If you need additional time between a customer ordering and their pickup slot, you can add preparation times.
Requirements
Pickup date picker must be enabled.
You can check this setting in Zapiet - Pickup + Delivery > Settings > Locations > Edit Pickup Settings, under Date and time pickers.
Add preparation times
Click Locations.
Click the location name you want to edit.
Go to Store Pickup and click Edit settings.
In the Pickup 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 pickup.
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 pickup
2 days blocks next-day pickup
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 pickup on.
You can now test the preparation times in the widget.
Examples
Example 1
Pickup is offered every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.
Customers can order for same-day pickup, but you need 4 hours to prepare the order.
Customers who order after 5 PM will need to order for the next day.
Solution
Set your pickup days by following our Configuring pickup days article.
For your relevant pickup days (Monday, Wednesday, Friday):
Add a preparation time of 4 hours.
Enable a cut-off time, and set it at 5PM.
Set the preparation time after the cut-off time to 1 day, to block same-day pickup.
For the days when you don't offer pickup (Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday), change the default setting to no preparation time.
Example 2
Pickup is available Monday - Friday.
Customers can order for next-day pickup until 4PM.
After 4 PM customers can order for the day after tomorrow.
Customers ordering after the cut-off time on Friday can't order for pickup until Tuesday.
Solution
For all your pickup days (Monday - Friday):
Add a preparation time of 1 day, to block same-day pickup.
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 pickup.
On Friday, after the cut-off time, add a preparation time of 4 days. This will block out Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday pickup, 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.
Limitations
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.
Notes
You need to set up pickup preparation time on all days, even days you do not offer pickup on.