Pre-Orders & Deposits

Buy in advance only lets customers order before the stock arrives. Pre-Orders & Deposits uses it and adds the label, the button text, the ship date on the product, cart, checkout and e-mails, limits, deposits with a balance payment link, reminders, the overdue rule and the reports.

Yes. CS-Cart calculates the order as usual. The add-on only splits the final total into "pay now" and "balance", so taxes and order discounts are part of both payments pro rata, and deposit + balance always equals the order total.

All of them. Gateways get the amount due now (or the balance) instead of the order total. Offline methods leave the order open; you confirm the deposit or the full payment on the order page. A gateway that sends the order's line items to the provider must accept a total that differs from the items (most gateways send only the amount).

No. Deposit and balance are two payments of the same order, so revenue, taxes, invoices, reports and vendor payouts are counted once. This is also why the add-on uses its own payment link instead of a separate "payment request" order.

No. The payment page passes on-site card forms to CS-Cart exactly like the core "repay" function; CS-Cart removes that data according to the order status settings.

Change the date in the Pre-order tab. Open orders follow the new date: the balance request moves with it, as long as it has not been sent yet.

After the due date and the grace period the customer gets an overdue e-mail, or, with "Cancel the order", the order is cancelled and its stock returned by CS-Cart. Deposits are not refunded automatically: refund them in your payment provider and click "Mark the deposit as refunded".

Yes: choose a percent or fixed deposit in the Pre-order tab without ticking "Sell as a pre-order". This suits made-to-order and custom products; you send the balance link when the goods are ready, or after a set number of days.

Each vendor order gets its own deposit and balance. Vendors manage their pre-orders in the vendor panel. The deposit status does not count for vendor payouts, so a vendor order enters the vendor balance once it is paid in full.

Yes. Product pages depend only on the product data; the cart, checkout and payment page are never cached.

Delivery estimates (core or add-ons such as a shipping estimator or delivery date slots) do not know release dates. Our info box shows the ship date; if you use delivery date selection, tell customers that pre-order items ship from the release date, or keep pre-orders in separate orders ("Order separately").

The add-on's tables, settings, language variables, e-mail templates and run marks. Pre-order products get their previous out-of-stock action back. The "Deposit paid" status is removed only if no order uses it. Orders are never changed.

Without a valid license (no key after the 14-day start period, an invalid or revoked key, a domain the license does not cover, or no successful check for 14 days), new checkouts are normal orders paid in full, without pre-order labels, deposits or limits. Orders that already have a deposit keep their payment link, reminders and payment handling. Once the license is valid again, everything is back.

Open Add-ons → Manage add-ons → Pre-Orders & Deposits → Settings → License. The status line says what is wrong: no key, a key for another add-on, a revoked license, or a domain that the license does not cover. Fix it and click Check now. See License.

Yes. Subdomains of your licensed domain (for example staging.yourstore.com) and local development hosts (localhost, private IP addresses, .local, .test) are covered by the same license.

Nothing changes for 14 days: the add-on keeps working and retries every hour. Only if no check succeeds for 14 days is it switched off until the next successful check.

No. The check runs in the admin panel or from cron, once a day. The storefront never runs it.