A preorder is an order a customer places for a product that has not been released yet, which you ship once it becomes available. The customer commits now, you collect full payment, a deposit or nothing at checkout, and you promise a ship date. That is the difference with a backorder, which is an existing product that has temporarily sold out.
For a webshop, a preorder is a set of promises that has to hold in several places at once: the product page shows a date, the payment is taken at the right moment, the Google feed sends the preorder value with that same date, and you deliver inside the time EU law allows. Below are the payment options and their limits, how preorders work in Shopify, WooCommerce and Magento, the Google Merchant Center rules, the EU delivery and withdrawal rules, and wording for every touchpoint.
Preorder vs backorder: unreleased products vs sold-out stock
Both let customers buy something you cannot ship today, so they are often mixed up. Google draws the line clearly in its availability attribute rules: the preorder value is only for new products that have not been released yet. An existing product that is out of stock and will be back later, while you keep taking orders, is a backorder. Our backorder guide covers that case, with the stock settings per platform.
- Preorder: next season's trail running shoe, launching on a set date; a board game whose print run is still at the factory; a limited edition with a fixed production slot.
- Backorder: a bestselling desk lamp that sold out, with a container arriving in three weeks.
- Neither: a product that a supplier ships to the customer in five working days is in stock with a longer delivery time.
Search results for "preorder" mix games, consoles and sneakers, but for a merchant the question is practical: is the product new, or is it a restock? The answer decides the feed value, the page copy and, in some cases, how long you may take to deliver.
When taking preorders pays off and when it backfires
Preorders bring in revenue and demand data before the stock exists. They also create a debt: every preorder is a delivery you owe, often already paid for. They work best when you control or can verify the release date.
- Good fits: new product launches with a confirmed production date (our product launch checklist covers the data side of a launch), limited editions and small production runs where preorder volume decides the order quantity, and products you only produce once enough buyers commit.
- Risky fits: gifts with a release date close to a holiday, imports with an unconfirmed shipping date, and anything where one supplier delay pushes you past the date you promised.
- Cap the quantity: stop taking preorders at the number of units confirmed by the supplier, not at an open-ended number.
- Know the margin first: a preorder refunded after a delay still costs payment fees and handling. Work out what each order contributes with our contribution margin guide before you advertise a preorder.
Charging at order, at shipment or with a deposit
Payment timing is the biggest design choice in a preorder flow. Charging at checkout gives you cash now but makes every delay a refund question. Charging later protects the customer but means the charge can fail. A card authorization looks like a middle way, but it expires: Shopify Payments gives an authorization period of 7 days, and on Shopify Plus some cards can be extended to up to 30 days (Visa, Mastercard and American Express). Capturing after the standard 7 days costs an extra 1.75% on the transaction. For a release date weeks away, authorize-and-capture does not work.
Four ways to take payment for a preorder
| Full payment at checkout | At order | Refunds and cancellations if the date slips | The release date is confirmed and close |
|---|---|---|---|
| Deposit, balance later | Part at order, rest at release | The balance charge fails or the customer disputes it | High-priced items and long lead times |
| Authorize, capture at shipment | At shipment | The authorization expires before release | Shipping within days, not weeks |
| Charge at release | At release | Charges fail, customers forget they ordered | Demand testing and uncertain dates |
In the Netherlands, many customers pay with iDEAL (now branded iDEAL | Wero), a bank payment the customer authenticates and completes at checkout. It has no card-style hold that you capture later, so a deposit with the balance at release means either a second payment request to the customer or a payment method you can store and charge again, such as a card.
Shopify preorders: an app plus Shopify's purchase options
Shopify has no preorder switch on the product. According to the Shopify Help Center, you install a preorder app from the Shopify App Store, complete the setup in that app and then manage preorders in the Shopify admin. Depending on the options the app offers, you collect full, partial or no payment when the customer orders, and Shopify stores the payment method so you can collect the remaining balance later.
- Uninstalling deletes data: Shopify deletes the preorder data 48 hours after you uninstall the app, so export it first when you switch apps.
- Continue selling when out of stock is not a preorder: that inventory setting lets a product keep selling at zero stock, but adds no date, no deposit and no preorder label. It is a backorder tool.
- Check the payment methods: before launch, place a test order with each payment method you offer and confirm how a deposit or a later charge behaves.
WooCommerce Pre-Orders and Magento options
WooCommerce sells an official extension for this. The WooCommerce Pre-Orders documentation describes two charge modes: upfront, where the customer pays at checkout like a normal order, and upon release, where the customer is not charged until the product is available. With supported gateways (Stripe, Square and Braintree among them), the saved payment method is charged automatically on release. With other gateways, the customer gets a Pay Now email and has to complete the payment.
- Availability date: optional, and it must be in the future. When it arrives, the product stops being a preorder and sells normally.
- Release: happens automatically on the availability date or when an admin completes the preorders by hand; orders then move to processing, completed or failed depending on the payment.
- Watch the edge case: changing an active preorder's date to the past ends the preorder, but no release processing runs and the orders are not completed.
Adobe's documentation for Magento Open Source and Adobe Commerce describes backorders, not preorders. The nearest built-in setting is Backorders, which keeps a product buyable below zero stock (see the Magento section of our backorder guide). Preorder buttons, release dates and deposits usually come from one of the preorder extensions on the Commerce Marketplace. Whatever you pick, check what it does to the stock status and the feed, because an extension that sets a product to in stock to make it buyable will also make the feed say in stock.
Google Merchant Center: the preorder value and availability_date
Google accepts preorder as an availability value and then asks for more. On its availability page Google says you must provide an availability date, the landing page must show the expected shipping date, and the product page needs an active way to buy. The availability_date attribute has its own rules:
- Required when availability is preorder or backorder, optional otherwise.
- Format: ISO 8601 with a time and time zone, such as 2027-03-02T09:00+0100. Without a time zone, Google assumes midnight UTC.
- No ranges and at most one year ahead. Send your best estimate and update it when the date is confirmed.
- Visible on the page: in a format customers understand; a month and year ("March 2027") is acceptable when you do not know the exact day.
A preorder product in a Google feed therefore carries two values: availability preorder and availability_date 2027-03-02T09:00+0100, with "Ships from 2 March 2027" next to the buy button. If the page says one date and the feed another, or the page has no buy button, Google can flag the product; our guide to mismatched availability covers the fixes.
EU delivery and withdrawal rules for preorders
For consumer sales in the EU, the Consumer Rights Directive sets the baseline, and national law implements it. Four articles matter for preorders:
- Tell the customer the delivery date before they order (Article 6). The arrangements for payment and delivery, including the time by which you undertake to deliver, are part of the pre-contract information. A clearly stated release date is how a delivery later than 30 days becomes agreed.
- 30 days unless agreed otherwise (Article 18). Without an agreed delivery time, you deliver without undue delay and no later than 30 days after the contract. If you miss the agreed date, the customer can give you an additional period and terminate if you miss that too; if the date was essential, such as a costume for a specific party, they can terminate straight away.
- Withdrawal starts at delivery (Article 9). For a sale of goods, the 14-day withdrawal period runs from the day the customer takes physical possession of the goods, so a preorder can still be returned after it arrives.
- Refund within 14 days (Article 13) of being told the customer withdraws. Goods made to the customer's specifications or clearly personalized are an exception to the withdrawal right (Article 16).
One preorder from listing to the end of the withdrawal period
- 1
Day 0
Preorder opens
Product page shows the ship date and payment terms; the feed sends preorder with availability_date.
- 2
At checkout
Customer orders
Full payment, deposit or no charge, depending on the option you chose.
- 3
Before the date
Date confirmed or moved
If the date slips, email customers and update the page and availability_date on the same day.
- 4
Release
Balance charged and order shipped
Deliver by the date you stated, or within 30 days if no date was agreed.
- 5
Delivery + 14 days
Withdrawal period ends
Refunds within 14 days of a withdrawal notice.
Wording for preorder buttons, checkout notes and delay emails
Customers accept waiting when they chose it. Problems start when the date is hidden in a description tab or the order confirmation forgets it. Write the wording once and use it everywhere the product appears.
- Button: "Preorder now, ships from 2 March" instead of an unchanged "Add to cart".
- Near the price: what is charged today and what later: "Pay EUR 50 deposit today, EUR 149 when it ships."
- Cart and checkout: the ship date per line, and whether a mixed cart ships together on the latest date or in parts.
- Order confirmation: the ship date, the payment terms and how to cancel before release.
- Delay email: sent before the old date passes, with the new date, the reason in one sentence and a one-click cancel with a full refund.
Plan around the gift calendar too. A preorder that ships after the holiday a customer is buying for is a likely cancellation; say so on the page in the weeks before peak season. Our Black Friday checklist includes a stock and availability check for those weeks.
Product data behind a preorder listing
A preorder product often goes live with less data than a normal one: no final photos, a provisional description, a date that changes. The fields below keep the shop, the feeds and the marketplaces telling the same story.
Fields to fill before a preorder goes live
The stock availability entry in our ecommerce dictionary explains how these status values relate to each other.
Release dates and channel availability in WISEPIM
WISEPIM is not an order or inventory system and does not take preorders. It keeps the product's stock fields and, since October 2026, an Expected availability date. That date goes to Google as availability_date, through Feed Hub feeds and the direct Merchant Center connection, which share one availability rule. Today that rule sends the date only while a product is on backorder: WISEPIM has no stored preorder status, so a product with zero stock and backorders allowed goes out as backorder, not preorder. For a new product that Google should see as preorder, set the preorder value in the feed your shop or preorder app produces, and use WISEPIM to keep the date and the other product data consistent.
Feed Hub does translate the status per channel. Microsoft and Pinterest have no backorder value in their specs, so Feed Hub sends preorder there for a backordered product, while Meta and TikTok get "available for order". Keep that in mind when you compare what each channel shows for the same product.
