How to take deposits on Shopify, step by step

In short: to take deposits on Shopify, install a deposit app, create a deposit plan as a percentage or fixed amount, attach it to your products and add the app's deposit block to your product page. Shopify's checkout takes the deposit and saves the card, and the app collects the balance later.

How deposits work in Shopify

Shopify supports deferred purchase options: a product can be sold with a deposit charged at checkout and the rest recorded as payment terms on the order. On Shopify Payments or PayPal Express the customer's card is saved against the order so the balance can be charged later. Shopify provides the checkout, the saved card and the payment terms, but it does not add a deposit option to your products itself: on every plan, Plus included, an app creates the purchase option, shows it on the product page and collects the balance afterwards.

Step by step

1. Check payment capture. Check Settings, Payments in your Shopify admin: payment capture must be automatic at checkout or manual. Per-fulfilment capture does not work with deferred purchase options.
2. Install a deposit app. Install a deposit app such as Balance Due and connect it; it reads your store currency and time zone.
3. Create a deposit plan. Create a deposit plan: choose a percentage or fixed deposit and when the balance is due (days after the order, an exact date, when you mark the order ready, or instalments on Shopify Plus).
4. Attach it to products. Attach the plan to products, a collection or a tag. Only those products get the deposit option.
5. Add the deposit choice to your product page. In Online Store, Themes, Customize, open the product template and add the Balance Due deposit block under the buy buttons. Most themes do not show deferred purchase options on their own, so without the block customers never see the choice.
6. Write your deposit terms. Write the deposit terms into the product description and your policies page: amount, when the balance is taken, refund position.
7. Place a test order. Place a test order with Shopify's Bogus Gateway on a development store, or a real low-value order, and watch the schedule email, the hold and the balance charge.
8. Hold fulfilment until paid. Turn on the fulfilment hold so nothing ships before the balance clears, and decide who gets the morning digest.

Settings that trip stores up

• Per-fulfilment payment capture: switch to automatic or manual.
• A product page with no deposit choice: most themes, including Shopify's newer ones, do not display deferred purchase options, so add the app's deposit block to the product template.
• Payment providers without saved-card support: deposits still work, but the balance is collected by pay link rather than automatically.
• Expecting deposits on POS or draft orders: deferred purchase options are an online checkout feature.
• Expecting express checkout buttons: deposit orders go through Shopify's standard checkout, so Shop Pay, Apple Pay and Google Pay express buttons do not handle them.

Policy wording that protects you

Say what the deposit is, whether it is refundable and from what point, when and how the balance is taken (from the same card, on a date or when the order is ready), and what happens if the balance cannot be taken (the order is held, and after the retries it is treated as cancelled or referred). Keep it to a paragraph and repeat it on the payment messages; Balance Due does this automatically with the policy text in its settings.

Collecting the balance

The balance is the part most stores underestimate. It has to be charged on the right day, retried when a card declines, chased when it fails, reconciled when the order is edited, and released for shipping when it clears. Doing that by hand on twenty open orders is a part-time job; this is what the app is for. See automatic balance collection for exactly what Balance Due does at each step, and when a balance payment fails for what happens after a decline.