Shopify draft orders: Why and how to create them for your Shopify store

Draft Shopify orders are orders that a merchant places in the Shopify admin on behalf of a customer. Draft orders can be created in three different ways: create a draft order in Shopify, create a draft order in the Edit Order app, or convert an abandoned checkout to a draft order in Edit Order. Creating a draft order instead of working with a new order can give you more ways to interact with your customers, such as: B. sending them an invoice in their local currency.

When to create draft orders for your Shopify store?

If you need to create an order on behalf of a customer, you can create a draft order in your Shopify admin. You add customer details and products, then send an invoice, collect payment, or set payment terms.

When the order is paid for or you have set payment terms, the draft order is converted to an order and listed on your Orders page.

You can use draft orders to sell directly to consumers or other businesses. If you regularly sell to other businesses, check out all of Shopify’s business-to-business (B2B) features.

Order drafts are useful when you need to do the following:

  • Create an order so you can accept payments for orders placed over the phone, in person, or by email.
  • Send invoices to customers to pay with a secure payment link.
  • Use custom items to reflect additional costs or products that aren’t listed in your inventory.
  • Manually re-create orders from one of your active sales channels.
  • Sell ​​products at discount or wholesale prices.
  • Get pre-orders.
  • Save your orders as a draft and continue working on them later. Find draft orders saved on the Drafts page in the Shopify admin.

If you’re using Shopify Markets, the local currency, prices, duties, and taxes are determined by the marketplace associated with the order. If multiple markets are enabled, the customer’s shipping address determines the market for the order. You can change the market for an order project.

Create a draft ordershopify draft orders

For the benefit of your client, draft an order, and then send them an invoice. A link to the checkout where your customer may pay for their order is automatically included in the invoice.

Draft orders may include the following details:

  • one or more products
  • discounts on the full purchase or certain products
  • shipping rates
  • applicable taxes
  • a customer
  • tags
  • market
Steps:
  1. From your Shopify admin, navigate to Orders
  2. Select Create order.
  3. Product additions to the order
  4. Make the order specific:
    • Add a client
    • Apply reductions
    • Switch taxes on or off
    • Add a remark or tags
    • Alter the market so that a new local currency is shown.
  5. Choose one of the following:
    • Send a bill to the client. By default, the invoice include a payment link that your customer may utilize to complete the transaction.
    • Recede with the client’s money.
    • Establish the conditions for payment.
    • Save the order as a draft so that you may edit it later from the Drafts page.

You can also create orders with pre-populated customer information from existing customer profiles.

Add products

  1. From the Drafts page in your Shopify admin, open the draft order.
  2. Do one of the following things in the Order details section:
    • Type in the name of the item you wish to include in your order.
    • Select Browse Products to view a list of products and collections in your store.
    • By choosing Add custom item, you may add a custom item to the order.
  3. The specific goods or versions you wish to add to the order should be checked.
  4. Click Add to Order. To remove a product from your order, click the X button next to it in the “Order Details” section.
  5. Check the number of products you have added to the order. If you add a zero-inventory product and the product doesn’t allow oversale, you’ll get a message warning you of an inventory problem when you try to checkout.
  6. Optional: To reserve products included in an invoice or draft order, click Reserve Items, then choose how long you want to reserve the items. This will reserve all items that have inventory tracking enabled, but will not adjust their actual inventory levels in your Shopify admin.

Set item or order discounts

If you wish to apply a discount to the current order, you may decide whether to do so for the entire purchase or only certain goods. Both item and order discounts are applied to the total order price – be careful not to duplicate the discount Orders generated as draft order invoices cannot be checked out using discount codes.

Apply a discount to an item

  1. Open the order from the Drafts page in the Shopify admin.
  2. In the Order Details section, click the price next to the item name.
  3. Set the discount as a currency amount or as a percentage of the listed price.
  4. Optional: In the Reason text box, enter a justification for the discount.
  5. Select Apply.

Apply a discount to the entire order

  1. Open the order from the Orders page of your Shopify admin.
  2. Select Add discount.
  3. Set the discount as a currency amount or as a percentage of the total price. This discount is in addition to any item-specific discount.
  4. Optional: In the text box labeled Reason, enter a justification for the discount.
  5. Select Apply.

Add shipping

If the current order requires shipping, then you can choose a preset shipping rate or create a custom rate.

Steps:
  1. Open the order from the Orders page of your Shopify admin.
  2. Select Add shipping.
  3. Select “Custom”, then enter a shipping price.
  4. If you selected Custom, enter the custom rate name and shipping rate.
  5. Select Apply.

Add tags

You can organize your orders differently than they are committed, paid and fulfilled by adding tags. You can filter the orders by tag and then save the order view for that tag so you can quickly access those orders in the future.

Steps:
  1. Open the order from the Orders page in the Shopify admin.
  2. Put the tag names in, comma-separated. The maximum number of characters (letters and integers) allowed on an order tag is 40.
  3. Click View All Tags to select from previously used tags. Click the tags you want to add and then click Apply Changes to apply them to the order.
  4. Select Save.

Add or remove taxes

Draft orders include tax by default based on your store’s tax settings and customer’s shipping address. If you don’t have a registered shipping address, taxes will be based on the customer’s billing address instead.

Steps:
  1. Open the order from the Drafts page in the Shopify admin..
  2. Click Taxes in the Order details section.
  3. Choosing Charge taxes.
  4. Click Apply to save the changes or Close to cancel..

Add a customer to a draft order

  1. Open the order from the Orders page of your Shopify admin.
  2. In the Search or create a customer section, start typing the name of an existing customer or type the name of a new customer.
  3. Click on the customer to assign it to the order.
  4. If you are creating a new customer, click Create New Customer.
  5. Complete the appropriate fields under Create a new customer.
  6. Click Save Customer. This customer is now registered in your shop.
  7. Select Save.

Change a customer’s contact information

  1. Open the order from the Orders page of your Shopify admin.
  2. In the Customers section of the order, click Edit next to the customer’s email, shipping, or billing address.
  3. Make the necessary changes.
  4. Select Save.

You can also remove a customer from a draft order. In the Customer section of the draft order, click the X icon. This does not remove the customer from the customer list in your Shopify admin.

Set payment terms for payments due later

The payment terms allow you to set the date on which the order must be paid. You can set payment terms for draft orders or add them to existing orders with the status Payment pending.

When setting up your payment terms, you can choose from the following options:

  • Due on receipt: Use this option to make the payment due the day you send the invoice to your customer.
  • Net term: Use this option to set the payment as due within the specified number of days from the date of issue.
  • Fixed term: Use this option to make the payment due on a specific date.

If an order is not paid by the due date, the order status changes to Overdue.

After setting the payment terms, you can send an invoice or accept payment for the order.

If you generate a draft order for a customer, you can then provide them a link to the checkout page so they can fill out their billing information, choose a shipping option, and make a payment. The draft order turns becomes an order in the Orders page and is immediately marked as Paid after the customer uses the link to finish the checkout process.

There are two ways to give your clients checkout links:

  • Send an invoice to your customer, which includes a link to the payment page.
  • Share a payment link with your customer in a mobile app.

Accept payment

If you have already been paid for a draft order, you can designate it as paid. If not, you can take payment by credit card if you have your customer’s billing information. An order is created on the Orders page whenever you accept payment for a draft order.
shopify draft orders

There are no third-party transaction fees for orders processed through Shopify Payments. You only pay credit card processing fees when you manually process credit card purchases in the Shopify admin.

If you use a supported direct credit card payment service provider instead, you pay the same third-party transaction fees when processing credit card purchases as for online orders. If you mark the order as paid and select a manual payment method, such as cash on delivery or bank deposit, you will not be charged a third-party transaction fee for that order.

Conclusion

Shopify draft orders can give you more ways to interact with your customers. Just a few basic steps you will know how to create draft orders for your Shopify store. If based on the data we have provided you are still having difficulty, you can contact ONEXT DIGITAL, which will help you get a better experience on how to create draft orders for your Shopify store.

ONEXT DIGITAL is one of the Web Development and Service Providers on platforms including Shopify. With experienced web developers, we bring high-quality products and services to effectively optimize your business landing page.