Wix Stores: Letting Customers Pre-Order Products | Help Center

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Wix Stores

Managing products and categories

Wix Stores: Letting Customers Pre-Order Products

7 min

In this article

Enabling pre-orders for products without product options
Enabling pre-orders for products with product options
Fulfilling pre-ordered products and managing inventory
FAQs

Allow customers to pre-order new, anticipated, or out-of-stock products so you never miss a potential sale.

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

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.

Enabling pre-orders for products without product options

You can enable pre-order while creating or editing a product. This makes the pre-order button appear when the product 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".

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 Inventory and re-order section.
Click the Sell as pre-order when this product is out of stock toggle to enable it.

Screenshot of part of the product creation page in Wix Stores showing the pre-order toggle

Enter a short pre-order message.
Tip: Include an availability message, such as 'Ready to ship by mid-May'.The note is displayed 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 for this product:
1. Select the Limit the number of items available for pre-order checkbox.
2. Enter the maximum number of pre-orders you can accept.

Limiting pre-orders:

Set a pre-order limit if you anticipate higher demand than you can fulfill.
To be able to set a limit, you must track specific inventory amounts.

Enabling pre-orders for products with product options

Even if a product has variants, you can still follow the instructions above for products without variants. Initially, the settings will apply to all variants. This means that each variant is available for pre-order, each one displays the same message, and has the same pre-order limit.

When you click Edit Variant, you'll see the settings applied to each variant and you'll be able to customize them individually.

Screenshot of the edit variant window in Wix Stores

Tip:

You can also enable pre-order per variant from Edit Variants without enabling it for the entire product.

To customize pre-order settings per variant:

Follow the instruction in the section above for products without variants.
Create the product options you need for the product.
Click Edit Variants.
Click the Allow pre-order toggle for each variant to enable or disable it.
Note: If you don't see the pre-order settings, check the FAQ to see how to display them.
Click the Edit pre-order settings icon .

Screenshot of the edit variant window in Wix Stores showing the Edit pre-order settings icon

Enter a short pre-order message.
(Optional) Add a product limit:
1. Click Limit the number of items available for pre-order checkbox.
2. Enter the maximum number of pre-orders you can accept for this product.
Click Done.
Click Apply & Continue.

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.

Fulfilling pre-ordered products and managing inventory

When 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 update your stock level to 38 (50 - 12 = 38), rather than updating it to 50.

To fulfill a pre-ordered product and 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.