Selling Plan Description or Message Template for Pre-Orders

When you set up a pre-order in Timesact, the copy a customer reads isn’t in one field — and knowing which field paints which screen is the difference between writing copy once and revisiting it every launch. Two of those fields live on the product page: the message template and the Selling Plan description. A third field, the Selling Plan name, is the one that travels — it appears in the cart, at checkout, and in the order confirmation email.

The most common mix-up we see on setup calls is treating the Selling Plan description as the line that follows the order through checkout and email. It doesn’t. The description is a product-page message. The string that travels with the order is the Selling Plan name. Once that’s clear, deciding where to write each piece of copy is straightforward.

Here’s the map:

The Selling Plan description is the message that renders directly under the pre-order button on the product page and stays there. It’s the plan’s own commitment line — the place for a short statement of what this pre-order is: “Each piece is handcrafted to order and ships within four to six weeks.” It’s an optional field tied to the specific Selling Plan, so it’s a natural home for copy that belongs to a fulfillment pattern rather than a single product.

That’s the correction worth underlining: the description does not follow the order into the cart or the confirmation email. If you want a line the customer sees after they’ve committed — in the cart, at checkout, in their inbox — that’s the Selling Plan name, covered below.

The description earns its keep when you run multiple fulfillment patterns. If your jewelry ships in four weeks and your bags in eight, you set up two Selling Plans — one per pattern — and give each its own description, then attach each plan to the products it covers. Two distinct product-page commitments, no per-product rewriting.

The message template controls the reusable pre-order messaging on the product page — the message that applies across every product using that template. It’s the right home for the copy that helps a customer make the decision to buy: a short, scannable line explaining why the page shows a Pre-Order button instead of Add to Cart, or a trust signal that fits the moment (“Reserve yours — released in small batches”).

A template message renders on every product page that uses that template, which is its strength: one template can frame a whole collection. It’s also where Timesact’s dynamic variables live — a small, fixed set of placeholders that resolve when the page renders: {{shippingDate}}, {{preorderQuantity}}, {{daysLeftUntilShippingDate}}, and {{daysLeftUntilPreorderEndDate}}. Those four are the whole list — there’s no product-name or charge-timing variable — and any variable you use needs its value set explicitly, or the template prints the literal text variable_not_set instead. So a line like “Ships on {{shippingDate}}” works only once that shipping date has been set to a real value.

If you’re still mapping what your store needs before you write a word of copy, our feature-by-feature guide to choosing a pre-order app covers the decisions that come first.

The Selling Plan name is the label that follows the order everywhere the customer looks after the product page. Shopify shows it next to the line item in the cart, again in the checkout order summary, and renders it inside the order confirmation email automatically. It’s also the option label on the product page.

Because it’s the one string that reaches the inbox, it’s worth more than “Pre-order.” A name like “Made to order — ships in 4–6 weeks” carries the timeline into the cart, the checkout, and the confirmation email in one move — no email-template editing, no per-surface copy. This is the field that quietly prevents the “wait, when does this ship?” email two days after checkout — one link in the full pre-order customer journey, from product page to delivery.

The clean pattern is to use each field for what it’s built for. Here’s the order that usually makes sense.

Write the template message. In your Timesact admin, open Settings → Templates, open your pre-order template, and write the short on-page copy that frames the pre-order for a customer who’s deciding. Keep it to a sentence or two — this message applies to every product page using the template.

Set when the pre-order turns on. Choose the activation rule: inventory-based (“pre-order only when out of stock”), or a date window with start and end dates. All campaign timing runs in UTC+0 (London time), so set any dates with that offset in mind.

Write the Selling Plan name, description, and charge timing. Open your Selling Plan and set the name to the label you want traveling into the cart and email (“Made to order — ships in 4–6 weeks”), the description to the product-page commitment line, and the charge timing in the plan’s Billing Policy — full payment at checkout, or a partial payment now with the balance collected on the final-payment date. If you run several fulfillment patterns, set up one plan per pattern and attach each to its products.

Enable the App Embed. In your Shopify theme editor, open Online Store → Themes → Customize, go to the App Embeds tab, toggle Timesact on, and save. That’s the activation switch that lets Timesact render across every product page on your current theme.

Preview the customer experience. Open a product page on your storefront to see the template message and plan description, then add the item to cart and walk to checkout to see the Selling Plan name travel through. This is a preview of what the customer will see on each screen.

Pre-order copy gets cleaner the moment you stop putting the same sentence in two fields and start using each for its job: storefront framing in the message template, the product-page commitment in the Selling Plan description, and the traveling label in the Selling Plan name. Set them once, attach new products to the right plan, and every screen picks up the right copy.

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