January 10, 2025
When your customer's shopping cart has items that can't be fulfilled together in a single shipment due to whatever reason (it could be availability, location or other shipping requirements), on Shopify we call this a 'mixed cart'.
A mixed cart is typically defined as:
• The cart has in-stock and pre-order items, which means they have different fulfillment dates.
• The cart has items that are fulfilled from different locations.
• The cart has items under different shipping profiles (which means they may have different shipping methods and rates).
• The cart has a combination of one-time purchase items and subscriptions.
• And finally, if the cart has items that use the Buy with Prime feature and normal items that don't use that feature..
Certain industries such as furniture, toys & collectibles, and automotive parts would often run into mixed cart challenges because they have a high SKU variety but not all of them are always in-stock. They're often not made-to-order either, so they need to balance customer expectations while keep running their business operations efficiently.
If you're frustrated by this mixed cart issue, you're not alone. In this blog article, we'll be focus on the in-stock and pre-order items mixed cart scenario since this is where we've gathered the most experience while running our pre-order app.
Before Split Shipping in Checkout was introduced in the Editions Summer 2024, Shopify didn't natively support mixed cart checkouts. (How did this challenge last for so long without a solution?!)
If a customer added an in-stock item along with a pre-order item (new product launch) or back order item (sold out) to the same cart, by default they would get blocked at checkout from completing their purchase.
They would have to buy the in-stock item first, then make another transaction just for the pre-order or back order item.
Even if you (the merchant) used an app, custom coding or a theme's built-in functionality to enable mixed cart checkouts, the mixed cart order would just be split into two sub-orders in the admin. You would have to pay shipping twice for the customer, eating into your profit margins.
Merchants would have to ask customers NOT to do a mixed cart order, plaster it all over their Shopify stores and product pages. Which is not a great customer experience, and it doesn't guarantee the customers would read the info anyway.
Some brands would implement pretty bizarre workarounds such as setting up a completely separate Shopify store just for running pre-orders.
Long story short - Potential lost sales, tricky inventory management, and causing a lot of customer confusion. Overall you get a whole heap of issues if a customer adds an in-stock item and a pre-order item to the same cart.
With Split-Shipping in Checkout that rolled out to all Shopify merchants in August 2024, your customers can complete a mixed cart order that has items with different fulfillment requirements, and can choose between different shipping options.
Shopify will split your customer’s order into two shipments automatically.
Below are 4 different but common split-shipping scenarios based on our Early Bird merchants:
If you're not a new Shopify store, you probably don't have "Split Shipping in Checkout" enabled. This means you're probably still paying double shipping for your customers' mixed cart orders - Once for shipping in-stock items, and once for shipping pre-orders when they arrive at your warehouse.
Your customers will see one price for all items at checkout, disregarding the fulfillment dates. (Different fulfillment locations will always trigger two shipping costs though.)
To put that double shipping costs responsibility back to your customers, you'd want to enable "Split Shipping in Checkout".
1. Visit Settings
2. Shipping and Delivery
3. Enable Split Shipping
Now that we've enabled Split Shipping, your customers will have to pay twice for mixed cart orders; Once for shipping in-stock items, once for shipping pre-orders when they're ready to be dispatched.
Your customers might want to receive the in-stock items first, receive the pre-order item later.
They will pay for shipping twice, upfront.
They can choose between fastest and cheapest shipping options for the in-stock items, and also the same for the pre-order item.
The main difference here is the shipping dates.
Receive the in-stock item and pre-order item altogether later.
Your customers will still have to pay for shipping twice upfront, but you can refund them the additional shipping cost under their specific order. (Explained further below.)
If both items are in-stock but they come from different fulfillment locations, Shopify's Split Shipping in Checkout will still apply:
Your customer may want to pay for standard shipping for items shipping from Location A, pay for express shipping for items shipping from Location B.
They may want to pay for standard shipping for items shipping from both locations, but they will still have to pay twice upfront since it's two separate shipments from two different fulfillment locations.
So if your store offers free shipping, it would typically apply to all shipments in a split order.
This means that even if the order is split into multiple shipments because of different fulfillment dates or locations, the customer would not be charged for shipping on any of the shipments.
But, this depends on how your free shipping is setup.
For example:
• If your free shipping is based on a minimum order value, the total value of the cart (before splitting) would need to meet that threshold for free shipping to apply to all shipments.
• If free shipping is offered unconditionally, it will apply to all shipments; doesn't matter how the order is split in checkout.
For some industries like toys & collectibles, tech gadgets, and apparel, waiting for the in-stock and pre-order items to be shipped together is actually the standard customer expectation.
They're usually happy to wait for longer shipping times to avoid paying for double shipping, because these items they are buying aren't necessities or consumables.
If your customer has asked for all their items to be shipped together, you can visit their specific order in the admin, and put the in-stock item's fulfillment "On Hold" manually. Then edit their order and refund the additional shipping fees they've paid for.
You should mention this as an option on your product pages, in your order confirmation email, in your marketing as well that customers should inform you ASAP after they've placed their “mixed cart” order.
We have two example paragraphs in our help centre article which you can paste into into your product page description, and in your Shipping policy to let your customers know about this option. I'll share them in the description.
In that same article, we also share a step by step on how to manually hold and combine fulfillment for mixed cart orders, but thought it'd be good to share the steps in this blog article directly here as well:
1. From Shopify Admin, go to **Orders**
2. Find the customer’s mixed cart order you want to put on hold
3. In the **Unfulfilled** section, click the **...** menu and select **Hold fulfillment**.
4. Choose the items to put on hold and select a reason from the dropdown menu.
5. Click **Hold fulfillment**.
1. Go to Orders in your Shopify Admin again.
2. Click the order you want to merge fulfillments for.
3. In the **Unfulfilled** section, click the **...** menu and select **Merge fulfillment**.
4. Select the items you want to combine into one fulfillment.
5. Click **Merge fulfillment**.
1. Wait for the pre-order items to arrive
2. Go to the customer’s mixed cart order again and select **“Release fulfilment”**
3. Now you can fulfill both the in-stock and pre-order item to be shipped together.
• Instead of asking customers to place separate orders, Shopify can help you split customers' mixed carts automatically if it has in-stock items + preorders/subscriptions/Buy with Prime products. Or if any of the products are shipping from different locations or shipping profiles.
• Your customers will get notified at checkout if their order will be split, and they'll get to choose their preferred (fastest or cheapest) option for each shipment.
• It'll mean less confusion for your customers, and you don't eat into your margins by paying double shipping. Definitely a win-win. It'll be much easier for you to manage inventory as well.
• For customers who prefer all their items to be shipped together to save on shipping costs, you can manually hold the in-stock fulfilment (under Shopify Orders) and release it when the pre-order items have arrived.
• If you do pre-orders, subscriptions, or frequently sell out some of your SKUs, this feature is gonna be super helpful for your business. You can provide a much better customer (purchase) experience.
If you have any questions about managing split shipping for your Shopify pre-orders, feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn or email us at support@shopside.com.au to see how we can help!
