How to Set Up Shopify Local Delivery Date Scheduling

Your customer lives 3 miles from your shop. They order at 11am. They want the product delivered this afternoon. Shopify’s native local delivery setting lets you offer local delivery as a shipping method — but it doesn’t let the customer choose when. No date selection. No time slot. No cut-off time that prevents same-day orders after your driver has left.

For stores offering local delivery — bakeries, florists, meal prep brands, butchers, gift shops — the delivery date is the product. A cake that arrives tomorrow when the birthday is today is a failed order. Local delivery without date scheduling is a promise without a plan.

What Shopify’s native local delivery doesn’t do

Shopify lets you define a local delivery radius and set a flat rate. That’s it. It doesn’t offer:

• Date selection — customers can’t choose when they want their local delivery
• Time slots — no AM/PM or hourly window selection
• Cut-off times — no logic to remove same-day delivery after your driver’s departure
• Capacity limits — no daily cap on how many local deliveries you can handle
• Zone-level rules — the same rate and availability applies to your entire radius

For stores doing 5 local deliveries a day, this might be manageable. For stores doing 50, it’s a spreadsheet and a prayer.

How Flare handles local delivery scheduling

Flare’s store pickup and local delivery feature adds the scheduling layer that Shopify’s native setup is missing — date selection, time slots, cut-offs, capacity limits and zone rules.

Date and time slot selection. Customers choose a delivery date and time slot — AM/PM, hourly windows, or custom named slots like “Morning (9am–12pm)” or “Afternoon (1pm–5pm).” The slots you configure are the slots they see.

Same-day cut-off times. Your driver leaves at 2pm. After 2pm, same-day local delivery disappears from the checkout and the next available date shows instead. Flare applies cut-off times per delivery method — so same-day, next-day and standard delivery each have their own deadline.

See how local delivery scheduling works in Flare →

Daily capacity limits. Your van fits 30 deliveries. Delivery 31 would mean a second run or a late delivery. Flare’s order capacity limits close a date when it reaches your daily cap. Customers see the next available date. No overselling your delivery capacity.

Zone-based delivery rules. Not every address in your radius gets the same service. Customers within 5 miles might get same-day delivery. Customers 5–15 miles out might get next-day only. Flare applies postcode or radius-based zone rules so each zone gets its own delivery dates, time slots, rates and methods.

National shipping from the same app. Most local delivery apps are local-only. If you also ship nationally, you need a second app with a separate zone configuration. Flare handles both — local delivery with time slots AND national shipping with postcode zones, transit times and carrier integration — from one rules engine. One app. One configuration.

“Daniel and his team have been extremely helpful and supportive helping us to set up the date picker on our website. They helped to navigate and organise our extensive postcode list, and our complex delivery and order cut off schedule without hesitation. We would highly recommend Flare to anyone wanting a customisable date picker.”

— The Whole Bowl Co, Australia

Blocked dates for local delivery

Bank holidays, driver days off, vehicle servicing days — blocked dates remove them from the customer calendar automatically. Your local delivery schedule reflects your actual operation, not a generic 7-day calendar.

Per-product local delivery rules

Some products are available for local delivery only — fresh cakes, hot meals, fragile items. Others ship nationally. Flare shows or hides the local delivery option by product, collection or cart contents. A customer ordering a birthday cake sees local delivery and pickup. A customer ordering a shelf-stable gift box sees national shipping. Both in the same checkout.

700+ Shopify brands trust Flare for delivery scheduling — including local delivery specialists managing time slots, capacity and cut-offs daily. 99.8% order accuracy.

Set up local delivery scheduling on your Shopify store

Flare adds date selection, time slots, cut-offs and capacity limits to Shopify local delivery — no code required. Most stores are live within a day.

Start free trial → | Book a call →