Backordr Help Center

Getting started

What Backordr does (and does not) do

Shopify’s “Continue selling when out of stock” setting lets customers order products without available stock. Backordr adds tracking, expected dates, notifications, and fulfillment holds for those orders:

• Detects backordered line items automatically on every new order.
• Holds them using Shopify's native fulfillment holds, to keep affected items out of normal fulfillment until released. Check that your fulfillment service respects those holds.
• Tells the customer — an expected restock date on the product page and by email.
• Allocates returning stock in FIFO order on Growth and Pro, with optional automatic hold release on Pro.

Backordr works alongside Shopify orders, inventory, and your fulfillment service. Configure its theme blocks to display expected dates. Your warehouse or fulfillment service remains responsible for shipping.

Installing Backordr

1. Open the Backordr listing on the Shopify App Store (or search for Backordr — Backorder Manager), click Add app and approve the requested scopes (products, inventory, orders, themes, and merchant-managed fulfillment orders — used for detection, holds, tagging, and checking that the storefront block is in place).
2. Pick a plan on the Shopify-hosted pricing page. There is a permanent Free plan, and every paid plan starts with a 14-day free trial.
3. You land on the dashboard. Detection is on by default — from this moment, any new order containing an out-of-stock "continue selling" item is tracked automatically.

The setup guide

The dashboard shows a four-step guide until everything is wired up. The steps make what Backordr finds visible to you and your customers:

1. Show restock dates on your product pages — add the "Backorder Status" app block in the theme editor (see the storefront badge).
2. Add your first expected restock date — so customers see a date instead of just "delayed" (see restock dates).
3. Choose who backorder emails come from — a sender name and reply-to address (see customer emails).
4. Review your first backorder — it appears in the queue automatically when a customer orders an out-of-stock item.

The guide re-opens a step if you undo the thing it tracks, and you can dismiss it at any time.

How backorder detection works

When a new order arrives, Backordr checks every line item. An item is recorded as a backorder when both are true:

• The variant is set to "Continue selling when out of stock" in Shopify, and
• its total available stock is below zero across your tracked locations (all locations unless you've narrowed the set). An order that lands stock at exactly zero is still fulfillable, so it is not flagged.

For each backordered item Backordr:

• creates a record in the backorder queue,
• places a fulfillment hold (reason: inventory out of stock) for your fulfillment workflow (available on every plan),
• tags the order backorder (or partial-backorder when only part of the cart is affected), so you can filter the native Shopify order list,
• sends the customer a backorder confirmation email (if enabled), and
• attaches the known restock date, if you've set one for that variant.

Detection can be turned off entirely in Settings → General → "Automatically detect backorder items on new orders". Existing records stay; new orders are simply no longer scanned.

The dashboard

The dashboard is the day-to-day overview:

• Metric cards — pending backorders (with a this-week trend), units at risk, average wait time, and fill rate. Click a card to jump to the filtered queue.
• Overdue banner — appears when items are past their expected restock date, linking to the overdue list.
• Items awaiting restock — the top products your customers are waiting on: quantity backordered, expected restock date, and how many orders wait on each.
• Recent activity — a feed of everything Backordr did (backorders created, stock allocated, emails sent, failures that need attention). Dismiss entries one by one or mark all read.

The backorder queue

The queue lists every backorder ever recorded — one row per order line item, with the order, customer, product, quantity, dates, and status.

Statuses

Search, filters, and sorting

• Search by order number, customer name or email, product title, or SKU.
• Status tabs — All / Pending / Allocated / Fulfilling / Fulfilled / Cancelled, each with a live count.
• Sort by newest or oldest first, restock date (soonest or latest), largest quantity, or FIFO priority.
• Long lists are paginated 20 rows per page.

Bulk actions

Select rows with the checkboxes and the bulk action bar appears above the table:

• Allocate stock — try to allocate available inventory to the selected backorders (grouped per variant, oldest order first).
• Send notification — email the selected customers their current expected restock date (only rows that have a date are sent).
• Cancel backorders — cancels the selected records after a confirmation, releasing their fulfillment holds.

CSV export

Export CSV in the page header downloads the queue as a spreadsheet — respecting your current search and status filter, with no row cap. Columns include order, customer, product, SKU, quantity, status, and all lifecycle dates.

The backorder detail page

Click any order number to open the full record:

• Order & product — customer contact, order date, payment/fulfillment status pulled live from Shopify, and a link to the product.
• Restock date — the expected date for this item, editable in place; optionally notify the customer about the change as you save.
• Timeline — everything that happened: ordered, backordered, date changes, emails sent, allocation, hold release, shipment, cancellation.
• Actions — Allocate stock (Pending), Release & fulfill (Allocated), Send notification, Update restock date, and Cancel backorder.

Restock dates

A restock date is the promise customers see — on the product page badge, in emails, and in the queue. Dates are set per variant.

Adding and editing dates

1. Open Restock dates and click Add restock date.
2. Pick the product (and variant) in the product picker.
3. Choose the expected date and an optional internal note, then save.

The list shows every variant with a date, its SKU, source, how many backorders wait on it, and an Overdue badge when the date has passed. Edit or remove a date with the row actions. Removing a date also clears the storefront badge for that variant.

Every saved date is also written to a variant metafield (expected_restock_date in Backordr's app namespace), which is what the theme block reads — the storefront updates without any API calls or theme edits.

CSV import

To set many dates at once, use Restock dates → Import CSV. The file needs a header row and these columns:

variant_id,sku,expected_date,notes
gid://shopify/ProductVariant/123,SKU-001,2026-05-15,From supplier PO #4567
,SKU-002,2026-06-01,Manual estimate

• variant_id or sku — one of the two is required per row (SKUs are looked up in your catalog).
• expected_date — required, in YYYY-MM-DD format.
• notes — optional.

Drop the file on the upload zone, check the 10-row preview, and click Import. You get a per-row error report (e.g. "SKU not found"), and the import history is kept on the same page. A template file is available via Download template.

Where dates can come from

• Manual — set in Backordr (default).
• CSV — from an import.
• PO app metafield — if you use a purchase-order app that writes an expected_restock_date variant metafield, point Backordr at its namespace in Settings → Restock dates and incoming-PO dates flow through automatically. With Replenio, switch on its Expected arrival dates setting and enter replenio as the namespace here: the date on your purchase order then becomes the date your customer sees, and it keeps itself current as the order is sent, received or cancelled.

The storefront badge (theme app block)

The Backorder Status theme app block shows shoppers, right on the product page, that an item is on backorder and when it's expected back — before they buy. That transparency is what turns "out of stock, lost sale" into "backorder, kept sale".

1. Open Settings → Theme setup → Open theme editor (or the same step in the setup guide).
2. In the theme editor, add the Backorder Status block to your product template (Apps section).
3. Save the theme. Done — no code edits.

The block reads the saved restock-date metafield in your theme. For variants without a date it can show a general availability message; for in-stock variants the backorder message is hidden. Check the result in your published theme after changing the block settings.

Customer emails

Backordr sends transactional emails so customers aren't left guessing:

Configure the sender name and reply-to address in Settings → Notifications — replies from customers go straight to your inbox. Every send (or failure) is recorded in the activity feed and on the backorder's timeline.

Mixed carts: ship now or hold everything

When a cart mixes in-stock and backordered items, merchants disagree about the right behavior — so it's a setting (Settings → General → Mixed-cart handling, available on every plan):

• Split fulfillment (every plan) — available items remain ready for fulfillment while backordered items stay on hold. Your normal fulfillment workflow handles shipping.
• Hold all — the entire order waits until everything is in stock (one shipment, lower shipping cost).
• Manual — Backordr only records and tags; you manage holds yourself.

When stock arrives: FIFO allocation

Backordr watches inventory levels. When a backordered variant is restocked:

1. Incoming units are allocated first-come-first-served by default on Growth and Pro. Pro also supports priority controls that can change the order.
2. Allocated backorders show up as Allocated in the queue. Release them with Release & fulfill — or let auto-fulfill on restock (Pro) release the holds automatically, making the items available to your fulfillment workflow. Releasing a hold does not itself ship a parcel.
3. If the restock doesn't cover everyone, the remainder stays Pending and is first in line for the next delivery.

You can also allocate manually at any time — per record on the detail page, or in bulk from the queue.

Analytics

On Growth and Pro, the Analytics page (7 / 30 / 90-day ranges) shows:

• Backorder volume over time,
• Revenue impact — units recovered (fulfilled backorders) vs units lost (cancelled),
• Average wait time from order to fulfillment,
• Top backordered products with per-product fill rates — your case for bigger reorders of the right SKUs.

Google Merchant Center feed

On Growth and Pro, Backordr publishes a supplemental feed that marks backordered variants as availability: backorder with the expected restock date as availability_date — so Google keeps your Shopping ads and free listings running for items that are only temporarily out of stock.

1. Open Settings → Integrations and copy the feed URL.
2. In Google Merchant Center: Settings → Data sources → Supplemental sources, add a source with Scheduled fetch, and paste the URL.

The URL contains a secret token — treat it like a password. Variants without a restock date are listed without availability_date.

Shopify Flow triggers

On the Pro plan, Backordr provides four Shopify Flow triggers so you can build your own automations (Slack alerts, staff tasks, customer tags, etc.):

• Backorder created — fires when a new backorder is detected, with the order, product, and quantity.
• Restock date updated — fires when a variant's expected restock date is set or changed.
• Backorder overdue — fires when a backorder passes its expected restock date without being fulfilled.
• Backorder fulfilled — fires when a backordered item is released and fulfilled.

Settings reference

Your current plan and the upgrade/downgrade cards live on their own Plan & billing page, linked from the app navigation.

Plans & billing

Backordr uses Shopify Managed Pricing — subscribing, upgrading, and downgrading all happen on Shopify's own billing page, on your Shopify invoice. There is a permanent Free plan; every paid plan includes a 14-day free trial.

Manage plan changes through Shopify’s billing page. Backorder detection is unlimited on every plan. Customer emails have separate monthly allowances: 30 on Free, 2,500 on Growth, and 25,000 on Pro. Check the activity log and usage display when notifications are not sent. Changing plans does not delete your backorder records.

Privacy & data

Backordr stores what it needs to manage backorders: order references, the affected line items, customer name and email (for the notification emails you send), restock dates, and an activity log. It honors the mandatory GDPR webhooks (customers/data_request, customers/redact, shop/redact) and hard-deletes your shop's data on uninstall. Full policy: Backordr privacy policy.

Troubleshooting & FAQ

An out-of-stock order didn't show up in the queue

• Check the variant's inventory setting — it must be "Continue selling when out of stock". Items that simply can't be bought never become backorders.
• Check Settings → General — automatic detection must be on.
• Check available stock at order time: if the variant still had units available somewhere, it wasn't backordered.
• Detection has no monthly quota. If only an email is missing, check notification settings and your plan’s email allowance in the activity log.

The storefront badge doesn't appear

• Confirm the Backorder Status block is added to the product template in the theme editor and the theme was saved.
• The badge only renders for variants that are out of stock with "continue selling" enabled.
• If you expect a date in the badge, make sure that variant has a restock date in Backordr.

Emails aren't reaching customers

• Set a sender name and reply-to in Settings → Notifications.
• Restock-update and shipped emails need Growth or Pro; on Free only the confirmation email is sent.
• Each send attempt is logged in the activity feed — a failed send shows up there with the reason.

Something shipped before the restock date

Backordr's hold is placed on the fulfillment order. If a staff member manually releases the hold in Shopify admin, or a fulfillment app is configured to override holds, Shopify will let it ship. The backorder's timeline shows when and how the hold was released.

What happens if I uninstall?

Backordr releases its fulfillment holds on a best-effort basis (Shopify may revoke the app's access before the release goes through — if a hold lingers, release it from the order page in Shopify admin), order tags remain (they're part of your order data), and Backordr's own records are deleted per our privacy policy. The theme app block deactivates automatically — Shopify removes app blocks when the app is gone, so your theme is never left broken.

Getting help

• In the app, every page footer has "Need help? Read the documentation or contact support." — the contact form reaches us directly, and we usually reply within one business day.
• Prefer email? Write to support@veltriolabs.com.