Backordr Help Center

Getting started

What Backordr does (and does not) do

Shopify lets a product keep selling after it hits zero stock (the "Continue selling when out of stock" setting), but it has no concept of a backorder: nothing tracks which orders are waiting, customers get no date, and fulfillment apps happily try to ship items you don't have. Backordr fills that gap:

• Detects backordered line items automatically on every new order.
• Holds them using Shopify's native fulfillment holds, so no warehouse or 3PL ships them early.
• Tells the customer — an expected restock date on the product page and by email.
• Releases holds first-come-first-served when inventory arrives.

Backordr works with Shopify's native orders, inventory, and fulfillment — it does not replace your fulfillment app, create orders, or touch your theme code. It never changes prices or checkout behavior.

Installing Backordr

1. Install from the Shopify App Store and approve the requested scopes (products, inventory, orders, and merchant-managed fulfillment orders — used for detection, holds, and tagging).
2. Pick a plan on the Shopify-hosted pricing page. Every 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 zero or below across all locations.

For each backordered item Backordr:

• creates a record in the backorder queue,
• places a fulfillment hold (reason: inventory out of stock) so fulfillment services don't ship it,
• 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, up to 5,000 rows. 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 (for example Replenio), point Backordr at its namespace in Settings → Restock dates and incoming-PO dates flow through automatically.

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 restock-date metafield directly from the theme, so it renders with zero impact on page speed and always shows the latest date you've set. For variants without a date it shows a neutral "ships as soon as it's back" message; for in-stock variants it renders nothing.

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):

• Split fulfillment (Growth and Pro) — the fulfillment order is split: in-stock items ship immediately, backordered items stay on hold. Customers get what's available right away.
• 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 — the oldest pending backorder gets stock first (Growth and Pro). No customer gets skipped because a newer order was easier to see.
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, so restocked orders ship with zero clicks.
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 the Pro plan, 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 two 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.
• Backorder fulfilled — fires when a backordered item is released and fulfilled.

Settings reference

Plans & billing

Backordr uses Shopify Managed Pricing — subscribing, upgrading, and downgrading all happen on Shopify's own billing page, on your Shopify invoice. Every plan includes a 14-day free trial.

Changing plans takes effect immediately; Shopify prorates the charge. Downgrading below a limit never deletes data — Backordr just stops tracking new backorders beyond the plan's limit and tells you in the activity feed.

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.
• On Starter, check the activity feed for a plan limit reached entry — Starter tracks up to 50 backordered SKUs.

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 Starter 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?

Fulfillment holds placed by Backordr are released, 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.