The settings behind a preorder, what Shopify doesn't support, the FTC rule on charging early, and a launch runbook that stays right between drops.
A Shopify preorder rarely breaks at setup. It breaks on launch day. The steps live in one person's head, and the app, stock rules and checkout underneath them have moved since the last drop.
This article covers what to write down before the next preorder goes live, in what order, and which parts will be wrong by the drop after it.
Shopify's help center is direct about it: to use pre-orders, you need to install a pre-order app. The app adds a purchase option to the product, and that option controls three things.
The docs add one detail that matters for your procedure: it is the app's job to charge the balance at the right time and to deal with failed payments. If your preorder takes deposits, someone needs to know where those failures show up.
These settings sit in the app, on the product and in checkout. Unless one person owns each of them, they drift apart without anyone noticing.
Oversells usually come from settings that were set up correctly once and then left half-finished.
The continue-selling switch. Some stores run preorders without an app by turning on "Continue selling when out of stock" for the variant, and some apps rely on it too. If your setup uses it, it should only be on while the campaign runs. The failure is leaving it on: the campaign ends, nobody switches it off, and the store keeps selling stock it doesn't have.
Variant-level settings. Purchase options attach to products and to individual variants. One size on preorder and the rest in stock is normal. It also means a team that checks "the product" instead of every variant can miss the one still taking orders. It's the same variant-level gap the bundle inventory sync SOP works through for bundles.
Split shipments. An order that mixes a preorder item with in-stock items can ship in two parts. That means two labels, two shipping costs, and two chances to send the wrong thing at the wrong time.
More than one warehouse adds a fourth risk. Preorder stock can sit at a location your order routing doesn't send to. It's the same inventory sync gap that causes oversells between ShipBob and Shopify.
Shopify's developer docs and help center list the limits. Preorders:
Every one of these is a promise your launch could make by accident. If the plan includes a discount, a channel or a way to pay, test that exact combination on your store before launch day. If your checkout has been customized, ask the app or your developer first.
How to place a test order that checks the real checkout without causing problems on a live store.
Try it on one of your own procedures.
Record a process once, AI writes the structured SOP. 3 free SOPs, no credit card.
In the US, charging before the product ships falls under the FTC's Mail, Internet, or Telephone Order Merchandise Rule. The FTC's summary says it "requires sellers who solicit buyers to order merchandise through the mail, via the Internet, or by phone to have a reasonable basis to expect that the sellers can ship within the advertised time frame, or, if no time frame is specified, within 30 days."
The FTC's business guide to the rule sets out what happens when you can't ship on time:
Shopify's own preorder setup page repeats the same requirements. For your procedure, this means two owners. Whoever sets the ship date needs a real reason to believe it, and whoever handles customer emails needs the delay notice drafted before launch day.
Write the launch as a sequence with a name on each step, not as a list of settings. The order is what goes wrong, and the order is what nobody remembers.
None of this needs new software. It needs someone to walk the steps in order, with a name next to each one. The pre-order management SOP has the fuller version of the procedure.
Preorder launches don't happen often, but the app and settings under them change anyway. Three kinds of drift show up.
That gap between what the document says and what the team does is SOP drift. None of the three announces itself. A procedure that is mostly right can be worse than one that is obviously broken, because people follow it with confidence.
Two habits help. Put one person's name on the preorder procedure, not a department. When a procedure belongs to everyone, drift belongs to nobody. A knowledge transfer plan for the role closes the same gap when that person moves on. And give the procedure an expiry date, not a vague review date, so it reads "not trusted until someone checks it" rather than "have a look sometime".
The harder habit is knowing what changed since the procedure was written. That usually means watching someone run the whole drop, which is why most teams skip it and launch from memory.
Before the next drop, have the person who ran the last preorder walk through the whole sequence, including the teardown, while someone writes it down. Then compare that to the document you already have. The gap between the two is the procedure your team is really running.
ReccordSOP turns a screen recording of that walkthrough into a written SOP, with numbered steps and a screenshot for each one. It highlights the button or element clicked in each step. Record the launch again next quarter and it compares the new recording with the existing SOP, flagging each step that changed instead of overwriting it. Checklist runs record which version of the SOP someone followed. If a published SOP goes 90 days without a review, the owner gets an email.
It documents the process. It doesn't run it, doesn't watch your Shopify or app settings, and won't stop an oversell on its own. A recording also captures one person's way of doing the task, so someone still has to review it.
The free plan covers 3 SOPs in total, enough for the launch, the teardown and the delay notice. Team is $19 per user per month, with a 3-user minimum.
A purchase option that lets a customer buy a product variant before it is ready to ship. The store decides separately when stock is counted as used and when the customer is charged, which is why two preorders that look the same on the product page can behave differently in the order list.
Yes, for Shopify's preorder feature. Shopify's help center says that to use pre-orders you need to install a pre-order app, and the setup happens in that app. Some stores fake a preorder without an app by turning on continue selling when out of stock, but that is a workaround, not Shopify's preorder feature.
As long as the date you state, if you have a reasonable basis for it. In the US, the FTC rule says that if you state no date, you need a reasonable basis to expect to ship within 30 days. If you can't ship on time, you must tell the customer the new date, or that you don't know it, and offer to cancel with a full refund.
Because the fix from last time never made it into the written steps, or it did and then drifted. A continue-selling switch gets left on, or a variant nobody rechecked stays open for orders. It is the same mistake in the same order, because nobody wrote down what changed.
3 free SOPs to start. No credit card required. See if drift detection keeps your docs honest.
Start for freeI built ReccordSOP after watching too many DTC ops teams lose months to undocumented workflows. These SOPs are battle-tested with Shopify operators running $1M to $50M brands.
Last reviewed October 21, 2026
A checkout that completes is not a checkout that works. After a theme or app change, the test is whether the order in your admin holds everything the storefront collected.
Your stock count drifts the same way your SOPs do. The difference is this one oversells products you don't have.
Most SOPs are wrong within 90 days of publishing. Here's how to detect it before it costs you a customer.
We use essential cookies for sign-in and a small amount of analytics to improve the product. Privacy policy.