---
title: How to take wholesale pre-orders for a seasonal product
Metadescription: Open the ordering window, put the product on sale for its season, and set the cutoff where production commits - taking wholesale pre-orders months ahead.
author: Dan Edwards
author_role: Founder
author_url: https://danedwardsdeveloper.com
author_linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dan-edwards-developer
published: 2026-08-26
---

Token estimate: ~1,100

# How to take wholesale pre-orders for a seasonal product

A pre-order is an ordinary order with a delivery date months out rather than days. Nothing special has to be built for it, but three settings decide whether your customers can place one at all - the maximum lead time on their order profile, the dates the product is available, and where you put the cutoff. Get those wrong and the date simply shows as closed, with no indication that a setting is the reason.

By **[Dan Edwards](https://wholesalehandler.com/about)**, Founder.

## Open the ordering window before you advertise it

This is the setting that silently blocks pre-orders. An [order profile](https://wholesalehandler.com/articles/how-order-profiles-work-on-wholesale-handler) can cap how far ahead a customer may order - a maximum lead time that suits weekly trade, often a fortnight or a month. A customer on that profile cannot pick a date beyond it, so a turkey pre-order in September is impossible against a 14-day cap and the customer sees a closed date rather than an explanation.

Raise or clear the cap on every profile whose customers you want pre-ordering, and do it before the email goes out. Otherwise the first thing your announcement produces is a phone call saying the date will not click.

## Put the product on sale for its season only

Seasonal availability works in the negative. Rather than opening a product for a range of dates, you mark it unavailable for the ranges it should not be sold in, with a reason and a note your customers see.

That inversion matters for a pre-order, because the product has to be **orderable now** and **deliverable later**. A Christmas ham on sale from September with an unavailability window covering January onwards is orderable today for a December date, and closes itself afterwards without you remembering to withdraw it.

Leave the end date open when you do not know it. An open-ended window runs until further notice, which is the right state for weather and for a crop whose finish date is a guess.

## Put the cutoff where production commits

For weekly trade the cutoff protects the delivery. For a pre-order it protects the commitment you have to make in advance - the birds ordered, the trees netted, the chocolate tempered. That date is usually weeks before delivery and has nothing to do with the delivery day itself.

Set it where your own money goes out. After it passes, the [production schedule](https://wholesalehandler.com/articles/how-production-schedules-work-on-wholesale-handler) shows a green lock against the date, which is your signal that the totals are final and safe to buy against. An amber lock means orders can still move.

## A pre-order is a commitment, not a payment

Wholesale Handler records what each customer has committed to. It does not take a deposit, hold a card or track a prepayment, so the money arrives on the invoice after delivery like any other order.

For trade customers that is usually the right shape - they are accounts you know, not the public. If your risk is a customer walking away from fifty trees in December, the lever is who you let pre-order, not a deposit the system cannot collect.

## Q&A

**Q: How do I stop pre-orders once I have sold out?**
A: Turn on stock tracking for that product and set the quantity to what you are making. Two customers ordering at once cannot oversell it. Products left untracked have no limit at all, which is the right default for anything you make to order.

**Q: Can a customer change a pre-order placed three months earlier?**
A: Until the cutoff for its delivery date, subject to your order lock window. A pre-order placed in September for December stays updateable through autumn unless you lock it sooner, which is worth deciding before you open ordering rather than after somebody halves their order in November.

**Q: Should the pre-order product sit on its own price list?**
A: It does not need to. A product carries a price on every list, so a seasonal line can be priced per tier like anything else. A separate list is only worth it when the seasonal pricing follows a different logic from your normal tiers.