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Enable pre-orders to let customers place orders in advance for a future pickup or delivery time. This helps you manage demand, prepare ahead for busy periods, and control how many future orders can be accepted per time slot. Pre-orders are managed from your store settings and can be configured separately for pickup and delivery.

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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

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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.

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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.
The order must still be for an available pickup or delivery time.
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 when the next available time slot is within 45 minutes. If the next available slot is more than 45 minutes away, customers will need to choose a scheduled time instead.
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
These limits are checked across all orders in the slot, not per individual order.The first order in an empty slot will always go through, even if it exceeds these limits. The limits are then applied to any additional orders placed in the same slot.If you need to restrict the size or value of a single order, use the max order value setting instead.
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
For example, if customers can order up to 7 days ahead and need at least 1 day notice, a customer ordering on Monday would see Tuesday as the earliest available fulfilment day.
11

Review the Customer Preview

Use Preview: What customers will see to check the time slots that will appear at checkout.This preview helps confirm your slot length, capacity, and scheduling settings before saving.
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.

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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.

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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)

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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

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Troubleshooting

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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.

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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.

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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.
Pickup and delivery pre-orders are configured separately. Make sure you check both tabs if your store accepts both fulfilment types.