How to add Pre-Orders to your WooCommerce Store? (2022 Guide)
Published: 2022-02-02 09:16:53

Many online retailers use pre-orders as a way to spark interest in upcoming products, gauge product demand and raise money for production. This lets them know how many products they should make on their first production run and receive payment upfront. One of the methods of doing this is through the WooCommerce Pre-Orders plugin.

This plugin allows you to sell your products even before they’re available. What’s really great about it is that it offers you so much flexibility.

You can easily set up a product to be available as a pre-order and choose the time when it will be released. In addition, you can choose whether to charge customers at the time of the sale or when the product is ready to be released (or shipped if it’s a physical product). So, when the product is available, the plugin can automatically fulfill your orders.


**How to set up Pre-Ordering on WooCommerce**

Here we’ll explain how you can create a pre-ordering campaign using the WooCommerce Pre-Orders extension. For this tutorial, we’ll assume you already have a WooCommerce store set up with some products added to it.


**Step #1: Install the WooCommerce Pre-Orders Extension**

The first thing you need to do is get the WooCommerce Pre-Orders extension.
Log into your WordPress website and head over to Plugins > Add New.
Upload the extension’s .zip file and install it on your website.

**Step #2: Set Up a Product To Allow Pre-Orders**

To get started, choose a WooCommerce product that you’d like to allow pre-orders for.
Let’s say you sell hoodies and want to let customers pre-order an upcoming design.
Once you’ve added your product details, navigate to the Pre-Orders tab from the Product data section.

**Configure the following options:**

Tick the checkbox next to the Enable Pre-Orders option.
Set the product’s availability date. The extension lets you set the date and time.
Optionally, you can set a Pre-Order Fee if you want to add an additional fee.
The When to Charge option lets you decide when to charge customers for the product. You can set this to either Upon Release or Upfront using the dropdown.

_Click Publish to proceed._
The WooCommerce Pre-Orders plugin lets you customize the different labels and button text that appears on your site’s front-end.


**Step #3: Sending Out Pre-Order Emails**

Using the WooCommerce Pre-Orders extension, you can automatically send out emails to customers.
The extension uses WordPress’ default template specified for the Customer Note Email to send out emails.
You can send out email updates to customers who pre-ordered a specific product.

Change a product’s release date and send customers who pre-ordered the product an email letting them know the new release date. Essentially, the plugin builds an email list of customers who pre-ordered the product for you making it easy to notify everyone in a few clicks.

Complete all pre-orders for a product. Doing so will charge the customer’s card the pre-ordered amount, change their order status to Completed in the back-end, and send them an email notification.
Cancel all pre-orders for a specific product. Doing so will mark the order as Cancelled in the back-end and send the customer an email notification. If pre-orders were charged upfront, you will have to manually refund the orders.


**Reference Blog**
[https://www.gomahamaya.com/add-pre-orders-to-your-woocommerce-store/](https://www.gomahamaya.com/add-pre-orders-to-your-woocommerce-store/)