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Wix Stores: Allowing Customers to Pre-Order Products

5 min read

Let customers pre-order anticipated, new products or out-of-stock items to make sure you don't miss potential sales.

Customers click the Pre-Order button to purchase a product as they would for any other shop item. As soon as it's in stock, you can fulfill it.

Screenshot of a sample product in a Wix store that's available for pre-order

In this article, learn more about:

Enabling pre-orders for a product

You can enable pre-order while creating or editing a product. This makes the pre-order button appear when the product or one of its variants is out of stock.

For example, you can create a new product with 50 items in stock and enable pre-order. As long as the product is in stock, customers can purchase it. When the product is out of stock, the "Add to Cart" button changes to "Pre-Order".

Notes:

Pre-order is not currently available through the standalone Add to Cart button.
When customers pre-order a product, they pay the full amount in advance. It's not possible to collect partial payment at checkout.

To enable pre-ordering:

Go to Store Products in your site's dashboard.
Create a new physical product or edit an existing one.
Scroll down to the Pre-order section.
Click the Pre-order toggle to enable it.

Screenshot of part of the product creation page in Wix where you can enable pre-order

Enter a short pre-order message.
Tip: It's recommended to add a message about when the product should be available (e.g. Ready to ship by mid-May). The note appears above the pre-order button.

Screenshot of a sample product in a Wix store with a pre-order button and the delivery message outlined

(Optional) Limit the number of possible pre-orders:
1. Click Limit to.
2. Enter the maximum number of pre-orders you can accept.

Limiting pre-orders:

Set a limit if you think you might get more pre-orders than you can handle.
To be able to set a limit, you must track specific inventory amounts.
If the product has variants, the pre-order limit is placed per variant. This means that if you limit to 10, and your product comes in 2 colors and 2 sizes, each of the 4 variants is limited to 10.

Fulfilling pre-ordered products and managing inventory

If customers pre-order your product, your inventory (if you're tracking specific amounts) goes into negative numbers. This negative number indicates how many pre-orders you have for the product.

Screenshot of inventory settings in a Wix store with negative inventory

When you get new stock and update the stock levels, you need to take into consideration the products that are pre-ordered.

For example, if you have 12 pre-orders, your stock level is -12. If you get 50 units in, you need to updated your stock level to 38 (50 - 12 = 38), rather than updating it to 50.

To fulfill a pre-ordered product & manage inventory:

Update inventory to include the pre-orders:
1. Go to Store Products in your site's dashboard.
2. Select the relevant product.
3. Scroll down to the Inventory and shipping section.
4. Calculate how much inventory you need to add (amount of new units minus the number of pre-orders).
5. Update the inventory level.
Fulfill pre-ordered products:
1. Go to Orders in your site's dashboard.
2. Filter your orders to locate orders that contain the pre-ordered product:
  1. Click Filter.
  2. In the Products filter, select the relevant product.
  3. Click Done.
3. Fulfill the order as you would any other order.