Pre-orders Square for Retail

[GEMshop]

I am planning to pre-sell a book through Square Online which won't ship until mid 2022. For a minimum of 3 months, orders will be unfulfilled within Square. Will that be a problem? Will the software prompt me to complete the orders, or worse, penalize me in some way?

I have experience with selling on Amazon and if an order is late you risk losing the sale. I want to be sure there aren't any setting within Square that will impede pre-sales. 

[JK_Fiber_Art]

Hey GEMshop,

Don't believe you're alone with your Pre-Order question as many others have the same thought.  From what I've searched through, this topic has been submitted as a "feature request", sorry don't have any other details other than this question has come up before.  Perhaps someone else has more updated info.

Normally when someone places an order the item should be shipped within 7 days (that's kind of the standard with most online businesses and credit card processors).   For now maybe a creative different way of marketing the sale of your book would work (just a thought).

Personal thought:  There are other online processors that do have policies for Pre-Orders, however that's a totally different place to go - if you're happy with Square at this point - don't bother going anywhere else - we've been there and Square has been the best to date.

Maybe offer something in return for their purchase that you could send them up front (key fob, book mark, etc.) - the customer gets what you send them and when your book is ready to ship, you ship it.  Yep, some folks may think they are getting scammed however, if you have a solid explanation of your process and their purchase is clearly a  pre-order and the book will ship with an estimated best date - then you will have their trust.

Best - JK 😎

[HC_Charlie]

Hello @GEMshop and thanks for you question. I have done some presale retail items before, although the longest I went was about 6 weeks before I shipped. There are some settings you can use when you receive an order. First, if you click on the order you can change the status from a new order to PENDING. This should hold the order (although i do not know for how long, or if there is a limit). When I received my preordered items, I shipped them and updated the status in my dashboard to SHIPPED.

There used to be an expiration on the Square site (not Weebly) if orders were not accepted by clicking pending, but according to this post, it seems that if you are using a Weebly online site there is no expiration:

I think preorders are not something available right now for regular retail stores; something similar is being used in Restaurant situations. But using this Pending status may work for this situation.