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

Requirements

Delivery date picker must be enabled.
You can check this setting in Zapiet - Pickup + Delivery > Settings > Local delivery, under Date and time pickers.

Add preparation times

Click Locations.
Click the location name you want to edit.
Go to Local Delivery and click Edit settings.
In the Delivery 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 delivery.
By default we set a minimum advance notice of 1 day.
Choose how many hours, minutes or days of preparation time you need.
1 day is not the same as 24 hours.
- 0 days shows the first available slot
- 1 day blocks same-day delivery
- 2 days blocks next-day delivery
- 24 hours is exactly 24 hours from the customer ordering
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 delivery on.

You can now test the preparation times in the widget.

Delivery is offered every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.
Customers can order for same-day delivery, but you need 4 hours to prepare the order.
Customers who order after 5:00 PM will need to order for the next day.

Set the delivery days by following our Configure delivery days article.
For your relevant delivery days (Monday, Wednesday, Friday):
- Add a preparation time of 4 hours.
- Enable a cut-off time, and set it at 5:00 PM.
- Set the preparation time after the cut-off time to 1 day, to block same-day delivery.
For the days when you don't offer delivery (Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday), change the default setting to no preparation time.

Delivery is available Monday - Friday.
Customers can order for next-day delivery until 4:00 PM.
After 4:00 PM customers can order for the day after tomorrow.
Customers ordering after the cut-off time on Friday can't order for delivery until Tuesday.

Set the delivery days by following our Configure delivery days article.
For all your delivery days (Monday - Friday):
- Add a preparation time of 1 day, to block same-day delivery.
- Enable a cut-off time, and set it at 4:00 PM.
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 delivery.
On Friday, after the cut-off time, add a preparation time of 4 days. This will block out Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday delivery, 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 used by 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 or hours that you need to prepare the order.

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