Creating an Order on Behalf of a Customer on Shopify

Shopify lets you create orders for your customers and send them invoices from the Shopify admin so that they can complete the purchase.

These orders are named Draft Orders and are useful when you accept orders offline (by phone/in-person), want to recreate mistaken orders, give special discounts, or take pre-orders.

Draft orders are similar to the orders that customers create for themselves. When the payment is accepted a draft order is converted into a regular order.

How to Create a Draft Order

1. From your Shopify admin, go to Orders> Create order
2. Add products to the order
3. Customize the order - add a customer, apply discounts, turn taxes on/off, add tags/notes
4. Choose one of the following - email an invoice to the customer (it contains a link to checkout by default), accept payment, or save the order as a draft.

Keep in mind that you should only sell products which are available in stock. Selling out of stock items can lead to unhappy customers who might never be seen again. One way of solving this issue is to use a good inventory management app such as Out-Of-Stock Police by Egnition or Push Down & Hide Out of Stock by Merchbees.