Inventory operations
Backorder
Selling what you do not yet have.
Where it lives in nouz
Orders, where fulfilment lags the order date.
A backorder is an order accepted for stock that has not arrived: the customer pays now and waits. It converts a stockout into a delay rather than a lost sale, at the cost of a promise that has to be kept, and it changes when the costs of that order land.
It is a real alternative to losing the demand, and it works exactly as well as the communication around it. An honest date at checkout, kept, is tolerated by most customers; a vague one, missed, produces cancellations, refunds and disputes that cost far more than the sale was worth.
The recognition question is worth being deliberate about. The revenue arrives when the order is placed, the goods leave when it ships, and the two can fall in different months, which is one of the ways a period can look unusually profitable and then unusually expensive.
It also shifts the cash calendar in your favour: the customer funds the purchase before the supplier is paid. That is genuinely useful and quietly dangerous, because it works until the shipment is late and then several promises come due at once.
Related terms