Pre-orders

A pre-order lets customers buy a package before it can be delivered. They pay now, and the package is delivered at a release date you control.

Use it for a rank tied to a season that has not started, or a cosmetic for a server that has not opened yet.

Setting a release date

Open a package, go to the Billing & Rewards tab, and set a Release date. Any date in the future turns the package into a pre-order. Leave it empty for normal, immediate delivery.

A date in the past behaves exactly like no date at all, so once release passes the package quietly goes back to being ordinary. There is nothing to switch off afterwards.

Subscription packages cannot be pre-ordered. A subscription starts billing at the payment gateway immediately, and not every gateway can delay the first charge cleanly.

What happens when someone pre-orders

The customer pays in full at checkout, exactly as they would for any package. Then:

Commands do not run. They are held until the release date, on every delivery path.
Discord roles are not assigned. They are handed over at release too, so a customer never gets the Discord role weeks before the in-game rank.
Timed packages do not start counting down. A 30-day rank bought three weeks early still delivers with a full 30 days, because the clock starts at release rather than at purchase.
It counts against purchase limits. A pre-order burns the customer’s per-user allowance immediately, since they have bought it.

Releasing

Delivery happens automatically within a minute of the release date passing. You do not need to do anything.

If you are ready early, open the package and press Release now. That delivers every pre-order already sold and makes new purchases deliver immediately.

If the date slips, just change it. Pre-orders already sold move to the new date with it.

What the customer sees

A Pre-order chip on the package card in your store.
The release date on the package detail view and in their cart.
“Pre-order, releases <date>” against the order in their purchase history, so they can see why nothing has arrived.

Refunds and deletion

Refunding an unreleased pre-order revokes the entitlement and cancels its held commands, so the customer does not receive the package later.

A package with unreleased pre-orders cannot be deleted. Release them or refund those orders first. Deactivating the package is different and is the right tool for stopping new sales: existing pre-orders still release as scheduled.

Not included

There is no release notification email, and customers cannot cancel a pre-order themselves. Merchant-initiated refunds work normally.

Custom templates

Storefront templates read pkg.releaseAt on a package. It is set only while the release is still ahead, so a simple {% if pkg.releaseAt %} is enough to show a chip or a date.

The bundled Crest, Almanac and Realms templates already use it. A custom template will not show the pre-order chip until you add it. See Custom templates.