Q: I hold items for customers who pay a bit at a time. How do I keep track of who has paid what, and what happens to the money if they never come back?
If your layaway tracking lives on paper slips and a box behind the counter, every part payment depends on someone writing it down correctly, and the slip staying where it belongs until the customer returns.
This post follows one layaway in Octabiz from the first deposit to pickup or cancellation, using only what our release notes say the feature does.
In short
Key takeaways
Since v1.20.1240 (26 October 2026), you can put an item on layaway in Octabiz, and it is held for the customer.
Each deposit is recorded, and at pickup the deposits count toward the sale at the till.
If the customer cancels, you refund the deposit or keep it, and the item is released.
Layaway tracking: what changed in Octabiz
Release v1.20.1240, shipped on 26 October 2026 under the title "Layaways and special orders, and sales by employee", added layaways to the till. You can put an item on layaway and it is held for the customer. Each deposit is recorded, so the running total sits with the layaway instead of in a notebook. At pickup, the sale goes through the till as usual, with the deposits already paid counted toward it. If the customer cancels, you either refund the deposit or keep it, and the item is released back to you.
How to run a layaway step by step
Here is the path one layaway takes, in the order the release notes describe it:
One layaway, start to finish
- 1
Put the item on layaway
Choose the item and the customer, and take the first deposit. The item is now held for that customer.
- 2
Record each later deposit
When the customer comes back with another payment, record it against the same layaway so every deposit is kept.
- 3
Ring it up at pickup
When they collect, the sale goes through the till as usual, and the deposits already paid count toward the price.
- 4
Or cancel it
If the customer cancels, choose whether to refund the deposit or keep it. The item is released.
Showing new staff
The release notes describe what happens at each step, but not the names of the screens or buttons, so walk a new team member through one real layaway on the till before they run one alone.
Deciding your keep-or-refund rule before the first deposit
Because Octabiz lets you either refund or keep the deposit when someone cancels, the choice is yours to make, and it goes better when you make it once, in writing, before the first customer pays anything.
We made the same point in our Special Order Deposit post: a deposit is money you hold until pickup. Write the refund rule down before you take the money, so nobody argues about it later. If you already have a written special order policy, extend it to cover layaways (how long you hold an item, and when a deposit stops being refundable), then point to it at the counter every time.
Who this helps
If you run a small shop that holds items for customers paying over time, this replaces the slip in the box with a layaway that keeps its own deposits and finishes at the till like any other sale. If you also take deposits on items you order in, the same release added special orders, and v1.20.1490 (2 November 2026) linked special orders to customers, added product tax to them and lets them send an arrival notice. The Special Order Deposit post covers how much to take. Customers are watching what they spend: the Shopify layaway guide reports the Federal Reserve finding that 46% of adults delayed a major purchase in response to higher prices, and layaway gives those shoppers a way to keep buying from you.
Common questions
Try it on one item this week
Pick one item a customer has asked you to hold, put it on layaway, take a deposit and watch it count at pickup. You can read every change we ship on the releases page.
P.S. If your shop handles layaway differently and you think we missed something, tell us; we read every reply.
Put your first layaway on the till
Where this came from
The research, methods, and photos behind this article.