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A Shopify draft order invoice is a payment request you send directly from your Shopify admin to a customer before an order is placed — giving them a secure checkout link to review items, confirm pricing, and pay on their own terms. If you sell to trade buyers, accept phone orders, or quote custom jobs, understanding this feature is essential. For a full introduction to running a store on the platform, start with Shopify South Africa.
Unlike a standard checkout, a draft order sits in a pending state until the customer completes payment or you mark it as paid. That flexibility makes it useful for wholesale negotiations, phased payments, and any sale that does not fit a self-serve add-to-cart flow. It is built into every paid Shopify plan — no extra app needed to send the link itself — but whether the document it sends meets SARS requirements for a valid tax invoice is a different question entirely, and one SA merchants need to answer before relying on it for B2B billing.
Quick Answer
A shopify draft order invoice is a manually created order that generates a secure checkout link emailed to your customer — available on all paid Shopify plans (Basic, Grow, Advanced, Plus). You can apply custom pricing, set payment terms (Net 7 through Net 90), and collect payment via any connected gateway such as PayFast or Peach Payments.
Shopify's native invoice email is not a SARS-compliant tax document on its own. VAT-registered SA merchants collecting input tax need a third-party invoicing app or a separate accounting document to meet the 21-day SARS requirement for a valid tax invoice.
Jump to a section
What Is a Shopify Draft Order Invoice?
Six Steps: Quote to Confirmed Payment
When to Use Draft Orders vs Standard Checkout
Draft Orders and SARS VAT Compliance
What Draft Orders Can and Cannot Do
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Get a Free Store ReviewWhat Is a Shopify Draft Order Invoice?
A Shopify draft order invoice is a manually assembled order record that generates a personalised checkout link for one specific customer, allowing payment to be collected outside the standard storefront flow. The word "invoice" in Shopify's interface refers to the email containing that link — not to a SARS-formatted tax document. Both are useful, but they serve different purposes, and confusing them creates real administrative problems for VAT-registered SA merchants.
Draft orders live at Orders > Drafts in your Shopify admin. They behave like a regular order before payment is taken: you can add any product from your catalogue, add custom line items (useful for services, installation, or bespoke goods), apply fixed or percentage discounts at line level or order level, set a shipping rate, toggle taxes on or off, and assign a customer record. Once the customer pays via the checkout link, the draft converts to a confirmed order — inventory adjusts, fulfillment triggers, and it appears in your standard orders list.
Shopify plan access: Draft orders and invoice sending are available on every paid Shopify plan — Basic ($39/month), Grow ($105/month), Advanced ($399/month), and Plus (from $2,300/month on a 3-year contract). The only features gated to Plus are customer-specific deposit requirements and partial payments on B2B orders, per Shopify's B2B plan documentation. If you need Net 30 terms or a simple payment link, any plan works.
Six Steps: From Quote to Confirmed Customer Payment
Creating and sending a draft order invoice takes under five minutes once you know the admin path — the value is in what you configure before you hit send.
- Go to Orders > Drafts and click Create order. This opens a blank draft where you can search your product catalogue or type a custom item name and price.
- Add products and set pricing. You can override the listed price on any line item — useful for negotiated wholesale rates without changing your public price. Apply a fixed-amount or percentage discount at the order level if you want a blanket reduction.
- Assign a customer. Select an existing customer record or create a new one. The customer's address pulls into the order and determines the default tax calculation.
- Set draft order payment terms if required. In the Payment section, choose from Due on receipt, Due on fulfillment, or a Net term (7, 15, 30, 45, 60, or 90 days). For standard retail use, Due on receipt is typical — the customer pays immediately via the checkout link. Net 30 or Net 60 are common for SA trade accounts.
- Click Send invoice. Write a short message (optional), review the invoice preview, and send. Shopify emails the customer a secure, unique checkout link.
- The customer pays. They open the link, confirm shipping, enter payment details via your connected SA gateway (PayFast, Peach Payments, or similar), and submit. The draft converts to a confirmed, paid order.
You can also click Mark as paid instead of sending a link — useful for walk-in or phone payments you have already collected. Or click Mark as pending to record the order and chase payment separately. Both convert the draft to a live order.
When to Use Draft Orders vs Standard Checkout — SA Decision Table
The right tool depends on who you are selling to, how the price was determined, and whether the customer will pay immediately or on terms. This table maps common SA selling scenarios to the right approach.
| Selling Scenario | Standard Checkout | Draft Order Invoice | Why |
|---|---|---|---|
| Online retail — fixed price, public catalogue | ✓ Best fit | — | No negotiation needed; self-serve checkout is faster |
| Wholesale / trade buyer — negotiated pricing | — | ✓ Best fit | Custom line-item prices; customer sees their rate, not the public rate |
| Phone or WhatsApp order | — | ✓ Best fit | Customer is not at a screen; link arrives by email for later payment |
| Custom / bespoke item (not in catalogue) | — | ✓ Best fit | Add a custom line item with an ad hoc price and description |
| Quote for approval before payment | — | ✓ Best fit | Draft sits open until customer approves; no stock held until paid |
| Net 30 / Net 60 trade account | — | ✓ Best fit | Set payment terms on the draft; customer pays when terms are due |
| High-volume D2C with loyalty pricing (10+ customers per hour) | ✓ Better fit | Use B2B catalogs instead | Draft orders are manual; at scale, Shopify B2B catalogs with price lists are more efficient |
SA context: Many SA trade relationships still run on phoned-in or WhatsApp-quoted orders. A draft order invoice bridges that offline habit with online payment — the buyer gets a link via email and pays through a familiar Shopify payment gateway like PayFast or Peach Payments without needing to navigate a storefront. This is one of the most underused workflows in SA wholesale and trade channels.
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Get a B2B Setup AssessmentDraft Order Invoices and SARS VAT Compliance
Shopify's draft order invoice email is a payment request, not a SARS-compliant tax invoice — and for VAT-registered SA merchants, that distinction has real consequences for your buyers' ability to claim input VAT. (For a full breakdown of how Shopify handles tax settings, see Shopify Tax & VAT South Africa.)
Under the South African Revenue Service (SARS) requirements under the VAT Act 89 of 1991, a valid full tax invoice for supplies exceeding R5,000 must include all of the following:
- The words "Tax Invoice", "VAT Invoice" or "Invoice" (these exact designations)
- Your business name, physical address, and VAT registration number (10 digits, starts with 4)
- A unique, sequential invoice number and the date of issue
- The buyer's name, address, and VAT registration number (if they are VAT-registered)
- A full description of the goods or services, with quantities or volumes
- The price excluding VAT, the VAT amount at 15% as a separate line, and the total including VAT
The invoice must be issued within 21 days of the supply date. Your trade buyers cannot claim input VAT without it.
Shopify's native invoice email gives your customer a checkout link — it does not generate a document with sequential numbering, your VAT registration number, or a split VAT/total display. For supplies between R50 and R5,000 (abridged invoice threshold), many retail transactions will be fine without a formal tax invoice. But for B2B sales over R5,000 — which is most wholesale ordering — you need either:
- A third-party Shopify invoicing app (such as Sufio, which validates documents against SA accounting legislation) that generates a compliant tax invoice automatically after payment, or
- A separate accounting system (Xero, Sage, or QuickBooks) that picks up confirmed Shopify orders and issues the formal tax document.
The practical workflow for VAT-registered SA merchants: use Shopify's draft order invoice to collect payment (it handles the quoting, pricing, and checkout flow well), then issue a SARS-compliant tax invoice from your accounting integration or invoicing app once the order is confirmed. Do not rely on the Shopify invoice email as your legal tax record for input VAT purposes.
What Shopify Draft Orders Can and Cannot Do
Draft orders solve a specific set of problems well and have genuine constraints worth knowing before you build a workflow around them.
| Capability | Available? | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Send payment link by email | ✓ All plans | Secure, unique checkout URL per draft |
| Custom line items (off-catalogue) | ✓ All plans | Services, installation, bespoke products |
| Line-item and order-level discounts | ✓ All plans | Fixed or percentage; applied manually |
| Net payment terms (7–90 days) | ✓ All plans | Added July 2024; customer pays when terms are due |
| Toggle taxes on/off per order | ✓ All plans | Useful for zero-rated exports or tax-exempt buyers |
| Duplicate an existing order | ✓ All plans | Saves time for repeat wholesale orders |
| Pay via SA gateways (PayFast, Peach Payments) | ✓ All plans | Customer uses the checkout link with your connected gateway |
| Deposit / partial payment requirement | Plus only | Standard plans cannot require a percentage deposit upfront |
| Automatic discount codes applying automatically | ✗ | Automatic discounts do not trigger on drafts; apply manually |
| Abandoned checkout recovery emails | ✗ | Shopify does not send recovery emails for unpaid invoice links; follow up manually |
| Generates a SARS-compliant tax invoice | ✗ natively | Requires a third-party invoicing app or accounting integration |
| Draft auto-expiry | ✓ | Drafts created after April 1, 2025 delete after 12 months of inactivity; any edit resets the clock |
The reporting gap is worth noting too: Shopify has no native draft order report. Converted drafts appear in your standard orders view, but you cannot easily filter to see which orders originated as drafts. If you want to track your manual-order or B2B channel separately, use tags on every draft (for example, "wholesale", "phone-order", "trade-quote") and filter by tag in your orders view.
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Request a Store AuditWhy South African Businesses Choose Growth Pulse Media
Growth Pulse Media is a registered Shopify Partner built by an operator who scaled a large South African ecommerce business before founding the agency. That means every recommendation comes from knowing what the Shopify admin actually looks like at volume — the payment gateway friction, the wholesale order management gaps, the SARS compliance edge cases that global agencies simply do not encounter.
The team at our Shopify marketing agency works with a deliberately limited client load so every store gets senior attention, not a junior account manager reading a playbook. If your store handles B2B or wholesale orders, we structure a Shopify B2B invoice workflow that fits your actual trade terms — from draft order setup through to SARS-compliant tax documents — not a generic template. All work is done in-house, using SA-relevant platforms including PayFast, Peach Payments, Omnisend, and Klaviyo, with Shopify-native tools wherever they earn their place.
Who This Is NOT For
Pure D2C retail stores with no trade orders. If every sale comes through standard checkout and you do not quote, negotiate pricing, or take phone orders, draft orders add admin complexity with no upside. Standard checkout and Shopify's discount code system covers your use case.
Merchants below the VAT registration threshold who need a formal tax document. If your annual taxable supplies are below R120,000 and you are not VAT-registered, a standard receipt or order confirmation is sufficient for most transactions. The compliance layer only matters if you (or your buyers) are VAT-registered and need to claim input tax.
High-volume wholesale operations with many customer segments. Standard Shopify plans support up to 3 B2B catalogs per market; merchants managing many distinct customer segments across markets may outgrow this. If you need to assign price lists automatically at login across multiple segments, Shopify Plus (or a dedicated B2B wholesale app) handles that scale better than manual draft order creation.
Merchants who need deposit-before-production workflows on standard plans. If your business model requires customers to pay a percentage deposit upfront before you begin a custom production run, Shopify's deposit feature is Plus-only. On Basic, Grow, or Advanced, you cannot require a percentage deposit via the native draft order flow — you would need a workaround or a third-party app.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a Shopify draft order invoice?
A Shopify draft order invoice is an email Shopify sends to your customer on your behalf, containing a secure link to a pre-built checkout for an order you have configured manually in your admin. The customer clicks the link, reviews the items and price, selects shipping, and pays through your connected payment gateway. Once paid, the draft converts to a confirmed order and inventory updates automatically.
Is a Shopify draft order invoice the same as a SARS tax invoice?
No. Shopify's draft order invoice email is a payment request containing a checkout link — it does not include your VAT registration number, sequential invoice numbering, or the separately displayed VAT/total breakdown that SARS requires. VAT-registered merchants whose B2B sales exceed R5,000 per transaction should use a third-party invoicing app (such as Sufio) or an accounting integration (Xero, Sage) to generate a SARS-compliant tax invoice within 21 days of supply.
Do I need Shopify Plus to send draft order invoices?
No. Creating draft orders, sending invoice emails, and setting Net payment terms (Net 7 through Net 90) are available on every paid Shopify plan — Basic, Grow, Advanced, and Plus. Shopify Plus is only required if you need to mandate customer deposit percentages or collect partial payments on B2B orders natively within Shopify.
Can SA customers pay through a draft order invoice link?
Yes. When the customer clicks the checkout link in the invoice email, they go through a standard Shopify checkout using whichever payment gateway you have connected — PayFast, Peach Payments, Netcash, or another SA-compatible option. Shopify Payments is not available in South Africa, so the link routes through your third-party gateway the same way a standard storefront checkout would.
How long does a Shopify draft order stay open?
Draft orders created after April 1, 2025 auto-delete after 12 months of inactivity. Any edit — adding a product, changing the price, resending the invoice — resets the 12-month clock. If a customer has not paid and you want to keep the draft active, either resend the invoice or make a minor edit to reset the expiry timer.
Can I use draft orders for wholesale with custom pricing?
Yes — draft orders are the most accessible way to sell at wholesale or negotiated pricing on standard Shopify plans. You override the listed price on any line item to the agreed trade rate, apply any blanket discount, and send the invoice. The customer sees only the pricing you configured for them, not your public retail price. For stores on all paid plans as of April 2026, Shopify's native B2B catalogs (up to 3 per market) let you automate this for returning trade customers, with draft orders filling the gap for one-off or negotiated orders.
Build Your Shopify B2B and Invoicing Workflow the Right Way
Growth Pulse Media is a registered Shopify Partner with hands-on experience in South African wholesale, trade, and B2B ecommerce setups — including payment gateway integration, SARS VAT compliance workflows, and B2B catalog structure. We work with a limited client load so your store gets senior attention from day one.
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