping rules for certain products.

If this is the issue: One of two things will happen depending on your settings here. If "Only show fulfillable inventory" is on (which is recommended), your product will show as out of stock or unavailable. If "Only show fulfillable inventory" is off (which is the legacy default for Shopify stores created before April 2024), your product will likely show as in-stock, but fails at checkout with an error "We don't ship to your location".

Using Early Bird to sell pre-orders across Shopify Markets

If you're using our Early Bird app to sell and manage your pre-orders internationally, all of this configuration still applies. Early Bird relies on the same underlying Shopify setup. it adds features and automation like deposit payments and pre-order messaging on top of it.

Need help?

If you've worked through all four steps and your pre-order products still show as sold out internationally, this is likely a Shopify configuration issue specific to your store setup.

We recommend contacting Shopify Support, they can access your account and debug location/market/shipping routing issues that we can't see. If you're using Early Bird and want to discuss your pre-order setup or product launch strategy, feel free to email us at support@shopside.com.au and we're happy to help!

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