This document outlines a specific feature of Order Delivery, read about all the features in our overview.
To show accurate dates in the delivery/pickup calendar and in estimated delivery/pickup text at checkout, Order Delivery for WooCommerce needs to know which days you pick orders, cut-off times for those days, and your lead time.
“Picking” means the time your business spends preparing an order before it is shipped or ready for customer pickup.
Where to configure:
WooCommerce > Settings > Delivery & Pickup Dates > Picking
Configuring Picking Days and Cut-off Times
Order picking days
Turn on the weekdays when you prepare orders (e.g. Mon–Fri). Only these days count as “working days” for lead time and for the first date you can ship or have an order ready for pickup. At least one day must be enabled.
Order picking cut-off time
This is the default cut-off time for all picking days. If a customer places an order after this time on a given picking day, that day is not used for processing that order – so the first possible “picking complete” date moves to the next picking day.
Example: cut-off 14:00 and order at 15:00 on Tuesday → Tuesday doesn’t count; the first picking date is the next picking day (e.g. Wednesday).
Per-day cut-off time
In the Order picking days table, each day has an optional Cut-off time field. If you set a time for a day, it overrides the global “Order picking cut-off time” for that day only. Leave a day’s cut-off blank to use the global default for that day.
Disable specific dates
Use the Disable specific dates button to block picking on specific dates (e.g. holidays). Those dates are excluded from picking-day and lead-time calculations, so they never count as a valid “picking” day.
Configuring Lead Time
Lead time is configured using the Lead time in days field.
This is the minimum number of picking days you need to process an order before it can ship or be ready for pickup. Only picking days count; weekends or other non-picking days do not.
- 0 = same picking day can be the first shipping/ready date (subject to cut-off).
- 1 = at least one picking day of processing (e.g., order Monday → first shipping date is Tuesday if Monday is a picking day and before cut-off, or the next picking day if after cut-off or Monday isn’t a picking day).
- 2 = at least two picking days, and so on.
Example: Mon–Fri picking, cut-off 14:00, lead time 1:
- Order Monday 10:00 → Monday counts as day 1 → first date is Monday.
- Order Monday 15:00 → Monday is past cut-off, so Monday doesn’t count → first date is Tuesday (first picking day after today that “counts”).
- Disabled picking dates never count as a picking day in this calculation.
How These Settings Affect Date Calculation
First “shipping” (picking complete) date
The plugin starts from the order date/time and steps forward day by day. For each day it checks:
- Is this day a picking day?
- Is it not a disabled picking date?
- If it’s “today”, is the order time before that day’s cut-off (or the global cut-off)?
Only when all are true does it count that day toward lead time. After Lead time in days picking days have been counted, that date is the first date that the order can be considered “picked” and ready to ship or for pickup.
Earliest selectable delivery/pickup date
The calendar and estimates use this first date as the starting point. The earliest date a customer can choose for delivery or pickup is then determined by:
- The first date (above), and
- Your delivery days or pickup days and advanced delivery/pickup ranges (e.g. “0–2 days”) configured under Delivery Scheduling and Pickup Scheduling.
So: Picking defines when the order can be “ready”; Delivery/Pickup Scheduling defines when it can actually be delivered or picked up after that. Lead time is applied only on picking days; delivery/pickup ranges and delivery/pickup days are applied on top of the first shipping date.