I run a travel-based small business (Japan Craft Tours), and Shopify makes it shockingly difficult to send balance invoices to customers who’ve already paid a deposit.
I spent 3 hours trying to:
- Create draft orders for final payments (I only need 7)
- Copy checkout links without triggering emails
- Send invoices via Flodesk because Shopify Email won’t let me send to a single customer
- Build workaround pages just to hide long, ugly invoice links
All because Shopify:
- Doesn’t allow manual access to invoice URLs
- Doesn’t let us email individual customers
- Doesn’t support basic segmentation unless you’re on Plus
I love what I’ve built, but Shopify is clearly optimized for physical products — not real-world, multi-step service models like tours, coaching, classes, etc.
Please fix this.