How Pre-orders Work
- Customers can choose a future date and time at checkout
- Pickup and delivery have separate pre-order settings
- Customers can only choose from the days and times you make available
- Pre-orders appear in your storekit order dashboard like regular orders
- Advanced slot-level throttling can limit the total number of items and total order value allowed in a slot
Before You Set Up Pre-orders
Before enabling pre-orders, check your store opening hours. If your opening hours are not set, your store may be treated as open 24 hours by default.How to Enable Pre-orders
1
Open Store Settings
From your storekit dashboard, go to Stores and select the store you want to update.
2
Go to Pre-Orders
From the settings menu, open Pre-Orders.
3
Enable Pre-orders
Turn on Accept pre-orders.This allows customers to order in advance for a future date and time.
4
Choose Whether to Accept Orders Outside Opening Hours
If Also accept pre-orders outside of opening hours is enabled, customers can place future orders even when your store is currently closed.
5
Choose Pickup or Delivery
Use the Pickup and Delivery tabs to configure each fulfilment type separately.Pickup and delivery can have different slot lengths, capacity limits, scheduling rules, and available times.
6
Configure Slot Length
Choose how each day should be split into time slots.For example, you can split the day into 15-minute slots so customers choose from times such as 08:00–08:15, 08:15–08:30, and so on.
7
Choose Whether to Allow ASAP Orders
Use Also let customers order for ASAP without picking a slot if you want customers to place immediate orders as well as scheduled pre-orders.If this is turned off, customers must choose an available time slot.The ASAP option only appears on the current day, and only when the next available time slot is within the threshold set just below the toggle: Show the ASAP option when the next available slot is within [N] of the current time. The choices are fixed — Always (no limit), 15 minutes, 30 minutes, 45 minutes, 1 hour, 1.5 hours, 2 hours — and it defaults to 45 minutes. If the next available slot is further away than the threshold, customers have to choose a scheduled time instead. The threshold applies to every fulfilment type for the store.
Because ASAP availability is based on the first fulfillment slot — not your venue’s opening time — customers may be able to place ASAP orders up to a full threshold (45 minutes by default) before the first slot. If that slot is earlier than your opening time, orders can arrive before you officially open. See How ASAP Delivery Interacts with Opening Hours for how to prevent this.
8
Set Capacity Per Slot
Under Capacity per slot, set how many orders can be accepted in each time slot.For example, setting this to 1 means only one order can be accepted per slot.
9
Configure Advanced Slot-level Throttling
Use Advanced: Slot-level throttling if you need more control over how much can be accepted in each slot.This lets you limit a slot by:
- total number of items
- total order value
10
Set Scheduling Rules
Under Scheduling, choose:
- How many days ahead customers can order
- How much notice customers need before the earliest available pickup or delivery time
11
Review the Customer Preview
Use Preview: what customers will see to check the time slots that will appear at checkout.The preview generates slots from the slot length and the windows of the first available day, so it shows the most slots a day can offer. It does not apply preparation time, capacity already used, or snoozes — see Troubleshooting: expected time slots are missing if the live checkout offers fewer slots than the preview.
12
Set Pickup or Delivery Times
Under Pickup times or Delivery times, choose which days and times customers can place pre-orders.You can expand each day and add the available time windows for that fulfilment type.
13
Save Changes
Click Save to apply the change.Customers will only see pre-order options once the setting has been saved.
Pickup and Delivery Settings
Pickup and delivery are configured separately. Use the Pickup tab to control collection pre-orders, including pickup time slots and pickup capacity. Use the Delivery tab to control delivery pre-orders, including delivery time slots and delivery capacity. This lets you offer different availability for each fulfilment type.Limiting When an Order Can Be Collected
A common point of confusion is the difference between menu category hours and pickup or delivery time windows. They control two different things:- Category hours (set per category on the menu — see Category Hours) decide when a category is visible and orderable. They are evaluated against the current time, so they stop customers placing new orders for that category outside its hours. This is the setting to use if you want to stop new orders during a period — for example pausing a category during a lunch rush. Category hours do not restrict which pickup or collection time the customer can then choose.
- Pickup and delivery time windows (under Pre-Orders) decide when an order can actually be collected or delivered. These are the windows customers pick their slot from.
- Go to Stores → your store → Settings → Pre-Orders.
- Open the Pickup or Delivery tab.
- Under Pickup times or Delivery times, expand the day and set its time window. You can add more than one window per day with Add another time interval — for example 07:30–10:45 and 11:00–14:30 — so slots are only offered inside those intervals.
There is currently no single “this item is only collectable before X” setting. The times a customer can order for are the combination of the category’s hours (when the category can be ordered) and the pickup or delivery time windows (when it can be collected). Set both to match if you want a category to be orderable and collectable only within the same period. For example, Breakfast category hours of 07:30–10:45 stop new breakfast orders after 10:45, but a Pickup times window of 07:30–10:45 is what stops customers choosing a later collection time.
What Customers Can Do
When pre-orders are enabled, customers can:- Select a future date and time from the available slots
- Choose pickup or delivery if both fulfilment types are enabled
- Place orders outside current opening hours if this setting is enabled
- Place ASAP orders if ASAP ordering is enabled (based on preparation time)
When to Use Pre-orders
Use pre-orders when:- Customers need to order ahead for pickup or delivery
- Your venue prepares food in advance
- You want to accept orders outside current opening hours
- You need better control over future order volume
- You offer catering, large orders, or scheduled fulfilment
Understanding Slot Times in Your Dashboard
When a customer places a pre-order, the time shown in the order details is the start of the delivery or pickup window they selected — not the end. For example, if your store uses 30-minute slots and an order shows 12:00, the customer’s delivery window is 12:00–12:30. This time is referred to as the requested fulfilment time — it is the beginning of the slot the customer chose at checkout.Troubleshooting: expected time slots are missing
Pre-order slots are generated from one place only: the time windows saved for that weekday under Pickup times or Delivery times. Everything else — preparation time, capacity, snoozes — can only remove slots from that list; nothing adds slots back. Walk these checks in order. Unless stated otherwise, every setting is at Stores → your store → Settings → Pre-Orders.1
Check you are looking at the fulfilment type the customer used
Pickup and delivery have completely separate windows, slot lengths and capacity settings — use the Pickup and Delivery tabs.In-store ordering (QR / table) uses the Pickup times windows, but takes its preparation time from the Delivery figure in step 4.
2
Check the weekday's time windows
Under Pickup times (or Delivery times), expand the day. Slots exist only inside the windows saved there, so two windows leave a hard gap between them — 09:00–12:00 plus 13:00–17:00 offers nothing between 12:00 and 13:00.A day whose Unavailable toggle is on shows a Closed badge and offers no slots at all.
3
Check the window is long enough for the slot length
Slots are cut from the start of each window in steps of the slot length, and only whole steps are offered:
- A window shorter than one slot produces no slots — 12:00–12:05 with 10-minute slots gives nothing.
- A remainder too short for another whole slot is dropped — 12:00–12:45 with 10-minute slots ends with the 12:30–12:40 slot, and the last five minutes are unbookable.
4
Check preparation time — this is what usually removes the first slots of the day
For today only, storekit takes the current time, adds your preparation time, and removes every slot that starts before it. Preparation time is not on the Pre-Orders page: it lives at Stores → your store → Settings → Operations → Preparation time, which has a Delivery row and a Pickup row (order-and-pay stores show a single Average prep time row instead).
- Pickup slots use the Pickup figure.
- Delivery slots use the Delivery figure plus a fixed 15 minutes of travel allowance. That 15 minutes is not configurable and appears nowhere in the dashboard.
- Even with a figure of 0, the earliest slot is still about 5 minutes away — storekit applies a five-minute floor.
- If preparation time pushes the earliest slot past midnight, today has no slots at all.
5
Check Scheduling — whole days, not individual slots
Under Scheduling, Customers can order up to [N] days ahead and need at least [N] day(s) notice. A notice value of 1 or more removes today entirely, and nothing is bookable beyond the days-ahead value. See Customers can’t order for today.
6
Check Specific pre-order days
Specific pre-order days is an allow-list: as soon as any dates are selected, only those dates are bookable and every other day disappears. Dates in the past are ignored.
7
Check whether the store is snoozed or offline
While the store is snoozed, pre-orders are only offered if Allow pre-orders when store is snoozed is on — and then every slot that starts before the snooze ends is removed, and the earliest bookable date moves past the snooze. With that setting off, a snoozed store offers no pre-order slots at all. A store that is offline accepts no orders of any kind. See Disable Ordering.
8
Check capacity for the specific slot
A slot disappears once it is full: Accept up to [N] orders per slot under Capacity per slot, plus the total-items and revenue caps under Advanced: slot-level throttling.
- Orders that are rejected or archived stop counting; refunded and cancelled orders still count.
- A checkout started in the last 5 minutes also holds the slot until it completes or drops off.
- The item and revenue caps add the current customer’s basket to the running total, so the same slot can show for a small basket and be hidden for a large one. See Why are some timeslots missing? for a worked example.
- On the Delivery tab an individual day can override the defaults: expand the day and open Slot overrides (Slot duration, Max orders per slot, Max items per slot, Revenue cap per slot). Days with an override show a Custom badge.
9
Know what opening hours do — and don't do
Weekly opening hours and dated Special Opening Hours are not used to build the slot list, so they are never the reason a slot is absent. They are checked when the customer submits the order: a pre-order outside a dated special-hours window is rejected at checkout, and the customer sees no message explaining why. If slots are present but orders fail, look there rather than at your Pre-Orders windows.Hours do block ordering at the store level, though: while your store is closed, it takes no orders at all unless Also accept pre-orders outside of opening hours is on. That hides the whole ordering flow rather than individual slots.
10
If it is the ASAP option that is missing
ASAP is only offered on the current day, and only when the first available slot falls inside the threshold. Both controls are on the fulfilment tab: Also let customers order for ASAP without picking a slot, then Show the ASAP option when the next available slot is within [N] of the current time. The threshold list is fixed — Always (no limit), 15 minutes, 30 minutes, 45 minutes, 1 hour, 1.5 hours, 2 hours — it defaults to 45 minutes and applies to every fulfilment type for the store.
11
Verify with the preview, then in the customer view
Preview: what customers will see renders the slot length against the windows of the first available day only. It deliberately ignores preparation time, capacity already used, snoozes and opening hours, so it shows the maximum set of slots.If a slot appears in the preview but not at checkout, the cause is one of steps 4–8 — start with preparation time. When a day’s slots have all been filtered out, customers see “Sorry, no slots left today” in the time dropdown.Availability is cached in the customer’s browser, so after saving a change a customer may need to hard refresh the ordering page before the new slots appear.
Troubleshooting
Customers can’t order for today
If same-day orders won’t go through, there is no order cut-off setting to change — storekit has no cut-off time control anywhere in the dashboard. Instead, check these settings, in this order, under Stores → your store → Settings → Pre-Orders (check the Pickup and Delivery tabs separately):- Days notice is 1 or more. Under Scheduling the control reads Customers can order up to [N] days ahead and need at least [N] day(s) notice. If the notice value is 1 or more, today is removed and the earliest available day is tomorrow (or later). Set it to 0 to allow same-day pickup or delivery.
- The day’s pickup or delivery end time has already passed. Each day’s time window (the to end time under Pickup times or Delivery times) only generates slots up to that time. If it is already later than the day’s end time, no more slots appear for today.
- The day is set to Unavailable. If a day’s Unavailable toggle is on, no slots are offered for that day at all.
- “Specific pre-order days” does not include today. If you have set specific pre-order days, only those dates are bookable — if today is not listed, it is closed to pre-orders.
- Preparation time pushes past the last slot. The fulfilment prep time is added to the current time to find the earliest slot. If that earliest slot falls after the day’s last window, today has no bookable slots left.
Pre-order availability is cached in the customer’s browser. After you change any of these settings and save, a customer may need to hard refresh the ordering page (or reopen it) before the newly available days and slots appear.
Why are some timeslots missing?
For the full list of filters that can remove a slot, walk Troubleshooting: expected time slots are missing. Two settings are the usual cause: the slot value cap in slot-level throttling, and the per-day pickup or delivery end times. 1. The slot has hit its value cap (slot-level throttling) If you set a total order value limit under Advanced: Slot-level throttling, storekit adds up the value of every order already in that slot and hides the slot when the new customer’s basket would push the running total over the limit. Two things make this easy to misread:- The check depends on the incoming basket’s value, so the same slot can still show for a customer with a small basket while being hidden for a customer with a large one — at the exact same time.
- The limit is only enforced once the slot already has at least one order. The first order into an empty slot always goes through, even if it alone exceeds the limit.
Worked example — value cap of £100 on a slot
- The 12:00–12:30 slot already holds orders totalling £80.
- A customer with a £30 basket does not see the slot: £80 + £30 = £110, which is over £100.
- A customer with a £15 basket does see it: £80 + £15 = £95, which is under £100.
- If the slot had been empty, even a £250 basket would have gone through — the cap only starts applying after the first order lands.
How do I limit how many of one specific product can be pre-ordered?
Capacity per slot and slot-level throttling limit every order in a slot combined — they cannot cap how many of one specific product are sold.To restrict how many of a single product go out (on pre-orders or otherwise), turn on Track Inventory for that product and set its stock count. The product is hidden automatically once it reaches zero, while the rest of your menu stays available. See Inventory Management.
Customers cannot see pre-order slots
Check that Accept pre-orders is enabled and that the relevant pickup or delivery times have been added. Also check that the fulfilment type is enabled under Settings > Operations.Customers cannot see delivery pre-order slots
Check that delivery is enabled under Settings > Operations > Fulfilment. If the store is set to pickup only, customers will not see delivery as a fulfilment option even if delivery pre-order times have been added.Customers cannot select the expected time
Check your slot length, capacity per slot, scheduling notice, and pickup or delivery times. If a slot has reached its capacity, it will no longer be available for new orders.Does refunding or cancelling an order free up the slot?
Refunding an order returns the customer’s payment, but it does not reopen the pre-order slot. The order still counts towards that slot’s capacity, so the slot can stay unavailable even after the refund goes through. Cancelling an order does not reopen the slot either — cancelled orders are still counted against the slot. A pre-order slot only stops counting an order when that order is rejected (declined) or archived. When an order is rejected, its capacity is released immediately on storekit’s side, so the slot can be booked again straight away. This is separate from the 3–5 business days it usually takes for a refunded payment to appear back on the customer’s statement.To reopen the exact slot for a test or replacement order, reject the original order rather than only refunding it, or move the order to a different time by clicking its scheduled time in the order details (see Understanding Slot Times in Your Dashboard). Moving the order frees the slot it used to occupy.
A slot still isn’t available after a refund
Even once capacity has been released, a slot may still not appear for a new order. Common reasons:- The slot has been filled by other orders. Capacity is counted across every order in the slot, including capacity per slot and the slot-level throttling limits for total items and total order value — not just the refunded order.
- The slot is in the past or too soon. Slots that have already passed, or that fall inside your scheduling notice (lead time) or preparation time, will not show. Slots also can’t be booked beyond how many days ahead you allow.
- Your store is closed right now. Opening hours don’t remove individual slots from the list, but unless Also accept pre-orders outside of opening hours is enabled, a closed store takes no orders at all while it is closed. See Know what opening hours do — and don’t do.
- A very recent order is still holding the slot. An order placed in the last few minutes that hasn’t finished payment can briefly reserve the slot before it either completes or drops off.
Related
- Opening Hours — manage when your store is open for orders
- Enabling Pickup — enable pickup/collection orders for your store
- Enabling Delivery — enable delivery orders for your store
- Delivery Zones — configure where delivery is available
- Managing Live Orders — handle incoming orders in real time