Shopify draft orders: a guide to phone, wholesale and gift orders

Shopify draft orders let you build an order in your admin for a shopper who can't or won't check out on their own: a phone order, a wholesale reorder sent by email, or a company buying 40 gift boxes for its team. You add the products, price and shipping, then either send an invoice with a checkout link or record the payment yourself, and the draft becomes a normal order.

The holiday weeks are when these orders pile up, and when small setup mistakes cost the most: stock that sells out from under a quote, a discount that won't apply, or an invoice link that stops working. This guide walks through creating a draft order, getting paid, holding stock, and the limits worth knowing before you quote a big gift order.

When a draft order is the right tool

Use a draft order when the order starts with you, not the shopper:

• A customer calls or emails and asks you to place the order for them.
• A business wants a quote for a bulk gift order before it pays.
• A regular wholesale buyer reorders and pays on terms.
• You sell something custom, such as engraving or a one-off bundle, that isn't a product in your store.

If the shopper can simply buy on your site, let them. Every price you type by hand is one you can get wrong.

Create a draft order step by step

Shopify's guide to creating draft orders covers every field. The short version:

1. In your Shopify admin, go to Orders > Drafts and click Create order.
2. Add products from the picker, which shows available inventory. For something that isn't a product, add a custom item with a name, price and quantity.
3. Search for the customer or create a new one. Add an email or phone number, or Shopify can't send the order confirmation.
4. Click Add shipping or delivery and choose your shipping rates, local delivery, pickup in store, or a custom rate with its own name and cost.
5. Check Estimated tax in the Payment section. Taxes follow your store's tax settings and the shipping address.
6. Add tags and a note so your team can find the order later, for example a tag like corporate-gift-2026.
7. Click Save.

Prefer real products over custom items where you can. Shopify notes that custom items aren't tracked as inventory, don't appear in product sales reports and can't be used with automated fulfillment or shipping apps.

If you sell in more than one market, the draft's currency and pricing come from the market tied to the customer's shipping address. A Market section appears on the draft when a market other than your primary one is active, and you can change the pricing there.

Send the invoice or a checkout link

To let the customer pay on your checkout, open the draft and, in the Payment section, click Send invoice, add a message, review it and send. The email carries a checkout link. To share the link yourself, use Share > Copy link and paste it into a DM or your own email. Shopify's page on sending draft orders lists three options you can set when you send or share:

• Product prices: locked by default, so the customer pays the price you quoted even if your store price changes.
• Discount codes: customers can enter a code at checkout only if you select this option.
• Ignore all checkout rules: lets the customer check out without your checkout validations.

Once the customer pays, the draft becomes an order on your Orders page, marked Paid. One thing to watch: if you add a product after sending the invoice, Shopify says shipping rates don't update automatically, so review shipping before you resend.

Get paid: card, mark as paid or payment terms

If you're not sending an invoice, click Collect payment in the Payment section. Shopify's page on getting paid for draft orders describes two options:

• Credit card: enter the card and billing details and click Charge. This needs Shopify Payments with verification complete.
• Mark as paid: for money you've already received another way, such as a bank transfer. Enter the amount received and click Create order.

To let a trusted buyer pay later, select Payment due later in the Payment section and choose a term: due on receipt, due on fulfillment, net 7, 15, 30, 45, 60 or 90, or a fixed date. Then send the invoice or collect payment as usual.

Two cautions. Don't mark a draft as paid before the money arrives: Shopify warns that the invoice link stops working once you do. And on Shopify Plus you can add a percentage deposit to payment terms, but other plans can't.

For orders on terms, Shopify's deferred payments page explains that an unpaid order past its due date shows as Overdue, and that you can set up to five payment reminders under Settings > Notifications, on the due date or up to 30 days after it. Payment terms can't be used to send an invoice when the draft is in a currency other than your store currency.

Hold stock with reserve inventory

This is the setting most merchants miss. By default, the items in a draft order stay available, so other shoppers can buy them. If they sell out, the draft only shows a warning. During a sale, a quote you sent on Monday can be unfillable by Wednesday.

To hold the stock, open the draft, click the ... menu and choose Reserve inventory, then pick the date and time the reservation ends. Reserved units move to Committed and are kept for that draft. Inventory tracking has to be on for the product. Match the end date to the quote's deadline.

If you add a product with no stock and overselling is off, Shopify still lets you add it, with a warning, but the customer will see an out-of-stock error at checkout unless you add stock and reserve it, or take payment in your admin instead. Our guide to continue selling when out of stock covers that setting.

Discounts on draft orders

Shopify's draft order discounts page lists four ways to lower the price: an existing discount code, your eligible automatic discounts, a custom discount on the whole order, or a custom discount on one line. The limits catch people out:

• Automatic discounts don't apply to drafts on their own. You have to add them.
• Shipping discount codes, including free shipping, aren't supported. Use a custom shipping rate instead.
• Buy X get Y codes aren't supported.
• Up to 5 discount codes can go on one order.
• An invalid or deactivated discount blocks the order until you remove it.

Order and line discounts both reduce the total, so check you haven't discounted the same items twice. A custom unit price is the other route: it replaces the listed price entirely. A discount's reason is visible to the customer, so write it as you'd want them to read it.

A worked example: a corporate gift order

Say you sell candles, and an office manager emails on 10 November asking for 40 gift sets, delivered to their office, paid within 30 days. These numbers are only an example.

1. You create a draft with 40 of your gift set product, add the company contact as the customer and their office as the shipping address.
2. You add a custom order discount of 10%, with the reason "Team order of 40", and pick your standard shipping rate.
3. You reserve the 40 sets until 17 November, the date your quote expires.
4. You choose Payment due later with net 30 and send the invoice, leaving product prices locked.
5. You tag the draft corporate-gift-2026 and check that a due-date payment reminder is set up under Settings > Notifications.

Where Atomato fits

Bulk gift buyers often start as ordinary shoppers adding lots of one item to their cart. Atomato's NotiFeed adds a feed shoppers open from a bell in your header, and a message there can use a Cart items targeting rule, such as greater than or equal to 10, to show only when the cart holds that many items, with a button link to your contact page asking for a team quote. Targeting rules are on every plan, and the free Starter plan includes one active NotiFeed campaign with one message. Atomato doesn't send emails and doesn't show on Shopify checkout, so the quote and invoice still happen in your admin.

Target visitors based onShow this campaign only on specific pages or cart conditions.Turn on

Conditions must match:all conditionsany condition

Page URLContains/products/

Page URLUTMCart valueCart itemsCart productsDeviceExit Intent

Common mistakes and what this won't fix

• Not reserving stock. Drafts don't hold inventory unless you reserve it.
• Marking as paid early. It breaks the invoice link.
• Expecting duplicates to be complete. Duplicating an order or draft copies products, customer, addresses, notes and tags, but not discounts or shipping rates.
• Leaving drafts to pile up. Shopify deletes drafts created on or after 1 April 2025 after one year without activity. Any edit resets the timer.
• Skipping review on big card orders. Our guide to high-risk orders on Shopify covers what to review before you ship.

Draft orders won't give a buyer a wholesale catalog or a login with their own prices. For that, Shopify has separate B2B features. And once a draft becomes an order, changes follow the order editing rules in our guide to editing an order on Shopify.

Draft order checklist

• Customer added with an email or phone number.
• Products used instead of custom items where possible.
• Shipping rate and tax checked against the shipping address.
• Discount type supported on drafts, with no double discount.
• Stock reserved until the quote's deadline.
• Prices locked, and checkout discount codes allowed only on purpose.
• Payment method chosen: invoice, card, mark as paid or payment terms.
• Tag and note added so the team can find it.

Common questions

Do Shopify draft orders reserve inventory?

Not by default. Items stay available to other shoppers until you use Reserve inventory and set an end date and time.

Can a customer use a discount code on a draft order invoice?

Only if you select Discount codes when you send the invoice or share the link.

Do draft orders expire?

Drafts created on or after 1 April 2025 are deleted after one year with no activity. Shopify's pages don't give a separate expiry for the invoice link.

Can I take a deposit on a draft order?

A percentage deposit on payment terms is a Shopify Plus feature. On other plans, use payment terms without a deposit, or take full payment.

Next step

Open Orders > Drafts, delete or finish any old drafts, and write down your rule for holiday quotes: which discount you offer for bulk orders, how long you reserve stock and which payment terms you accept.

Install Atomato free on Shopify