What Is a Presale Offer?
A presale offer lets buyers place orders and pay for your product before you have it in stock. When the presale toggle is on, buyers can add your offer to cart and complete checkout even when your stock quantity shows zero. Their order is flagged as a presale — stock is not decremented and the item is not dispatched immediately.
This is ideal for situations where you have confirmed incoming stock — a shipment on the way, a container cleared at port, or a manufacturing order you are confident will arrive — and you want to start taking orders in advance rather than waiting until the stock arrives to create the offer.
When to Use Presale
- Incoming shipment: You have paid for a consignment and it is en route. You know it will arrive within 2–4 weeks and want to take pre-orders now.
- Manufacture-on-demand: Solar systems or solar pumps assembled to order. You accept orders, then assemble and deliver.
- Seasonal restocking: You run out of a popular item but your regular restock is predictable. Keep the offer live with presale so you don't lose your ranking on the product page.
- Pre-order campaigns: You are introducing a new product and want to gauge demand before your stock arrives.
An offer with stock = 0 and presale OFF disappears from availability filters — buyers cannot order. An offer with stock = 0 and presale ON remains orderable. Make sure your stock is genuinely incoming before enabling presale; accepting orders you cannot fulfil will damage your seller rating.
Enabling Presale
In the Financing section of the offer form, tick "Enable Presale". That is the only required step. There are no extra fields — no expected delivery date field and no deposit amount field on the presale toggle itself.
To communicate the expected delivery date to buyers, use the Warranty Note field (in Core Details) to add a clear ETA note.
"Stock arriving approx. 20 July 2026. Orders placed now will be dispatched within 2 days of arrival. 12-month manufacturer warranty on the product."
How Presale Works at Checkout
Buyers see your offer on the product page like any other listing. When they add it to cart and checkout, the order completes normally — payment is collected. The order line is internally flagged as a presale order.
Unlike regular orders, presale orders do not decrement your stock counter. Your listed stock quantity stays at zero (or whatever you have set) until you update it manually when your goods arrive.
When your stock arrives:
- Edit the offer and update the Stock field to your actual quantity
- Untick the Presale toggle if you no longer want to accept pre-orders (or leave it on to keep accepting them)
- Fulfil the presale orders that are waiting
Presale and Other Financing Options
Presale can be combined with any financing option (HP, FI, RBF). A buyer can take a presale order on an HP instalment plan, for example. The financing terms apply to the order as normal.
PayGo — A Related but Different Model
If you sell solar home systems on a pay-as-you-go token model (where the buyer pays a deposit and then makes recurring payments to unlock usage), use the PayGo fields in the Financing section rather than presale. PayGo is designed for ongoing payment collection after delivery, not for pre-delivery ordering:
- Initial Amount — the upfront deposit or activation fee collected at sale
- Periodic Amount — the recurring payment amount
- Periodicity — daily, weekly, or monthly
- Term (units) — number of periods in the collection schedule
- PayGo Note — a short explanation shown on the buyer's quotation document
PayGo and presale are independent and can be used together if your model involves both a pre-order phase and post-delivery token collection.
Frequently Asked Questions
Update the Warranty Note on your offer as soon as you know there will be a delay, so existing and potential buyers are informed. Contact waiting buyers directly through the SolarMarket orders system to communicate the new ETA. Persistent fulfilment failures on presale orders affect your seller rating.
Not automatically. The presale toggle is on or off. If you want to limit pre-orders, monitor your order count and manually untick the presale toggle when you have reached your target, then set stock to 0 to take the offer offline until goods arrive.
Check that your offer is also approved (moderation_status = approved) and your offer status is set to Active. All three conditions — presale enabled, status active, and admin approved — must be true for the offer to appear as orderable. An approved presale offer with status Inactive will not show.
Presale offers remain visible on product pages, but buyers may see them slightly differently from in-stock offers. Keeping a high response rate and fulfilling presale orders promptly is the best way to maintain ranking performance.
