PreProduct has a lot of functionality around charging customers later for pre-orders, but what if you would like some money paid upfront? Perhaps you have an expensive product range or would like to ensure customers are committed to their pre-orders?
PreProduct has an advanced deposits system which works through your existing checkout to take Shopify deposit payments.

Summary #

• When setting up a pre-order listing you can choose to require a deposit.
• This will mean that when the customer pre-orders, they’ll be charged the deposit amount straight away, with the outstanding charge triggered in the future.
• Once you’re ready to start collecting the outstanding payment, you can trigger the deferred charge that customers have agreed to pay.

Step-by-step #

Setup #

1. Navigate to the ‘New Listing’ screen in PreProduct and select the product you would like to list.

2.  Check the ‘require a deposit’ box.

3. You can then either enter the amount or percentage which customers will have to pay upfront per item (the amount/percentage entered defaults to your store’s main currency).

4. Then you can click ‘Create listing’.

Front-end #

• A PreProduct deposit listing will have slightly different wording to other products above the button and in the on-page cart. (Just in the cart if you’re using your native button for pre-orders)
• The wording can all be edited via the ‘customise wording’ screen in PreProduct. Just make sure to select ‘deposit-upfront’  before editing.

• Once the customer fills out their order and clicks pre-order, they will be forwarded to your store’s cart or checkout (depending on your redirect settings)

Back-end #

• When a customer pre-orders, an entry in the listing dashboard will be created with a pink ‘deposit paid’ badge.

• When you’re ready to collect the remaining payment for a deposit pre-order, you can charge specific customers or in bulk (Doc here)
• The usual deferred charge process will then kick in. i.e. the optional upcoming charge email will be sent out, followed by the charge attempt.
• Customers will then be charged the outstanding amount/percentage on the card that they used at checkout.