Custom and manual line items

Read time: 5 minutes. Last updated: August 28, 2026 Who it's for: Merchants quoting something that isn't a Shopify product - an assembly fee, freight, a service, a made-to-order item - and anyone who needs to price individual lines by hand.

Not everything you quote exists as a Shopify variant. A custom line is a line with a title you type and a price you set, with no product behind it. It lives on the quote like any other line, prints on the proposal PDF, and converts onto the Shopify draft order.

⚠️ Creating a quote yourself - which is where custom lines are added - requires the Starter plan or higher.

What a custom line is

A custom line carries:

A title you write. Free text: "10 ft cable assembly, 2 x fittings", "Assembly and testing", "Palletised freight to dock".
A price you set. No catalog price to discount from - the number is the number.
A quantity, like any other line.
Two flags that only apply to custom lines: requires shipping and taxable.

Those two flags exist because Shopify ignores them when a line has a variant behind it - the variant's own settings apply instead. They're meaningful only on custom lines, and the defaults mirror Shopify's own draft-order behaviour: a custom line is taxable and needs no shipping unless you say otherwise.

Set requires shipping when the custom line is a physical good that should be included in shipping calculations. Clear taxable when the line shouldn't be taxed - and check that against your tax position rather than assuming, since it's a decision you're making rather than one Shopify is calculating.

Add a custom line

Custom lines are added when you build the quote:

Go to Quotes → Create quote, or open an existing quote and duplicate it.
Add the buyer and any catalog products as normal.
Select Add custom line.
Enter the title, price, and quantity, then set requires shipping and taxable to match what the line is.
Save, then price and send the proposal as usual.

Duplicating a quote is often the fastest route for repeat work: the duplicate carries the buyer, company context, line items, addresses, PO number and custom-field answers, and resets every price so you re-quote deliberately rather than reissuing an old number. See Create a quote yourself.

Edit individual line prices

Every line on every quote can be priced individually in the proposal editor, whether it came from your catalog or you typed it in:

Set a unit price per line.
Adjust quantity per line.
For catalog lines, the discount against the catalog price is shown inline as you type, so you can see how deep a line has gone without working it out.

That per-line view is what makes a floor price and an approval threshold meaningful - both are evaluated per line, not just on the quote total. See Floor price and discounts and Approval workflows.

Quoting an assembled or made-to-order product

If you sell something assembled from parts - a cable made from a length of cable, two fittings, and an assembly fee - and the buyer should see one item at one price, a custom line is the way to do it today.

Rather than quoting four component lines, add a single custom line: "10 ft cable assembly, 2 x fittings" at one price. The buyer sees one line on the quote, one line on the PDF, and one line on the order.

The trade-off is inventory: a custom line has no variant behind it, so it won't decrement component stock. For genuinely made-to-order work that's often the right model rather than a compromise - you're building to order, not drawing from a shelf. If component-level inventory tracking is essential, quote the components as catalog lines instead and accept that the buyer sees the breakdown.

What happens at conversion

A custom line converts onto the Shopify draft order as a custom line item - title and price intact - so it survives to the order, the invoice, and your reporting. Your requires shipping and taxable flags travel with it, which is exactly why they're worth setting correctly at quote time.

See Convert a quote to a draft order.

Common gotchas

"Add custom line isn't there." You're on the free Lite plan, or you're in the proposal editor on a buyer-submitted quote rather than creating a quote yourself. Custom lines are added when you build the quote.
A custom line was taxed when I didn't expect it. The default is taxable. Clear the flag on lines that shouldn't be.
A custom line wasn't included in shipping. The default is no shipping required, on the assumption that a custom line is a fee or service. Set the flag for physical goods.
Stock didn't move. Custom lines have no variant, so there's nothing to decrement. Use catalog lines where you need inventory to move.

Create a quote yourself - building a quote from scratch, where custom lines are added.
Build and send a proposal - per-line pricing, discounts, and expiry.
Convert a quote to a draft order - what carries onto the order.