Delivery Date Rules

Delivery date rules let you decide which delivery dates customers can choose at checkout. For each day of the week, you set an order cut-off time and the number of days it takes to deliver an order placed before or after it. You also choose the days of the week you deliver on and how far ahead customers can choose a date. B2B Wave then works out the earliest date each order can arrive and only accepts delivery dates that fit your schedule.

You can create as many rules as you need, for example one for local customers and one for customers further away. One rule can be your default, and you can assign a different rule to specific customers.

NOTE: Delivery date rules are not enabled on new accounts. Contact our support team to have them enabled on your account.

Enabling Delivery Date Rules

To start using delivery date rules, follow these steps:

Step 1. Contact our support team to enable delivery date rules on your account. Once they are enabled, “Delivery Date Rules” appears under the Settings menu.

Step 2. Go to Settings >Profile and select the “Application configuration” tab.

Step 3. In the “Orders” section, check “Ask for Delivery Date by Customers for Orders.” If every order must have a delivery date, also check “Require Delivery Date at order checkout.” Then, click “Save.” Learn more about these settings here.

NOTE: Rules only check a delivery date that the customer enters. If “Require Delivery Date at order checkout” is unchecked, customers can still place orders without a delivery date.

How Delivery Date Rules Work

When a customer orders, B2B Wave uses their rule to work out which delivery dates to offer:

• It looks up the settings for the day of the week the customer is ordering on
• It compares the current time with that day’s cut-off time
• It adds that day’s number of delivery days, for ordering before or after the cut-off, to today’s date. The result is the earliest delivery date
• From that date on, it offers each of your available delivery days until the end of the period set in “Show available dates within the next (days)”

For example, a rule has a cut-off time of 14:00 every day and delivers Monday to Friday:

• Monday is set to 1 day before the cut-off and 2 days after it. A customer who orders on Monday at 11:00 can choose Tuesday or any later delivery day. If they order at 15:00, the earliest date is Wednesday
• Friday is set to 3 days before the cut-off and 4 days after it. Orders placed on Friday before 14:00 can be delivered from Monday, and orders placed after 14:00 from Tuesday

Delivery days are calendar days, so weekends and days you don’t deliver on count toward the total. An order placed exactly at the cut-off time counts as placed before it.

NOTE: Cut-off times follow the time zone selected in the “Timezone” field under Settings >Profile (“Basic Info” tab). If no time zone is selected, cut-off times are applied in UTC.

Creating a Delivery Date Rule

To create a rule, follow these steps:

Step 1. Go to Settings >Delivery Date Rules and click “+New delivery date rule.”

Step 2. On the “New delivery date rule” page, fill in the necessary information. The page starts with the settings of your default rule, or with a sample Monday to Friday schedule if you don’t have a default rule yet.

Specifically, here you need to define the following:

Below each delivery days box, a hint shows the day of the week the order would be delivered on (e.g., “Next day: Tuesday”). If that day isn’t one of your available delivery days, the hint reads “No delivery on” followed by the day, in red.

Step 3. Test the rule, if needed, as described below.

Step 4. Click “Save.”

NOTE: For all seven days of the week, each number of delivery days must land on one of your available delivery days. Otherwise, the rule isn’t saved and an error tells you which one to fix, for example: “On Friday, placing an order after the cut-off time results in delivery on Sunday, which is not an available delivery day.”

Testing a Delivery Date Rule

The “Test rule” section shows the delivery dates a customer would be offered if they ordered at a given date and time. It uses the values currently on the page, so you can try changes before saving them.

Step 1. Select the order date in the “Date” field. Leave it empty to test from today.

Step 2. Select the time of the order in the “Time” field.

Step 3. Click “Show the available dates for the next 14 days.” The number on the button matches the “Show available dates within the next (days)” setting.

B2B Wave lists the first five available delivery dates. When there are more, “First 5 delivery days shown.” appears above the list.

NOTE: If the test shows “No available dates found for the given criteria.”, customers using this rule can’t place an order with a delivery date, and if “Require Delivery Date at order checkout” is checked, they can’t place orders at all. This happens when no available delivery days are checked, or when “Show available dates within the next (days)” is shorter than the number of delivery days. B2B Wave saves such a rule without a warning, so test it before saving.

Setting the Default Delivery Date Rule

The default rule applies to every customer who doesn’t have a rule of their own. Creating a rule doesn’t make it the default, even if it’s your first one. Until you set a default, only the customers you assign a rule to get a delivery schedule.

Step 1. Go to Settings >Delivery Date Rules.

Step 2. Click “Set default” in the “Default” column of the rule you want to use. The default rule shows a check mark in that column. Only one rule can be the default, so setting a new one replaces the previous default. The “Total Customers using Rule” column shows how many customers use each rule. For the default rule, this includes every customer without a rule of their own. Click the number to open the customer list for that rule.

Assigning a Rule to a Customer

To give a customer a different schedule from your default rule, follow these steps:

Step 1. Go to the Customers menu and click on the customer.

Step 2. On the “Editing customer” page, stay on the “Customer details” tab and select a rule from the “Delivery Date Rules” drop-down menu. To have the customer follow your default rule, select “Use default schedule.”

Step 3. Click “Save.

To list the customers that use a rule, go to the Customers menu and select the rule in the “Delivery date rule” filter. Selecting your default rule also lists the customers who have no rule of their own. The customer import and export files don’t include delivery date rules, so rules are assigned from each customer’s page.

NOTE: The “Delivery Date Rules” field only appears once you have created at least one rule and checked “Ask for Delivery Date by Customers for Orders.” Sub-customers don’t inherit their parent customer’s rule, so assign one to each sub-customer that needs the same schedule.

How Delivery Dates Appear at Checkout

At checkout, customers choose a date in the “Delivery date” field. Depending on your storefront design, the calendar either only lets them pick dates from their rule, or lets them pick any date and checks it when they place the order.

Either way, B2B Wave checks the date again when the customer places the order, using the time at that moment. If the date is no longer available, for example because the cut-off time passed while the customer was at checkout, the order isn’t placed and the customer sees the message “Delivery date … is not available,” with the date shown in your store’s date format. They can then choose another date and place the order again.

Delivery date rules apply to orders placed through the storefront checkout. They don’t apply to:

• Orders you create or edit from the Admin Panel, where you can set any delivery date
• Saved orders that a customer confirms several at a time from their unsubmitted orders

NOTE: Delivery date rules are switched off on the storefront when the “Custom code for <body> section (before closing)” field (Settings >Profile, “Advanced” tab) contains the word “date” anywhere, including inside other words such as “update.” This prevents conflicts with scripts that change the delivery date field. When this happens, the “Delivery Date Rules” field also disappears from the customer page. Contact our support team if you use custom code and want to use delivery date rules.

Editing, Copying, and Deleting Delivery Date Rules

You can manage your rules from Settings >Delivery Date Rules:

The “Delete delivery date rule?” window shows how many customers use the rule and offers three options:

NOTE: If you delete your default rule, customers without a rule of their own have no delivery schedule until you set another default. The window above only counts customers assigned to the rule on their customer page, so it doesn’t appear when you delete a default rule that no customer has been assigned to directly.

How Delivery Date Rules and Standing Orders Work Together

Standing orders use the customer’s delivery date rule, or your default rule, to set delivery dates. When you create or edit a standing order from the Standing Orders menu, the “Schedule By” drop-down menu offers “Delivery Date” once you have at least one delivery date rule:

Click “Show creation plan for the next 8 orders” to preview the order and delivery dates before saving.

NOTE: The creation plan works out delivery dates as if each order were placed at 12:00. “Order Date” standing orders are created at the start of the day, so when a cut-off time is earlier than 12:00, the order can get an earlier delivery date than the plan shows. Contact our support team if you need help setting up your delivery schedule.