How to capture deferred payment upon fulfillment for Shopify pre-orders (charge when ship)?

If you want to charge customers when their pre-order ships instead of on a fixed date, Shopify's checkout system will still require you to show customers a specific payment date in order to maintain transparency about when they'll be charged and reduce payment dispute risks.

This likely won't match your preferred customer experience as it'll create confusion. This is the main challenge when trying to implement a "charge when ship" payment flow.

This article covers the technical possibilities and limitations of capturing deferred payments upon fulfillment, and helps you decide which approach works best for your Shopify pre-order setup.

Solution 1: Use Shopify Flow to capture payment upon fulfillment

Important: You can technically set this up, but Shopify still requires showing customers a fixed payment date at checkout.

Most of our Early Bird merchants find this approach creates more customer confusion than it solves, but it's possible if you:

• Provide customers with clear communication about actual charge timing
• Set up proper Shopify Flow automation to capture payments
• Use a buffer date at checkout (like 90 days) to give yourself flexibility

This solution allows payment capture upon fulfillment but requires clear customer communication to avoid confusion.

How it works

When you set up "charge when ship" with Early Bird and Shopify Flow:

• Customers pay a deposit upfront and see a fixed date at checkout for the deferred payment date
• Early Bird vaults their credit card; and Shopify stores their payment information securely for you
• Shopify Flow automatically captures the remaining payment when you fulfill the pre-order
• Customers get charged earlier (or later) than the date shown at checkout; when you actually ship

Setting up Early Bird & Shopify Flow for payment capture

You can set up automatic payment capture with these steps:

• Create a pre-order campaign in Early Bird and publish it to your storefront. You will need to choose a deferred payment date around when you expect to fulfill the pre-orders.
• Customers will see the deferred payment date when checking out, however you can change this date after the order has been placed, as we will demonstrate using Flow.
• Set the balance due date to a realistic buffer (e.g., 90 days after checkout, or on a specific set date)
• Once you have published your campaign, create a new Flow.
• Give it a relevant name (i.e. "Make pre-orders due on fulfillment").
• You can optionally add extra conditions here to limit the Flow to only run on specific pre-order campaigns or products, based on your requirements.
• Add a condition to check if the order.paymentTerms.id field is "not empty and exists". This ensures the pre-order has a deferred payment set.
• Now create an action to "Send Admin API request", and choose the paymentTermsUpdate mutation.

Enter the following JSON value in the textbox provided:

{
  "input": {
    "paymentTermsId": "{{order.paymentTerms.id}}",
    "paymentTermsAttributes": {
      "paymentTermsTemplateId": "gid://shopify/PaymentTermsTemplate/9"
    }
  }
}

This will update the pre-order's payment terms to be set to "Due on fulfillment" when it runs automatically.

Solution 2: Use fixed payment dates with buffer time

If you want predictable payment timing without customer confusion, fixed dates work better than "charge when ship". In most cases, our Early Bird merchants have found their customers don't mind waiting for their pre-order shipment even after paying upfront, as long as there is clear communication about the shipment progress.

Here's how this works and what to consider:

How it works

When you use fixed payment dates with buffer time:

• Create a pre-order campaign in Early Bird again, and this time choose a specific set date as the deferred payment date.
• Set the balance due 4-8 weeks after order placement (based on your typical shipping timeline)
• If you ship early, you can send a pre-order update email to all relevant customers with just one click
• They will appreciate getting their order sooner than expected
• If shipping is delayed, you can use the same feature to keep customers informed
• This way, with a specific set deferred payment date, your customers see exactly when they'll be charged with no surprises

Important considerations for fixed payment dates

Payment protection: Unlike Buy Now Pay Later services, Shopify doesn't "hold" or guarantee funds. If customers don't have money when the payment date arrives, the charge will fail.

Customer communication: You should send reminder emails before deferred payment dates and have a process for handling failed payments.

Order management: Fixed dates are much easier to manage operationally and create clearer customer expectations.

Alternative approaches

Most merchants who initially want "charge when ship" find these alternatives work better:

Solution 3: Offer both backorders AND back-in-stock signups

Our backorder feature is the simplified version of pre-orders, works around Shopify's pre-order limitations (e.g. bundling, upselling, Buy X get Y discounts etc.) You can enable it across your entire catalogue, or only for specific products. One-click to activate it, set and forget.

By enabling this and our back-in-stock feature, you can display both options on your product pages, and let customers choose whichever they prefer - Pay in full upfront to reserve the product now, or just sign-up to be notified when it's back-in-stock again.

If your product has strong demand, customers tend to prefer pay in full (or pay a deposit) to avoid missing out.

The downside is there is no deposit functionality for backorders, and you can only display one line of text underneath the product name in cart and at checkout. Please see attached screenshot.

Solution 4: Run a Coming Soon pre-order campaign (Waitlist signups + preorders)

This approach is quite popular amongst merchants who have uncertain shipping times. Capture expressions of interest first (waitlist), then open up preorders when they've confirmed shipment is closer to arriving at the warehouse. It's more work than the backorder approach, but also gives your customers an option to reserve the product with a partial payment or deposit.

A step-by-step video guide on setting up a Coming Soon campaign coming soon. (In the meantime, you can check out our video on what you need to consider before setting up a Coming Soon Waitlist & Pre-order campaign.)

Need help?

If you have any questions about setting up deferred payment collection for your Shopify pre-orders, feel free to email us at support@shopside.com.au to see how we can help!