How do pre-orders affect Shopify inventory levels and tracking?

When customers place pre-orders through Early Bird, the impact on your Shopify inventory depends on the settings you choose in your pre-order campaign. In this article, let's go through your options to manage stock levels and prevent overselling or underselling.

How Early Bird manages Shopify inventory reservation

Early Bird gives you control over when your inventory gets reserved for pre-orders through two options. In your campaign's Fulfillment > Reserve pre-order stock section, you can choose:

When the pre-order is placed (Reserve at time of sale):

• Your Shopify inventory quantity decreases immediately when the pre-order is placed
• We help prevent overselling by removing units from available stock
• Best for limited quantity pre-orders or when you want guaranteed stock allocation

When the pre-order is fulfilled (Reserve at fulfillment):

• Your Shopify inventory remains available for other sales until you're ready to fulfill
• Your inventory only decreases when you actually process the pre-order
• Useful when you want to share inventory between pre-orders and regular sales
• Or if you're gauging demand before placing an order with the manufacturer (you might not want to reserve inventory yet when the pre-order is placed by the customer)

Pre-order Campaign availability settings impact on Shopify inventory

In your campaign's Availability section, you can choose how pre-orders interact with your Shopify store's inventory system:

1. Keep selling pre-orders until the campaign ends

• This enables Shopify's "Continue selling when out of stock" option
• Allows your Shopify inventory to go below zero (negative inventory)
• Customers can place unlimited pre-orders regardless of current stock levels
• Best for selling as many pre-orders as you want (to meet higher MOQs and reduce cost per unit), or when you're taking orders before production

2. Only sell pre-orders while in stock

• This option uses Shopify's standard inventory limits
• Your inventory will NOT go below zero
• It'll display "Sold Out" once you reach your set limit (but you can still capture back in stock emails)
• Best for limited quantity pre-orders with specific stock allocations

3. Only sell pre-orders while out of stock

• Essentially you're running back-orders with pre-order features
• This enables the "Continue selling when out of stock" option in Shopify
• Allows negative inventory levels once your regular stock hits zero
• Activates pre-orders automatically when your product (selected for this campaign) has zero inventory

How pre-orders appear in your Shopify admin

Order status:

• Pre-orders appear in your Shopify Orders section immediately after placement
• Orders remain marked as "Scheduled", "Unfulfilled", or "On Hold" depending on which Expected Fulfillment Date option you've chosen under the Fulfillment section - until you process them for shipping
• Shopify reporting will show them as pending orders

Inventory reporting:

• Reserved inventory (if you chose "reserve at time of sale") will reflect in your Shopify inventory levels immediately
• Shopify's inventory reports will show the impact based on your reservation settings
• Negative inventory appears in Shopify if you've enabled "Continue selling when out of stock"

Understanding Shopify's "Continue selling when out of stock" feature

If you're not familiar with the "Continue selling when out of stock" option, this Shopify feature is key to many pre-order scenarios:

• When enabled: Allows your customers to purchase products even when your inventory is at zero or negative
• When disabled: It prevents any purchases once your inventory reaches zero
• How Early Bird can help: We can automatically manage this setting based on your campaign configuration/authorisation

Best ways to run pre-orders on Shopify for different business models

Just a quick bonus section here for those who might be new to running pre-orders.

For unlimited pre-orders (crowdfunding style or to try meet higher MOQs):

• Use "Keep selling until campaign ends"
• You might want to go with "When the pre-order is fulfilled" to avoid tying up inventory

For limited quantity pre-orders:

• Use "Only sell pre-orders while in stock"
• Use "When the pre-order is placed" to guarantee allocation for the customer

For back-orders when sold out (but you want advanced pre-order features):

• Use "Only sell pre-orders while out of stock"
• Choose the option based on your restock confidence

Need help?

If you have questions about how pre-order settings affect your specific Shopify inventory setup, feel free to get in touch via support@shopside.com.au or reach out through our app!