Cut-off Times and Holidays
Delivery date estimates come from the shipping method’s cut-off times and the shop’s holidays.
Where to find it
Architect Panel → Commercial:
- Carts — the cart itself and its options
Architect Panel → Data:
- Datastores — then View Data on the cart table, and look for the row actions
Cut-off times are per day
Each entry names a day of the week, a time, and which day the order actually ships. That structure handles the real world: order by two on Thursday and it goes Thursday; order at three and it goes Friday; order on Saturday and it goes Monday.
A single cut-off time for the whole week cannot express that, which is why it is defined per day.
Holidays are shop-wide
A list of dates on which nothing ships. They shift every delivery estimate that crosses them, which is exactly what should happen and exactly what nobody remembers to configure.
Load the holidays a year ahead
The failure is not misconfiguration, it is omission. Public holidays, the days between Christmas and the new year, any shutdown week — enter them all at once, annually, rather than the week before each.
A shop promising next-day delivery on Christmas Eve has usually just not entered the holidays.
Be honest about the cut-off
Set it to when your warehouse actually stops packing, not when you would like it to. A cut-off half an hour after the last collection is a promise broken every single day.
Estimates are only as good as the inputs
Delivery days come from the method, working days from the cut-offs, non-working days from the holidays. All three have to be right, and the visible symptom of any of them being wrong is the same: a date the customer was given and did not get.
Turning dates off is a valid choice
Delivery date display is a cart option. If your fulfilment is not predictable enough to promise a date, showing a range in the shipping method and no specific date is more honest than a calculated date you miss.
Check it around the edges
Test what the shop promises late on a Friday, on a Sunday, and the day before a holiday. Those are the three cases that are wrong, and the only ones worth testing.
Worked example
A shop sets cut-offs per weekday with weekend orders shipping Monday, and loads the year’s public holidays each January along with its Christmas shutdown. Estimates are checked on a Friday afternoon and the day before a bank holiday, which caught a Saturday cut-off left over from a trial.
Recommendations
- Set cut-offs per day, not one for the week.
- Load a year of holidays in one sitting.
- Use the real packing cut-off.
- Test Friday, Sunday and pre-holiday.