Taking Pre-Orders on Shopify with Sumtracker
Pre-orders allow you to sell products before the physical inventory is available. This is common when you want to gauge demand, manage cash flow, or accept orders ahead of a restock. Sumtracker is fully compatible with Shopify's pre-order flow and handles negative inventory gracefully.
How Pre-Orders Work on Shopify
In Shopify, you can enable pre-orders for specific variants by turning on the Continue selling when out of stock setting on those variants. This allows customers to place orders even when the inventory level is at zero or negative.
How Sumtracker Handles Negative Inventory
When a variant sells into negative inventory because Continue selling when out of stock is enabled in Shopify, Sumtracker will reduce the Available and In Stock quantities below zero. Sumtracker will not attempt to correct, zero out, or override the negative inventory — it accurately reflects the real state and pushes the negative Available quantity back to Shopify as-is.
No configuration changes are needed in Sumtracker to support pre-orders. You do not need to turn off inventory sync or make any adjustments to your SKU settings.
Tracking Pre-Order Quantities with Booked Inventory
All quantities sold as pre-orders will appear under Booked Inventory in Sumtracker. Booked inventory represents quantities that have been ordered by customers but not yet fulfilled.
This gives you a clear picture of how many units you have already sold as pre-orders, which is essential for planning your next purchase order or production run. For example, if your Booked quantity is 30, you know that 30 units have been promised to customers and need to be procured or manufactured before you can fulfill those orders.
Receiving Purchase Orders when you have Negative Inventory
When the physical inventory arrives, you can create a Purchase Order in Sumtracker and mark it as received. This will increase the In Stock (and therefore Available) quantity automatically. No additional manual adjustment is needed to clear the negative balance.
For example, if a SKU is at -10 and you receive 50 units on a Purchase Order, Sumtracker will move the quantity to +40 automatically.
Summary
- Enable Continue selling when out of stock on the relevant Shopify variants
- No changes needed in Sumtracker — it supports negative inventory natively
- Pre-order sales appear as Booked Inventory, helping you plan procurement or manufacturing
- Receiving a Purchase Order automatically corrects the negative balance