Anticipo - Pre-Orders for WooCommerce Free documentation

Anticipo lets you sell a product weeks or months before it arrives. Customers pay in full at checkout. The order then waits in its own Pre-ordered status, outside your normal fulfilment queue, until launch day.

On the release date, a background job releases every waiting order. It reduces stock, moves the orders into your normal workflow and emails the customers. Nobody needs to be logged in for this to happen. You can also release or cancel pre-orders by hand, one at a time or in bulk.

The plugin is for WooCommerce store owners who want to take orders for upcoming products, new editions or restocks with a known or not yet announced date. Shoppers see a pre-order button, a badge, an availability message and a countdown. They can follow their reservations from a Pre-orders tab in My Account.

Anticipo is a free plugin on WordPress.org. It needs WooCommerce, so install and activate WooCommerce first.

You turn a product into a pre-order from the product edit screen. This works for simple, variable and external products. Variations inherit the release date and rules from the parent product.

1. Go to Products and edit the product.
2. In the Product data box, click the Pre-order tab.
3. Tick Enable pre-orders.
4. Set the release date and time. You enter it in your store timezone. It is stored in UTC, so changing the site timezone later never moves a launch.
5. Click Update.

On this tab you can also:

• Take pre-orders with no announced date yet. The product then shows the Message when the date is unknown from the settings. When you fill in the date later, every waiting customer is emailed automatically.
• Set a cut-off date so orders close before release, for example while you confirm quantities with a supplier.
• Give the product its own button text and availability message instead of the store wide wording.
• Enter its own Badge text, such as "Coming soon" or "Limited edition". This wording is used on the product image, in shop listings and in the cart.

Go to WooCommerce > Pre-orders. The Pre-orders tab is the first screen you see. It lists every pre-order in your store.

Each row shows:

• Order: the WooCommerce order number, linked to the order.
• Product: the pre-ordered product and its SKU.
• Customer: name and email address.
• Qty: the quantity reserved.
• Billing: how the order is paid, for example Pay in full at checkout.
• Status: where the pre-order stands, for example Confirmed, waiting for release.
• Release date: when the product is due.
• Value and Placed: the order value and the date the order was placed.

Click the Order, Qty, Status, Release date, Value or Placed column heading to sort the list. To narrow it down, pick a status, a billing mode or a product from the three drop-downs and click Filter. Use the search box and Search pre-orders to find a specific pre-order. Screen Options at the top right controls the list display.

You do not have to wait for the release date. From the Pre-orders tab you can release or cancel any pre-order by hand, one at a time or in bulk.

To work on several pre-orders at once:

1. Tick the checkbox next to each pre-order, or tick the checkbox in the header row to select all of them.
2. Choose an action from Bulk actions.
3. Click Apply.

If you prefer to review every launch yourself, go to the Settings tab and switch off Release automatically on the availability date. Pre-orders then wait until you release them from this screen.

Go to WooCommerce > Pre-orders and open the Settings tab. These are store wide settings. Every product can override the release date and wording on its own Pre-order tab. Click Save settings at the bottom when you are done.

The screen has four sections:

• General: switch every pre-order feature on or off, and decide whether pre-orders can share a cart with in-stock items. Turning Enable pre-orders off keeps all data and settings. Existing pre-orders resume when you switch it back on. The Mixed carts rule is also enforced in the Cart and Checkout blocks.
• Display: what shoppers see. Use {date} for the release date and {time} for the release time in any of the text fields. This covers the button text, the availability message, the badge and the countdown.
• Release workflow: what happens on release day. Choose the order status while a pre-order waits and after it is released, whether release happens automatically, how many orders are handled per background batch, and when stock is reduced. Releases run in the background through WooCommerce Action Scheduler, so a launch with thousands of orders never blocks a page load.
• Advanced: housekeeping. Set the My Account endpoint slug, how much goes into the activity log, how long log entries are kept, and whether pre-order data is deleted with the plugin.

The full list of fields is in the settings reference below.

Go to WooCommerce > Pre-orders and open the Status tab. Check this screen first when something does not look right.

Health checks shows a green or warning result for:

• Action Scheduler: whether background releases and maintenance can run.
• Database tables: whether the plugin's own tables are present and indexed.
• Schema version: the installed database version compared with the expected one.
• Overdue releases: whether any pre-order is past its release date.
• Order storage: whether your store uses High Performance Order Storage (HPOS) or legacy post based storage. Both are supported.
• Translation plugin: whether a translation plugin such as WPML or Polylang is detected.

Background queue lists the scheduled jobs with Job, Runs at and Arguments. You see a daily maintenance job (anticipo_po_daily_maintenance) and one release job (anticipo_po_release_product) for each product with an upcoming release date. The daily job is a nightly sweep that catches anything missed, so an interrupted launch recovers on its own.

Activity log lists everything the plugin has done, newest first, with When, Level, Order and Message. Read it when a customer asks what happened to their order. Change how much is recorded with Activity log detail on the Settings tab.

The Documentation tab under WooCommerce > Pre-orders carries a guide inside your admin. Click a heading to expand it. It covers:

• Setting up your first pre-order in five minutes, and what the customer sees
• Every setting explained, with its default
• The Pre-order tab on a product, and listing upcoming pre-orders on a page
• What happens on release day, releasing early or by hand, missed releases and stock
• The emails, merge tags and changing the layout
• Running a multilingual store
• What the plugin does to keep your store fast
• Fixes for common problems
• A developer reference with hooks, helper functions and template overrides

Anticipo adds five emails. Each one is a regular WooCommerce email, so you manage it under WooCommerce > Settings > Emails like any other:

• Pre-order confirmed (customer): sent as soon as the pre-order is paid for. It confirms what has been reserved and when it is expected.
• Pre-order date changed (customer): sent when you change the release date on a product that already has pre-orders.
• Pre-order released (customer)
• Pre-order cancelled (customer)
• New pre-order (store)

Each email has Enable/Disable, Subject, Email heading, Message, Additional content, Email type, Cc(s) and Bcc(s) fields. The Message is the text shown above the table of pre-ordered products. You can use these merge tags in it:

{site_title} {site_url} {customer_name} {order_number} {order_date} {release_date} {product_list} {old_date} {account_url} {pay_url}

The Email preview below the fields shows how the email looks. Switch between desktop and mobile views, or click Send a test email to send one to yourself. Click Save changes when you are done.

Every email comes in HTML and plain text. Both templates can be overridden from your theme.

Shoppers see pre-order products clearly marked across your store:

• Pre-order button: the usual Add to cart label is replaced by your Add to cart button text, for example Pre-order now.
• Badge: a pre-order badge on the product image and in the cart. It uses the store wide Badge text or the product's own wording.
• Availability message: shown under the price on the product page with the release date filled in, and in shop listings when that setting is on.
• Countdown: a live countdown to release on the product page. It is hidden when no date is announced.
• My Account: a Pre-orders tab lists everything the customer has reserved, its status and when it arrives.

To gather all upcoming products on one page, add the [anticipo_preorder_products] shortcode to it. The page shows each product with its badge, price, availability message and pre-order button, soonest release first.