Block Delivery Dates on Shopify — Blackout Calendars
Customers Are Selecting Dates You Can’t Fulfil. Every Bank Holiday. Every Closure.
Flare lets you block any date — bank holidays, courier non-collection days, Christmas closures — so customers only ever see dates your operation can actually deliver on. Set once, runs automatically.
Why unblocked dates cost more than the failed delivery
Your Christmas closure runs 23rd December to 3rd January. Without Flare, a customer orders on 22nd December for delivery on 27th — a date your team isn’t there and your courier isn’t collecting. The order places normally. You find out when it doesn’t move. With Flare, you set the closure rule once. Every year, those dates are hidden automatically — no reminders, no manual updates, no one responsible for remembering before the rush.
Your courier doesn’t collect on bank holidays. Your kitchen closes on Sundays. Your team doesn’t ship between Christmas and New Year. Shopify has no way to reflect any of this at checkout. Customers select dates your operation can’t fulfil, orders place normally, and you find out when something goes wrong — a failed delivery, an angry email, a reship that costs more than the original order.
The cost isn’t just the failed delivery. It’s the customer who placed it. A customer who ordered for Christmas Eve and received nothing until January has had an experience that’s hard to recover from. At low volume these feel like isolated incidents. At scale — across every bank holiday, every closure period, every Sunday when your courier doesn’t collect — they’re a consistent source of preventable damage to your brand.
The alternative most merchants use isn’t a solution — it’s a note on the product page, a banner on the homepage, or a member of the team manually emailing customers who order on wrong dates. Each of these is a workaround that requires ongoing effort and still fails occasionally. Blocked dates in Flare are a rule. Set once, applied automatically, every time.
Block any date. Set once. Never think about it again.
Block specific dates, recurring days or date ranges
Block a single date — Good Friday this year. Block a recurring day — every Sunday, permanently. Block a date range — 23rd December to 3rd January, applied automatically every year. Rules stack: a bank holiday block applies on top of your Sunday block on top of your Christmas closure. Customers see the result — a calendar with only dates you can fulfil — without seeing any of the logic behind it.
Apply different blocked dates by zone or shipping method
Not all blocked dates apply everywhere. A Scottish bank holiday doesn’t affect your London deliveries. A courier non-collection day applies to DPD orders but not click-and-collect. Flare lets you apply blocked date rules globally or by delivery zone and shipping method — so the right dates are blocked for the right customers without over-restricting anyone unnecessarily.
Blocked dates update automatically — no manual management
Once a rule is set, it runs. Your Christmas closure is blocked every year without anyone remembering to update it. Your bank holiday calendar updates automatically for recurring rules. If a courier announces an unexpected non-collection day, add it once and every customer who tries to select that date sees it removed from their calendar immediately. No weekly maintenance. No team member responsible for keeping it current.
Three types of failed delivery that stop happening.
Bank holiday orders stop placing on days you can’t fulfil
Every UK bank holiday, every regional public holiday, every day your courier doesn’t collect — blocked automatically from checkout. Customers who try to select those dates see them removed from the calendar. No orders place on dates your operation can’t handle.
Christmas and closure periods managed once — forever
Set your Christmas closure rule once. Every year, those dates disappear from your checkout calendar in the weeks before the rush — automatically, without a reminder, without a team member responsible for updating it. The same applies to summer closures, refurbishment periods, or any planned downtime.
Courier non-collection days never reach your fulfilment team
DPD doesn’t collect from your Highland zone on Thursdays. Royal Mail doesn’t run on bank holidays. Add those rules once and they apply to every relevant order automatically. Your fulfilment team stops receiving orders they can’t dispatch — because those dates were never selectable at checkout.
“Flare has been incredibly helpful in streamlining our checkout process, providing features we’ve been searching for for years. These solutions have not only made the checkout process much easier and less confusing for our customers, but have eliminated countless hours of customer service work once orders are placed.”
Blocked dates — answered.
Shopify’s native shipping settings don’t let you block specific dates from the checkout calendar. There’s no way to hide bank holidays, closure periods or courier non-collection days natively. Flare adds a delivery date picker with full blackout calendar control — block specific dates, recurring days, or date ranges. Customers only ever see dates your operation can actually fulfil.
No. Recurring rules apply automatically — your Christmas closure blocks the same date range every year without any manual update. Bank holiday rules for recurring public holidays apply automatically. One-off dates like an unexpected courier non-collection day can be added in seconds and take effect immediately. Once the rules are set, they run without maintenance.
Yes. Apply blocked date rules globally or by delivery zone and shipping method. A Scottish bank holiday can be blocked for Highland DPD orders without affecting your London next-day customers. A courier non-collection day can apply to one shipping method without restricting others. Rules stack — zone blocks apply on top of global blocks automatically.
Yes — if you configure blocked dates to apply to subscriptions. Flare gives you control over which rules apply to subscription renewals. Most brands apply blocked dates to subscriptions so renewals don’t land on closure periods or bank holidays. If a renewal falls on a blocked date, Flare automatically reschedules to the next available date and notifies the customer.
Stop Customers Selecting Dates You Can’t Fulfil — Automatically.
Set your blocked date rules once. Bank holidays, closure periods, courier non-collection days — all hidden from checkout automatically, every time, without manual management.
7-day free trial · Assisted setup included
Most brands are live within a day. No developer required.