If you need additional time between a customer ordering and their shipping day, you can add preparation times.

Requirements

Shipping date picker must be enabled.
You can check this setting in Zapiet - Pickup + Delivery > Settings > Shipping > Date picker.

Add preparation times

To add shipping preparation times, follow our video tutorial or the written steps.

Click Settings.
Click Shipping.
In the Preparation time section, click Enabled to reveal the advance notice settings. You will be presented with multiple tabs, one for each day of the week you offer shipping.
By default, we set a minimum advance notice of 1 day.
Choose how many days of preparation time you need.
- 0 days shows the first available slot
- 1 day blocks same-day shipping
- 2 days blocks next-day shipping
In this example, for customers ordering on a Monday, the same day (Monday) will be blocked out. The first available slot will be Tuesday.
For more information, take a look at our Examples section.
You can also add a cut-off time. After the cut-off time, you can set a new preparation time. By default, we add a cut-off time of 2 days.
In this example, for customers ordering on a Monday after 2pm, same and next day (Mon and Tue) will be blocked out. The first available slot will be Wednesday.
For more information, take a look at our Examples section.
Repeat for every day of the week, and click Save.
You may need to add preparation time even for the days you do not offer shipping on.

You can now test the preparation times in the widget.

For your cut-off shipping day, Tuesday:
- Add a preparation time of 3 days.
- Enable a cut-off time, and set it at 2PM.
- Set the preparation time after the cut-off time to 4 days.
For Wednesday, add 3 days of preparation time.
For Thursday, add 2 days of preparation time.
For Friday, add 1 day.
For other days (Monday, Saturday, and Sunday) change the default setting to no preparation time.

Shipping is available Monday - Friday.
Customers can order for next-day shipping until 4PM.
After 4PM, customers can order for the day after tomorrow.
Customers ordering after the cut-off time on Friday can't order for shipping until Tuesday.

For all your shipping days (Monday - Friday):
- Add a preparation time of 1 day, to block same-day shipping.
- Enable a cut-off time, and set it at 4PM.
For Monday-Thursday, add the preparation time after the cut-off time to be 2 days, as this will block same-day and next day shipping.
On Friday, after the cut-off time, add a preparation time of 4 days. This will block out Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday shipping, so first available slot is Tuesday.
Saturday needs 3 days preparation time all day, to block out Saturday, Sunday, and Monday.

Sunday needs 2 days of preparation time all day, to block out Sunday and Monday.

If you are also using product-specific preparation times, then whichever has the longer preparation time will be the one shown in the widget.
We don't have the option to set up a specific slot that should be available in the next day—you can only set the number of days that you need to prepare the order.

You need to set up shipping preparation time on all days, even days you do not offer shipping on.