Setting up Set Aside

Install and open the app

Install Set Aside from its Shopify App Store listing and approve the permissions. The app reads and writes products and purchase options (that's how it makes a product a pre-order), reads and writes orders and fulfilment orders (tags and holds), and reads inventory (stock and incoming stock). It never touches payments.

On first open you land on the Overview with a setup checklist. There's no plan to approve and nothing to pay: Set Aside is free.

Add a pre-order product

Open Pre-Orders and click Add Pre-Order Product. Shopify's product picker opens; search and choose one product. Then:

• Release / Ship-By Date — when you expect to ship. Customers see “Ships from”.
• Payment Deadline — Paid by the Release Date is the default. Choose a fixed date, a number of days after the order, or no fixed deadline (the order is simply held until it's paid).
• Maximum LayBy Length — caps how long a FlexiLay plan can run for this product. Leave blank to use the store default from Settings.
• Button Text — replaces Add to Cart for this product (the default is set in Settings).
• Campaign Starts / Ends — optional. A pre-order starts now and ends on the release date unless you say otherwise.
• Pre-Order Cap — stop taking pre-orders after this many units. The table shows “17 / 40 sold”. Cancelled orders give their units back.
• Keep Selling When Out of Stock — on by default for pre-orders, so customers can buy at zero stock.
• Release Paid Orders When Stock Arrives — see step 6.

What this changes on your product

Saving a pre-order rule changes the product in Shopify, and the app tells you so before you save:

• A hidden Pre-order selling plan is added, so Shopify labels the line “Pre-order” at checkout and schedules fulfilment for the release date.
• Shopify's Requires selling plan is switched on, which makes the product pre-order only until the release date.
• With Keep Selling ticked, every variant is set to continue selling when out of stock. Pre-orders reduce the available quantity, so a sold-out product goes negative: that number is how many units you owe.

Everything is put back the way it was when the rule ends, is paused or is removed, including each variant's original out-of-stock setting.

Statuses

• Active — in force now.
• Scheduled — the campaign hasn't started.
• Cap Reached — the pre-order cap is full; the storefront shows your Sold Out text.
• Ended — the campaign end date has passed.
• Released — the release date has passed; the product sells normally again.
• Paused — switched off by you (select rows and use Pause / Resume).

Moving a release date moves every held order for that product to the new date, and offers to send those customers the Shipping Delay email in one click.

Give a product a pay-by date

Open Deadlines and click Add Product. Leave This Is a Pre-Order Product unticked. Choose the deadline: a fixed date, a number of days after the order, or none at all, which means “hold until paid”. Orders for the product are tagged and held until they're paid in full, and released the moment they are.

With FlexiLay Payments on the store, the pay-by date also becomes the end date of the customer's lay-by plan: their instalments are compressed so the last one lands before it (a date that's already close means pay in full at checkout).

Apply one rule to a collection or a tag

On either tab, Add by Collection or Tag applies one rule to every product in a collection (chosen with Shopify's picker) or carrying a tag you type. The products appear in the table marked “via collection / tag”. Products added to the collection or tag later are picked up on Sync now and every night; products that leave it have their rule removed.

A product's own rule always wins over a collection or tag rule, so you can set a release date for a whole drop and still give one product its own.

Turn on the storefront widget

The widget is a theme app embed. Turn it on once: Online Store → Themes → Customize, open App embeds (the puzzle-piece icon), switch on Set Aside and Save. Load any product page once and the Overview's badge turns to Storefront Widget Active.

On a product with a rule, the widget:

• swaps the Add to Cart text for your pre-order button text (pre-orders only);
• adds the hidden selling-plan field, so themes without purchase-option UI can still add a pre-order to the cart;
• places the badge on the product image (or under the title), and on collection cards if you choose;
• shows the “ships from” and “pay by” messages below or above the button, or under the price;
• shows a notice in the cart when it contains a pre-order;
• shows the LayBy price line (“Or LayBy from $216 a week with FlexiLay”) on every product, once FlexiLay Payments is installed and ready.

Wording, badge colours and positions live under Settings → Storefront Widgets, with a live preview. Messages accept {release_date}, {payby_date} and {shop_name}; the LayBy line accepts {label}, {instalment}, {frequency}, {deposit} and {payments}. Changes reach the storefront within a minute.

Themes that hide the button

The widget finds the product form and Add to Cart button on its own in every current Shopify theme. If a custom theme hides them, Settings → Advanced takes CSS selectors for the form, the button, the price and the badge container. For themes that render their own buttons, the widget also sets data-flexilay-preorder, data-release-date, data-payby-date and data-layby-from on the product form and fires a flexilay:preorder event, so your developer can draw whatever they like.

Incoming stock and purchase orders

When you create a purchase order or a transfer in Shopify and mark it as ordered, the units show as incoming on the product. Set Aside shows that number beside each pre-order (refreshed when you save or re-sync, nightly, and whenever Shopify's inventory changes), and uses it in two ways:

• Set Cap From Incoming in the rule editor copies the incoming units into the pre-order cap, so you sell exactly what's on order.
• Release Paid Orders When Stock Arrives: when the purchase order is received and the product's available stock comes back up to zero or above, every paid held order for it is released straight away, ahead of the release date. Unpaid orders stay held until they're paid. A partial delivery that leaves stock negative releases nothing.

Stock and incoming are summed across every variant and location. Untracked inventory never triggers a release.

How orders are tagged, held and released

The moment an order containing one of your products is placed, by any payment method, Set Aside:

• tags it FlexiLay:Deadline, Pre-order (if any line is a pre-order), Pay-by YYYY-MM-DD and FlexiLay:OnHold, and writes the dates as order attributes;
• puts a fulfilment hold on it (reason Awaiting payment until it's paid, otherwise Other with the release date in the note) so your team and any 3PL see it can't ship yet;
• emails the customer the pre-order confirmation (see step 9).

An order is released, the hold lifted and the tag changed to FlexiLay:Released, when it is paid in full and the release date has arrived (or there is none). That happens automatically within ten minutes of either condition being met, the day stock lands if you chose that, or when you press Release in the app to ship early. If you'd rather paid pre-orders ship as soon as they're paid without waiting for the date, turn off Hold Fully Paid Pre-Orders Until Their Release Date in Settings; anything already paid is released at once.

• An order cancelled in Shopify is marked cancelled here and gives its units back to the cap; the hold is left for you to deal with in Shopify.
• The CSV export carries the same columns as the table for whatever filter is showing.
• Orders paid by a FlexiLay lay-by are marked LayBy plan; they count as paid when the plan completes, and FlexiLay's own emails cover them.

Lay-by at checkout with FlexiLay Payments

Set Aside works on its own. Add FlexiLay Payments and customers can also choose Lay-By / Lay-A-Way at checkout: a deposit now, the balance in scheduled instalments into your own Stripe account, and the order held until the plan is paid in full. The LayBy / Lay-A-Way tab explains it with one of your own products, shows your setup status, and links to install, finish setup or open the FlexiLay dashboard.

Together the two apps do what neither can alone:

• A product's pay-by date becomes the plan's end date, so instalments finish before it.
• A pre-order paid by lay-by is released only when the plan is complete and the release date has arrived.
• The storefront's LayBy price line uses your real schedule settings and, on a product with a deadline, the compressed schedule.

Shopify gives apps no way to see whether a payment method is switched on in Settings → Payments, so the last step of “What You Need” is confirmed by you with I've Already Activated It, and verified automatically at the first checkout.

Notifications

Four emails to buyers and one to you, under Settings → Notifications. Each has an editable subject and message with variables ({order_name}, {customer_first_name}, {release_date}, {payby_date}, {products}, {total} and more), a Live / Draft switch, and Send Test to Me.

• Pre-Order Confirmation — when an order with one of your products is placed.
• Pay-By Reminder — a set number of days before the deadline, to orders not yet paid in full, once.
• Release Notice — when the order is released for fulfilment.
• Shipping Delay — draft by default; sent when you move a release date and choose to tell customers.
• Daily Digest to you — orders ready to release, orders past their pay-by date, and pre-orders whose release date passed with no stock in.

Settings

• Pre-Order Button Text — the default for new rules.
• Default Maximum LayBy Length — applies to products without their own setting, at checkout, on orders and on the storefront line.
• Hold Fully Paid Pre-Orders Until Their Release Date — on by default. Off releases paid orders at once, including any already held.
• Show Pre-Order Badges on the Storefront — the master switch for badges.
• Email Me a Daily Digest.