How to use preparation time

This feature allows you to define the time you need to prepare an order. This is particularly useful when you're allowing same day collection or delivery.

By default, a time slot will become unavailable when a customer visits the site after the start time of the time slot. Consider having the following time slot options.

If a customer comes on your website at 9 AM. The first option "8:00 AM - 10:00 AM" will be unavailable on the same day while all the order options will be available.

This feature allows you to tweak this behaviour. For example, if you need to allow at least 2 hours and 30 minutes to get the order ready for collection, you could define the Time slots preparation time this way:

Using the same example, for customer coming at 9 AM, the time slots "8:00 AM - 10:00 AM" and "10:00 AM - 12:00 PM" will appear unavailable.

And from 10:30 AM, "12:00 PM - 2:00 PM" will also become unavailable.

Hide unavailable slots

You also have the option to hide the unavailable time slots in case you don’t want to show them in the store:

Exceptions

If needed, you can define different preparation times per time slot. How can this be useful? It can help disable the first available slot for orders placed while the store is closed.

Use case:

Let's say customers place an order at 1:00 AM while the store is closed. They might select the first available delivery time window (9:00–10:00 AM). However, you still need at least one hour to prepare orders once the store opens at 9:00 AM.

At the same time, you want to keep this time window (9:00–10:00 AM) available for customers who place their orders before the store closes on that day. This way, you can prepare their order one day in advance and deliver it during the first available time window the next day.

To solve this, you can add an exception for any day that, based on the time your store closes, makes the first time slot unavailable if an order is placed after that time: Settings > Time slots > Time slots preparation time > Exceptions per time slot > Add exception