A pre-order is a sale you haven't fulfilled. A waitlist is a customer you haven't lost. When a product sells out, the customer looking at it decides in seconds: wait, or leave. A waitlist gives them a reason to wait. The reserve button on your product page becomes "Join Waitlist", they leave their name, and when stock lands they're told automatically and the item is held for them.
No money is taken online. No Shopify order is created. The customer pays when they collect, at your counter, where the second purchase happens.
Waitlists are part of the Automation plan. This guide covers what a waitlist is, how it differs from a pre-order, and the exact setup steps.
How a waitlist works in Reservo
There is no separate waitlist product or signup form. The waitlist is what your existing reserve button becomes when stock runs out:
- A customer visits a sold-out product. Because you've allowed out-of-stock reservations on it, the reserve button shows Join Waitlist instead of disappearing.
- They join in one step. No payment, no checkout. Their reservation shows awaiting stock in their account and in their emails.
- Stock arrives. Reservo allocates it to the queue on a first-come, first-served basis.
- Each customer whose stock has landed gets a built-in email: their items are ready for collection. You write nothing and chase nobody.
- Their hold clock starts only now. Nobody's reservation expires while they're still waiting for stock to exist.
- They collect and pay in store. That's when the sale, and the Shopify order, happens.
A waitlist is not a pre-order
Merchants often ask for "pre-orders" when what they need is a waitlist, and sometimes the reverse. They solve different problems.
A Shopify pre-order is a real checkout against stock that hasn't arrived. The customer pays in full, pays a deposit, or is charged on fulfilment, and a Shopify order is created. You'll need a pre-order app to set up the selling plans, and your store must use Shopify Payments or PayPal Express. It's the right tool when the restock date is confirmed, the product ships rather than gets collected, and you want the cash or the committed demand upfront.
A waitlist takes a name, not a payment. That changes the economics:
- Zero friction. The customer who would never pre-pay still leaves their name.
- Zero liability. No money held against stock that might slip. Nothing to refund, no chargebacks.
- No overselling. A queue is not a sale. Ten people can wait for three units and nobody is owed anything.
- Footfall. Collection happens in store.
The honest trade-off: no money down means some customers won't come back, a pre-order book funds your purchase order while a waitlist funds nothing until collection, and a waitlist is collect-in-store rather than shipped. If your restock date is confirmed and the product ships, run pre-orders. If dates are uncertain, items are collected in person anyway, and you have no appetite for refund admin, run the waitlist. They're not exclusive: a launch can take pre-orders while the long tail of sold-out variants runs the waitlist.
There's also a middle path. Reservo supports reserving out-of-stock items as ordinary reservations too, and in store your staff can take a deposit on one through POS. That's a layaway-style pre-order without the online checkout machinery: commitment when you want it, person to person.
Setting up waitlists
You'll need the Automation plan, and online reservations already working on your storefront (the app embed and the Reserve Online button block). If you haven't set those up yet, start with the main setup guide and come back; it covers locations, products, and theme installation.
Step 1: Check the product and its variants are enabled for online reservations
The reserve button follows the variant. A product can be enabled while one of its variants isn't, and on that variant the button won't show. If your button appears in the theme editor but disappears on the live page, this is almost always why.
- In Reservo, go to Settings and open the ROPIS tab.
- Open the product and confirm ROPIS is enabled for every variant you sell. The product screen can enable all variants in one action.
Step 2: Allow reservations when out of stock
This is the switch that creates the waitlist. It's set per variant, per location, so you stay in control of exactly which products queue and where.
- For a product with one variant: on the product's ROPIS settings screen, find Allow reservations when out of stock and choose Yes for the locations that should accept them.
- For a product with multiple variants: open each variant you want to queue and set Allow reservations when out of stock there, per location.
From this point the behaviour is automatic. While the variant has stock somewhere, customers reserve normally. When every reservable location hits zero, the button becomes Join Waitlist on its own. When stock comes back, it switches back. There is no separate waitlist toggle to remember.
Step 3: Decide how returning stock is shared out
In Settings, on the General tab, find Auto-allocate received stock. It's on by default, and for most shops that's the right answer: new stock goes to the oldest waiting reservations first, automatically, and each customer gets their ready-to-collect email as their items are allocated.
Switch it off only if you want to hand out incoming stock yourself, for example on a limited release where you decide who gets what. Received stock then stays unallocated until you assign it from the reservation in the app admin, in whatever order you choose.
What your customer sees
- On the sold-out product page: the Join Waitlist button (you can rename it in the theme editor's block settings).
- Before they confirm, a plain-English note: items on a waitlist aren't yet available to reserve, and stock is allocated first come, first served when it returns. Nobody is misled into thinking they've secured stock.
- In their account and emails: each item shows awaiting stock, so they always know where they stand.
- When their stock lands: an automatic email that their items are ready for collection, and their hold period starts.
Managing the queue
The Waitlist screen in the app admin shows everything that's queuing, in two views: By product (which variants have queues, how many customers are waiting, how much stock would clear them, and the longest wait) and By customer (who is waiting, and for what). Use the product view to decide what to reorder; a waitlist is a demand signal you'd otherwise never capture from a sold-out page.
Your staff see the same picture at the till through the Waitlist tile in Shopify POS, and a customer's waitlist also appears on their customer page in Shopify admin.
If you use Shopify Flow, reservation events fire as triggers, including stock received and items becoming ready for collection, so the waitlist can drive your email platform or reporting. A separate guide covers the Flow triggers.
Common questions
Does joining a waitlist commit the customer to anything?
No. No payment is taken and no order is created. If they don't collect once allocated, the hold expires like any other reservation and the stock frees itself.
Can the waitlist oversell?
No. A queue is not a sale. Any number of customers can wait for any amount of stock; allocation only ever happens against stock that has actually arrived.
Can I take a deposit from someone on the waitlist?
Not online, by design. In store, once their stock is allocated, staff can convert the reservation to a cart at POS and take a deposit with split payment.
Can customers see their place in the queue?
They see that their item is awaiting stock, not a queue position. Allocation order is first come, first served, or your choice if you've switched auto-allocation off.
Why don't I see these settings?
Out-of-stock reservations and waitlists are Automation plan features. On other plans the setting isn't available, and if you downgrade, out-of-stock settings are switched off for you.