How To Manage Pre-orders Efficiently

Pre-orders are orders that are taken for products or services that are not yet available. Many wholesale businesses operate a pre-order system, as they release seasonal or yearly collections. Pre-orders allow businesses to plan production effectively.

When providing information to your customers about a pre-order, you need to provide the basic information they need to make a decision. So, obviously they need to get a really good understanding of your products. Depending on your business this may simply mean high quality product images, or it may involve a visit from your sales rep with full working samples. The pricing should be clear, and they will need to know the deadline for ordering, expected delivery date and payment terms.

With Orderspace, handling pre-orders is very easy and all of the above is taken care for you. You simply set up a category in the usual way and then check the 'pre-order collection' tick-box to designate it as a pre-order category. You then enter the ordering deadline for the pre-order, and you have the option to enter a due date. You can set up as many pre-order categories as you need.

The customer view will show this clearly marked as a pre-order category, and your stockists can order from you in the usual way.

At any time you can run a report showing the list of pre-ordered items, this can also be exported to csv format. When the stock eventually arrives you will be able to quickly fulfil all the waiting orders.

Further Reading:
How to manage backorders
Delivering excellence to your wholesale customers
Why your retail website won't work for your wholesale customers