In a competitive eCommerce landscape, adaptability and personalized service are crucial for success. Shopify supports brands beyond the standard online shopping experience by providing a versatile solution for handling direct sales interactions and custom orders – meet draft orders.
What are draft orders?
While most eCommerce orders are placed directly through an online store, human interaction may be required for certain transactions such as generating custom B2B quotes or taking orders via email. In these cases, merchants can manually create an order on behalf of a customer through a draft order. Merchants can input customer information, add products, and customize many aspects of the order before sending a secure invoice link to the customer, directing them to Shopify's world-class checkout experience for payment. Merchants can complete the order by entering their payment details or deferring payment.
Why do draft orders matter?
Draft orders enable merchants to engage with customers through multiple channels, such as phone or in-person interactions. This allows merchants to reach customers wherever they shop and capture sales that might otherwise be lost. This approach can also facilitate the expansion into new sales channels, such as events and trade shows, providing opportunities for growth.
Draft orders offer merchants greater control over the sales process. They are highly customizable, allowing merchants to sell wholesale, apply custom discounts, and even create custom line items that are not tied to any products in their online store. They can also be used to override store settings to make exceptions for customers as needed. For example, if a product is unpublished in a specific market, merchants can still create draft orders for customers in that market as product publishing rules do not apply to draft orders.
For B2B merchants, draft orders play a critical role in the order process for sales and customer service teams, especially for orders that require a more personal touch such as negotiated quotes. When a draft order is created for a customer associated to a company, all relevant information, including customer-specific pricing and payment terms are automatically applied and are visible to sales staff. This benefit extends to phone orders, where sales staff can assemble the order in real-time with the customer with immediate access to the necessary information, helping them complete orders faster and reduce potential errors.
Draft orders support all aspects of assisted-selling by facilitating relationship-building and personalized sales through direct customer engagement in the ordering process. By addressing potential purchase barriers and providing a convenient order review and payment process, merchants can enhance the likelihood of order completion, driving increased sales.
What’s new in the Winter '25 Edition?
Merchants expect a consistent and intuitive experience across Shopify. Key features that work in other areas of the platform, such as checkout and fulfillment, should also work in draft orders, without the need for manual workarounds.
In this edition, Shopify introduced new capabilities and enhancements aimed at unifying draft orders with the rest of the platform. For instance, customizations made with Checkout Extensions will now apply to draft orders, both in the sales staff’s admin experience and the customer’s checkout experience. These improvements provide merchants with a more unified experience reducing errors and workarounds.
Checkout customizations in draft orders
Customizations, validations, and order routing rules created using Shopify Functions apply to draft orders. For example, displaying specific shipping options based on location, setting a minimum order value, or hiding certain payment methods. Checkout customizations created with app blocks also extend to draft orders. Existing extensions, such as loyalty apps and banner messages, will be visible in a customer’s draft order checkouts.
Streamlined B2B order management
This release introduces several enhancements to better support B2B merchants in both admin-created and buyer-initiated draft orders, ensuring a consistent experience for sales staff and customers.
Plus merchants using B2B on Shopify can set and collect deposits on draft orders to secure customer commitment without relying on workarounds such as offline payment collection. Collecting deposits is useful for large B2B orders, especially for build-to-order items that are not yet manufactured.
B2B merchants can charge vaulted credit cards to convert a draft order into an order. This feature saves merchants time, enabling them to charge the card without converting the draft into an order. For customers, this results in a faster payment experience by avoiding the hassle of reconfirming details when it's time to process payment.
In the past, B2B merchants could only offer fixed or customized bundles when an order did not require review. Now, orders submitted as drafts can contain both types of bundles. This gives customers flexibility in how they place their orders while providing merchants with a consistent way to manage bundle sales across all channels.
Pricing trust and transparency
Merchants have the option to lock product prices in draft orders, guaranteeing that quoted prices remain unchanged even if catalog prices fluctuate. If prices are not locked, they will automatically reflect the most current product price. Price lock can be used for generating stable quotes for large B2B orders, maintaining promotional pricing during seasonal sales, or ensuring agreed-upon prices for custom orders. All of which creates a trustworthy and reliable purchasing experience for customers and strengthens the overall merchant-customer relationship.
How to get started today
Dive deeper into specific draft order features by visiting the help center or create your first draft order in the admin. For the latest feature and enhancements, check out all Shopify updates in the Winter ’25 Edition.
