A pre-order is an order placed for an item that has not yet been released. The idea for pre-orders came when people found it hard to get popular items in stores due to their popularity.
WordPress WooCommerce Pre Order Plugin allows the customer(s) to purchase a product from the store which is currently out of stock.
Also, the plugin is very flexible in many ways as customers can order the items with multiple stock units with partial payment as well as complete payment if allowed by the admin.
Check the plugin overview in the video mentioned below –
Features of WooCommerce Pre Order
- This module works with all product types
- The customer can order out of stock products.
- Works with every type of product like Simple, Downloadable, Virtual, Grouped, and Variable.
- The admin can set preorder status and availability date.
- The admin can set a custom amount to be paid for the pre-ordered product.
- The customer can add a new product to the cart along with the pre-order product.
- By using this plugin customers can either pay the entire amount at once or can pay some of the amounts.
- Email notification sent to all registered customers for the new pre-order product.
- The email notification sent to the customers once the pre-order product gets available in stock.
- Admin can enable/disable the pre-order reminder email to all the customers.
- The admin can enable/disable the pre-order In-Stock reminder email to all the customers.
Note I: The shipping will not be generated at the time of pre-order, else it will be generated once the product will come back in the stock and the buyer places the order again.
II- If you have a Marketplace website, then you can check our Marketplace Pre Order Plugin for WooCommerce.
Installation of WooCommerce Pre Order
The user will get a zip file which he has to upload in the “Add New” menu option in the WordPress admin panel.
For this login to WordPress Admin Panel and Under the Dashboard hover your mouse over the “Plugins” menu option which brings out a Sub-Menu and then selects the “Add New” option.
After this, you will see an option on the top of your page that is “Upload Plugin”, click the option to upload the zip file.
By clicking on the “Upload Plugin” option, below that you will see a button “Choose File” click on the button to browse for the zip file as per the snapshot below.
After browsing the file, click the “Install Now” button to install the plugin as per the snapshot.
Now when the plugin is installed correctly, you will see the success message and an option to activate the plugin. Click on “Activate Plugin” to activate the installed plugin.
Module Translation
To know how to translate the module, you can click here.
Configuration of WooCommerce Pre Order
After the successful installation of the WooCommerce Pre Order, the admin can configure this plugin under “WooCommerce PreOrder > Configuration”.
Here, the admin will –
- Select the Timezone according to which the time maintain for the pre-order products.
- Enable the option ‘Preorder Reminder Email to all customers‘ to send the reminder mail to all the customers else select this option as Disabled to not send the reminder emails.
- Enable the option ‘Preorder Instock Reminder Email to all customers‘ to send a reminder email to all the customers when the preorder product becomes In stock else select this option as Disabled to not send the reminder mail.
Lastly, tap the Save Changes button to save the preorder configuration.
Admin End Workflow of WooCommerce Pre Order
Now admin adds pre-order to products. It done under “WooCommerce PreOrder > WooCommerce PreOrder List > Add PreOrder”.
All the pre-order products are available on the PreOrder List.
Product Name – Select Product Name from the list of available products. All out of stock products available on the list. Admin can select any of them as per the requirement.
Payment Method – Select payment method as “Partial Payment” or “Full Payment”.
Original Price – Original Price of the product will be auto-filled as per the product price.
PreOrder Price – Enter PreOrder Price if payment method selected as “Partial Payment”.
Quantity – Quantity of the product.
Expected Availability Date – Availability date of the product.
Status – Select status as “Enabled” or “Disabled” as per the requirement.
Pre-Order List section
Now Admin can see pre-orders in pre-order list. It done under “WooCommerce PreOrder > PreOrder List”.
Enable Preorder For Grouped Products
The admin can now enable the Pre-Order for the Grouped products to allow backorders for them.
For this, the admin needs to enable the Pre-order for the associated products of the grouped product.
For Example
There is a grouped product ‘Woo Single’ with associated products as ‘Woo Single #1’ and ‘Woo Single #2’ Here, the admin first needs to add a Pre-Order for the associated products.
Front End Workflow of WooCommmerce Pre Order
After a successful configuration, the customer can pre-order a product from the store.
After that the customer will view the product page.
Once the customer clicks on the Pre Order button, the product will be added to the cart, and the countdown timer will start as shown in the image below.
On the cart page:
The product will be visible as shown in the below snapshot. The price of the product will depend upon the configuration.
And the customer can place a pre-order as a normal order. Here, the customer can even see the availability of the pre-order product with a countdown timer as well.
The customer can also add a new product to the cart along with the pre-order product.
Once the customer has requested for pre-order, now it is important that the admin will update its quantity and change the status to In Stock from the backend. For this, the admin will navigate to the Products section under the admin panel.
Further, the admin will select respective product and change the status and product quantity under the Inventory section as shown in the image below:
Once the product is available in stock the customers will be notified through the mail. Then they can pay the rest of the amount of the product.
After placing an order for the pre-order product, a customer can check the order details by navigating through My account->Pre order.
On clicking the Pre-order option, the customers can see the details remaining amount he has to pay.
Partial Payment Workflow
While the admin has set partial payment for pre-order products –
- The customer can make the partial payment(initial amount) as set by the admin and
- When the pre-order product gets back into stock, the customer can make the remaining payment for the same pre-order product.
On the pre-order product page(after login) the customer can see the details like – the actual price, availability, left stock, and the initial payment to make for the pre-order product.

Pre Order
To pre-order the product, the customer has to tap on the available Pre Order button. This adds the pre-order product to the cart.

Now, the customer can make the payment for the initial amount(£25) as set by the admin by tapping the Proceed to Checkout button within the cart.

Tapping the Proceed to Checkout button takes the customer to the Place order page to make the partial payment for the Pre Order product.

The customer can check the Order details after placing the order and can see the initial partial payment(£25).

By navigating to the Pre Order menu option under the My Account section, the details of the remaining amount to make for the pre order products can be checked.

Tapping the View button for the respective pre-order product the details can be checked.

After the Pre-order product gets back into stock, the customer can navigate to the product page of the respective product. Here, the customer can see that the product is in stock and can make the remaining payment for the product by adding it to the cart.

On the Place Order page, the customer can see that the amount to pay is the remaining amount for the Pre order product.

lastly, after placing the order for the remaining amount the customer can see the complete order details as shown below in the snapshot.

At the same time, the customer also receives an email for the amount paid.

Support
Thus, that was much about the WooCommerce Pre-Order plugin. For any kind of doubts or suggestions regarding the plugin kindly reach back to us at [email protected] or raise a ticket at our HelpDesk system.
Current Product Version - 2.2.1
Supported Framework Version - WordPress: 6.0.0, WooCommerce: 6.4.1