Getting paid for draft orders
When a draft order is ready to be paid by a customer, you can send an invoice or checkout link so that your customer can input their own payment information and pay for the order from the online checkout.
Otherwise, if you have your customer's billing information, then you can manually accept payment for draft orders by credit card. You can also mark an order as paid when you've already received payment. When you accept payment for a draft order, it becomes an order on the Orders page.
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Considerations for getting paid for draft orders
Before you accept payments for your draft orders, review the following considerations:
- You can accept manual payment by credit cards only through Shopify Payments.
- You must complete Shopify Payments' verification process to accept credit card payments for draft orders.
- If you receive payments through direct payment providers other than Shopify Payments, then check with your provider whether handling customer information in this way affects PCI compliance requirements.
- If details about your draft order are outdated from what's now available in the Shopify admin, for example if a product price or shipping rate changed, then you must resolve the issues and apply changes before payment can be captured.
- Any payment method customizations that you've activated in your checkout apply to draft order checkouts by default. Created draft orders won't display payment method customizations in your Shopify admin, but the customizations still apply at checkout.
- To optimize performance, draft orders created on or after April 1, 2025, are automatically deleted after 1 year of inactivity. Any type of edit to the draft order resets the timer.
Transaction fees for draft orders
You aren't charged third-party transaction fees for draft orders in the following scenarios:
- When you process the payment through Shopify Payments. You pay only the credit card processing fees when processing credit card purchases manually in your Shopify admin.
- When you mark the order as paid and select a manual payment method, such as cash on delivery or bank deposit.
When you use a supported third-party direct credit card payment provider to accept payments, then you pay the same third-party transaction fees when processing credit card purchases that you pay for online orders.
Marking payment as paid on a draft order
If you've already received payment for the current order, or if you import a past order from another platform into your Shopify admin, then you can mark the order as paid. The received amount isn't captured again by your payment provider, and the customer receives an order confirmation email.
If you use international sales tools, then the value for Amount received is the value in the customer’s local currency converted to your store’s currency. The conversion is based on the live currency rate. For reporting purposes, if the amount you received is different than the amount displayed, then update it.
Steps:
From your Shopify admin, go to Orders > Drafts.
Click the existing draft order that you want to mark as paid.
In the Payment section, click Collect payment, and then click Mark as paid.
Optional: If the Amount received value is different than the amount that you received, then update the value.
Click Create order.
Optional: If any checkout validation rules haven't been met on the order, then a warning displays listing the rules to satisfy. Do any of the following actions:
- To cancel the payment and return to modify the draft order, click Cancel.
- To ignore the rule and mark the order as paid, click Ignore and create order.
After you create your order, you can access it from the Orders page.
Accepting payment by credit card manually for a draft order
If you have the billing information of your customer, then you can accept payment for the order by credit card. This payment method is available only with Shopify Payments.
Steps:
From your Shopify admin, go to Orders > Drafts.
Click the existing draft order that you want to accept a credit card payment for.
In the Payment section, click Collect payment, and then click Credit card.
Enter the customer's billing and credit card information.
Click Charge to confirm your payment settings and create an order from your draft order. The button displays the order total.
Optional: If any checkout validation rules haven't been met on the order, then a warning displays listing the rules to satisfy. Do any of the following actions:
- To cancel the payment and return to modify the draft order, click Cancel.
- To ignore the rule and mark the order as paid, click Ignore and create order.
Resolving issues with outdated draft orders
When you create a draft order, elements added to it (such as products and shipping rates) all display based on their configurations at the time they were added to the draft order. If an element of the draft order has changed by the time you attempt to complete it, for example if a product was deleted or a shipping rate price changed, then you're notified about the changes. You can make manual changes to the draft order, or accept the updates and complete the order automatically.
You're notified of the following types of changes:
- A product or variant was deleted.
- A product or variant's price was changed. This doesn't apply to products affected by a price lock.
- A shipping rate is no longer available.
- A shipping rate's price was changed.
When you receive a New updates to this draft order notification, you can take any of the following actions:
- Review draft order: Return to the draft order editor with all updates applied to the order, but not saved. You can manually make changes to products, or apply custom discounts or shipping rates.
- Create order: Continue completing the order with the updates automatically applied to the order.