Pre-orders let your customers order products that are currently out of stock. These can be items that are temporarily sold out or those that you only plan to launch. If you track inventory for a product in Retail POS (X-Series), you can enable pre-orders for products and product variants with zero stock in your Lightspeed eCom (E-Series) online store.
Items that are available for pre-order are marked as such on your online storefront, so customers know they’re ordering in advance when they check out. Pre-ordered products then get a special Pre-ordered label on the Orders page in your eCom admin panel, as well as in your online store’s notifications. You can view the number of pre-orders for a particular product or product variation on its page in Catalog > Products in your eCom admin.
If you plan to accept pre-orders/backorders, take time and study the rules concerning them in your country. You can describe your policy on pre-orders (payments, estimated shipping & order fulfillment time, returns, etc.) on your online stores’ legal pages to keep your customers informed.
How pre-orders work in eCom
Enabling pre-orders is voluntary. Products available for pre-order are your regular products when out of stock.
Once product stock reaches “0”, the product is marked with a special Pre-order label both on the storefront and on the product page, and its “Buy Now”/”Add to Bag” buttons turn into “Pre-Order” buttons:
For product variants, pre-orders work in a slightly different way. When a particular variant is out of stock, then on the product page, it gets a Pre-order label, and its ”Add to Bag” button turns into a “Pre-Order” button. On the storefront, the changes take place depending on the base product stock settings.
When customers click the “Pre-Order” button, the product or product variant is added to cart, and they can proceed with checkout to place a pre-order. The same payment, shipping, delivery, and pickup methods apply to pre-ordered items that are available for them while in stock.
After choosing a shipping, delivery, or pickup method at checkout, customers are reminded that the items are pre-ordered and will be shipped/available for pickup once they are in stock. In case there are both pre-ordered and in-stock items in the order, customers see a notice that they will get all the products together once the pre-ordered items are in stock. If a customer wants to get the available items sooner, they can place a separate order.
Once you replenish the stock for a product or product variation so that it’s “1” or more, customers will be able to buy this item on a regular basis again.
Enabling pre-orders for products in eCom
To take pre-orders for a product, you need to set pre-orders as the out of stock behavior for this product in your eCom admin panel. When its stock reaches “0”, the product will become available for pre-orders.
To enable pre-orders for a product:
- Navigate to your eCom Admin Panel.
- From the side menu, click Catalog > Products and select the product you want to edit.
- Find the Stock Control block and click Manage stock control.
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From the When out of stock dropdown, select Show and allow pre-order:
- Save the changes.
That’s it! Now once this product is out of stock in your online store, your customers will be able to pre-order it.
To save time on individual product setup, you can set pre-orders as the default out of stock behavior for all the new products in your eCom store or enable pre-orders for several products in bulk. Learn more about setting behavior for out of stock products in eCom →
If you want to edit the “Pre-order” text on labels and buttons (e.g., turn them into ”Booking”), you can do that with the Store Label Editor that you can access in the eCom Admin Panel > Settings > Edit Store Labels.
Enabling pre-orders for product variants in eCom
If you track the stock of individual product variants, you can enable pre-orders for them. For example, to keep accepting orders for sold out variants that you know will restock soon while selling product variants that are in stock on a regular basis.
To enable pre-orders for a product variant:
- Navigate to your eCom Admin Panel.
- From the side menu, click Catalog > Products and select the product you want to edit.
- Go to the Options > Variations tab.
- Find the variation you want to enable pre-orders for, then click the pencil icon next to it.
- Click the arrow next to Stock Control.
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From the When out of stock dropdown, select Show and allow pre-order:
- Click OK, then Save.
That’s it! Now when this product variant becomes out of stock in your online store, your customers will be able to pre-order it. Other variants will remain available for purchase if they are in stock.
To enable pre-orders for several product variations in bulk, use Bulk Product Editor.
Managing pre-orders in eCom
All the pre-orders that customers place in your store will be displayed on the Orders page in your eCom admin panel along with the regular orders. You can recognize pre-ordered items by a special Pre-ordered label next to them:
If there are several products in the order, click on it to see labels for the pre-ordered items.
The Pre-ordered label appears both on desktop and in the Lightspeed eCom mobile app. To see a list of all orders that contain pre-orders in your store, use order filters on the left of the Orders page.
When you’re ready to ship the pre-ordered items to customers, change the order status to Ready For Pickup or Shipped. Make sure you have the Order shipped and/or Order is ready for pickup notifications enabled in Settings > Notifications in the eCom admin if you want your customers to get the corresponding automated notification. You can also contact your customers by email or by phone to let them know that their pre-order is on the way or that they can come and pick it up.
The Pre-ordered labels remain displayed for your items after you replenish their stock.
Viewing pre-orders for individual products in eCom
You can view all the pre-orders placed for a particular product since the date you’ve replenished its stock for the last time.
To see a list of pre-orders for a product:
- Navigate to your eCom Admin Panel.
- From the side menu, click Catalog > Products and select the product you want to edit.
- Find the Stock Control block and click Manage stock control.
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Click View pre-orders:
- On the opened page, you will see all the pre-orders for this product that were submitted since the date you’ve replenished the stock for the last time. The list will also include pre-orders for product variations (if any).
To view how many pre-orders there are for a particular product variant, go to the products page in Catalog > Products > Options > Variations in the eCom admin and see the number of pre-ordered items in the Stock column:
To see the number of pre-ordered items in Lightspeed eCom mobile app, access the stock control/inventory section for products and their variations.