E-commerce
September 1, 2026
Are you wondering how to secure a sale concluded off-website or manage a complex B2B quote directly from your administration interface? The solution lies in creating draft orders, indispensable tools for turning every interaction into a reliable transaction without going through the classic funnel. These hidden Shopify features are often unfamiliar to new users, yet they are vital for sales teams operating in the field or during physical events.
This mechanism allows you to manually add products, apply negotiated rates, and send a secure payment link that mirrors the usual shopping cart experience. The stakes are crucial: it ensures stock traceability and customer loyalty, even for offline transactions. By mastering this tool, you gain commercial agility while maintaining strict administrative rigor, thus avoiding data loss or data entry errors that could be costly in lost margins.
So how do you create these purchase orders without wasting time or making mistakes? On the agenda:
How to differentiate between a draft order and a classic order?
What elements should be configured to guarantee the validity of an off-site sale?
What is the exact procedure for adding products and customers?
How to adjust rates and taxes when drafting the order?
What are the pitfalls to avoid when duplicating an order?
How does the mobile app facilitate these operations in the field?
How to manage unlisted items such as services or fees?
What strategy should be adopted for B2B customers and their specific conditions?
How to track the progress of a draft to the final order?
What internal tools do we recommend to optimize this workflow?
How does Qstomy transform the management of these offline orders?
What checklist should be validated before sending the final invoice?
Let's dive into a detailed exploration of this underutilized yet powerful feature.
Summary
Why distinguish a purchase order from a standard order?
Terminology and In-depth Definition
In the Shopify interface, the official term used is "draft order", but French-speaking sales teams often prefer the name "purchase order". This specific status designates a transaction that is not yet financially finalized. It is a bridge between verbal negotiation and accounting reality, allowing the terms of a sale to be frozen without immediately triggering financial flows.
Unlike a traditional order, it does not immediately trigger billing and remains editable until payment has been validated. This flexibility is essential for sales where the price or customer may change before the offer is closed. It also avoids transaction fees on projects that might be canceled, thereby offering valuable administrative flexibility.
The fundamental distinction lies in when inventory is deducted: for an order, it is upon validation of final payment, creating a temporary logical reserve. This means you can promise a complex sale without risking selling the same stock twice if the customer is still hesitating. Understanding this nuance is the first step to mastering your Shopify store's virtual warehouse and aligning your field operations with your back-office management.
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What elements make up the structure of a purchase order?
The Detailed Building Blocks
A draft order is built by assembling several interdependent blocks of information. The first and most critical concerns the products or variants associated with the customer's cart. Each line must be rigorously checked to avoid stock conflicts or variant errors, as a mistake here can distort the entire subsequent conversion process.
It is imperative to verify the actual stock availability for each selected variant prior to saving, as the draft does not automatically reserve inventory until payment. Discounts, whether manual or automatic, must also be applied consistently with your current commercial policy. This includes volume discounts, promo codes, and manual adjustments specific to the customer profile.
Furthermore, it is crucial to ensure that all mandatory information, such as the currency or potential tracking identifiers, is correctly entered right from the creation phase. The organization of these blocks determines the clarity of the purchase order sent to the customer. A well-thought-out structure reduces the error rate and improves the professional perception of your brand during offline exchanges, turning a simple list of products into a convincing and secure commercial document.
How do I set up shipping fees and taxes?
Complex Logistics and Tax Management
The shipping block allows for the integration of custom rates, whether they are based on location or set manually for a specific delivery. The customer's shipping address is then required to calculate these costs correctly. You can also choose not to include shipping costs if the sale is a "store pickup" type service or if the business conditions stipulate free delivery.
Similarly, taxes are estimated based on your store's settings and the billing and shipping addresses provided. It is possible to adjust these values if a specific tax rule applies to the concerned zone or to the specific product sold. For example, for digital goods, VAT rates can differ radically from those of physical products, requiring precise configuration.
Particular attention must be paid to tax exemption schemes for B2B or international customers. You often need to manually verify if the customer is a registered reseller exempt from taxes in certain jurisdictions. An incorrect tax estimation can lead to subsequent disputes or difficulties during final accounting, hence the importance of mastering this module before finalizing any provisional order form.
What is the creation procedure in the administration?
The desktop journey step-by-step
To create a new draft, you must navigate to the Orders menu, then select the Drafts tab. There you will find a dedicated "Create an order" button to initiate the entry. This interface is designed to be intuitive but requires knowing the keyboard shortcuts and advanced filters to save time on complex orders.
The process starts on a blank page where you must manually add product lines via search or selection in existing collections, then define the customer information before validating. You can search for a product by name, SKU, barcode, or category. Once the product is added, it is possible to adjust the quantity, the variant option, and above all, the unit price completely freely to adapt to an ongoing negotiation.
Next, the interface prompts you to select an existing customer or create a new one. This is where the customer database makes perfect sense: if you know the customer, your entries are quick and accurate. The final validation of the draft requires a careful check of each field, as this is the document that will then be transformed into an invoice or a final order. Do not overlook this review step to avoid tedious corrections later.
How do I use the mobile app for these sales?
Field operations with mobile
Creating a purchase order is not limited to the office. The Shopify mobile app offers an equivalent experience for teams on the go or at trade shows. This feature is particularly useful for representatives who want to close a sale immediately, without waiting to return to headquarters.
From the interface, go to the Orders section, then to draft orders to start a new entry. This allows immediate transactions to be processed without relying on a fixed workstation. The mobile app also allows barcode scanning, which reduces manual entry errors and significantly speeds up the order creation process.
Real-time synchronization ensures that data entered in the field instantly appears in the web admin. This means your central team sees the new draft order being created live, allowing for immediate follow-up and quick validation if necessary. Additionally, push notifications alert you to key movements, ensuring that no sales fall through the cracks while you are traveling for business.
How do I duplicate a draft or an existing order?
Optimize entry time through duplication
To avoid re-entering all information manually, you can duplicate a previously validated order or a draft opened earlier. This feature is ideal for processing recurring orders or loyal customers whose purchasing habits remain similar to the previous session.
The duplicate intelligently retains updated catalog products, customer addresses, notes, custom attributes, and the sales market. Only subsequent modifications need to be applied by the user to finalize the transaction. For example, if a customer always purchases the same product quantities every quarter, duplicating allows you to correct only the date and the unit price.
However, it is important to check for catalog changes after a duplication. A product may have been modified or deleted since the last order, which could require manual adjustments to the new draft. This post-duplication verification step is crucial to ensure the accuracy of the final order and avoid any unpleasant surprises during processing.
How do you manage non-catalog items such as services?
Custom products and non-catalog fees
It is possible to add items that do not exist in your standard inventory, such as services or additional fees (labor costs, express delivery, etc.). Shopify allows you to create these "virtual products" to bill for intangible services without needing to manage physical stock. This is particularly useful for assembly, installation services, or special shipping fees.
These items must be created with an understanding of the interface's limitations. They allow you to bill for intangible services while maintaining complete traceability in the customer's order history. You can also add explanatory notes to these line items, specifying the exact nature of the service provided or the associated delivery conditions.
Managing these non-catalog items requires careful attention to their name and description to ensure total clarity for both the customer and your accounting team. A best practice is to use standard prefixes, such as "SERVICE:" or "FEE:", to quickly identify these specific lines during order processing. This simplifies financial management and avoids confusion with the regular physical products in your catalog.
What is the strategy for B2B customers and negotiated rates?
Specific B2B Terms of Sale
For B2B profiles, it is crucial to lock negotiated prices on specific lines or on the entire cart. This ensures that the rate agreed upon during the commercial discussion applies correctly to the order, thereby eliminating any risk of automatic readjustment by Shopify's standard pricing rules.
Market configuration also allows for adapting the currency and exchange rates if the sale involves an international customer, thus ensuring accurate invoicing in compliance with the commercial agreements in place. You can manage multiple currencies simultaneously and choose the one that applies to your specific customer when creating the order.
Additionally, negotiated payment terms, such as 30-day payment or deferred bank transfers, must be clearly indicated on the order. This avoids any confusion regarding the expected payment deadline and secures the business relationship. The use of internal notes can also serve to record specific verbal agreements with the customer, ensuring total consistency between the initial sale and the finalized transaction.
Which tags should be used to classify these orders?
Organization and Tag Filtering
Using tags allows you to efficiently filter purchase orders in the saved views of the administration. For example, you can tag an order as "Trade Show 2026" or "Negotiation in Progress". These labels act as bridges between administrative management and marketing or sales strategies.
It is important to respect the character limit imposed by the system for each tag to avoid formatting errors during subsequent data processing or reporting. A rational and consistent use of tags greatly facilitates searching and analyzing sales performance.
Additionally, you can create saved views based on these filters to instantly access purchase orders specific to a customer segment or an ongoing campaign. This dynamic organization allows teams to focus on priorities without wasting time in manual navigation. A good tagging strategy is therefore essential for maintaining order and productivity within your draft order management.
How do I change a draft into an active order?
Finalization and secure payment
Once the order form has been drafted with precision, you have the option to send an invoice by email containing a secure payment link to your shop. This link redirects the customer to a personalized payment page, where they can check the details and make the final payment with complete confidence.
The customer then makes the payment via this link. As soon as the transaction is validated, the status automatically changes from "Draft" to "Paid", and the item is integrated into the normal processing flow for classic orders. Notifications are sent to the concerned parties, confirming the success of the transaction and the start of the logistics process.
It is possible to add a personalized message when sending the invoice to strengthen the customer relationship or reiterate the warranty conditions. This transition phase is critical because it marks the passage from the negotiation state to that of contractual execution. Once paid, the order form can no longer be modified, thus ensuring the integrity of the financial and logistical data for the remainder of the operation.
How does Qstomy transform the management of these offline orders?
Artificial intelligence at the merchant's service
At Qstomy, we support more than 100 merchants in optimizing these types of complex operations. Our AI agent acts as an operational assistant by automatically checking access to private catalogs and guiding customers to the right products even before the order is created.
Unlike a simple static interface, Qstomy helps manage parcel tracking and after-sales service for these specific orders. It ensures that every provisional order, whether it originates from a chat or a phone sale, respects your conversion and loyalty policies. The integration allows real-time data synchronization between the customer conversation and the automatic draft creation.
Additionally, Qstomy analyzes past interactions to suggest complementary products or personalized offers that could increase the average basket value when entering the order. This artificial intelligence does not just automate tasks; it enriches the sales experience by providing strategic insights to sales teams, transforming each temporary interaction into an opportunity for sustainable and measurable growth.
What checklist should be validated before sending the invoice?
Essential Validation Points
Before sending the final invoice to the customer, a quick check is essential to avoid any dispute. Verify that the customer's email is correct and matches their loyalty history. Also ensure that all product lines are accurate, that taxes are correctly calculated, and that shipping costs correspond to the order requirements.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is stock deducted upon creation? No, the stock is only verified but is not released until final payment. Can the draft be modified after the invoice has been sent? Yes, as long as the customer has not paid, you can update the details or cancel the sending for correction.
To go further: Complete guide to managing inventory in the Shopify admin - Qstomy, B2B e-commerce customer support: quotes, accounts, negotiated prices and recurring orders - Qstomy, Inventory management in the Shopify admin: complete guide - Qstomy, How to create Q&A paths to guide a customer to the right product - Qstomy, Creating a purchase order in the Shopify admin: complete guide - Qstomy, AI Chatbot for private catalog: verify access and guide to the right products - Qstomy, AI Chatbot vs live chat: which one to choose for an e-commerce store? - Qstomy.
Enzo
September 1, 2026
