Operations & Integrations

Shopify Draft Orders with Delivery Dates

Phone Orders, Wholesale Orders, B2B Orders. All Without a Delivery Date.

Flare’s admin button applies your full delivery rules to any Shopify order — draft, manual or existing. The same zone logic, transit times and cut-off rules that run at checkout, available in the admin for every order your team creates.

Without Flare
Order typePhone order — draft created in Shopify admin
Delivery dateBlank or manually typed by staff
Zone rules appliedNo — staff may not know zone schedules
Ship dateNot calculated
Order tagsNot written
⚠ Inconsistent — depends on who took the call
With Flare
Order typePhone order — draft created in Shopify admin
Delivery dateSelected via Flare admin button
Zone rules appliedYes — same rules as checkout
Ship dateCalculated and written automatically
Order tagsDelivery date + ship date + zone written
✓ Accurate — same rules engine as online orders
99.8%
Order accuracy
vs ~90% industry benchmark
4–8 hrs
Saved per week
on manual date entry and corrections
700+
Shopify brands
processing $10M+ orders per month
Why It Matters

Why manual orders break the delivery date system you built at checkout

A wholesale customer calls to place an order. Your staff member creates a draft in Shopify admin and types in a delivery date — Thursday. Without Flare, they don’t know your Highland DPD zone only ships Monday to Wednesday. The order goes to the warehouse with Thursday as the delivery date. It can’t be met. With Flare, the staff member opens the Flare admin button, selects the customer’s postcode zone and shipping method, and sees the valid dates — Wednesday is the next achievable date. The date is written to the order with the correct ship date and zone data. Every system has the right information before the order leaves the draft stage.

Online orders get your full delivery rules at checkout — zone logic, transit times, cut-off calculations, blocked dates. Every date a customer selects has been validated against your actual operational constraints. The moment a staff member creates a manual order in Shopify admin, that system doesn’t exist. There’s no picker, no zone lookup, no cut-off check. The delivery date is whatever someone types into a text field — or nothing at all.

The inconsistency compounds across team members. Different staff apply different logic. Some add dates, some don’t. Some know the zone schedules, most don’t. The result is a portion of your order volume — potentially all of your B2B, wholesale and phone orders — carrying delivery data that’s either missing, wrong or formatted inconsistently. That data then flows downstream to your warehouse, your 3PL and your shipping calendar, where it causes the same problems as any other bad data: missed deadlines, failed deliveries and manual corrections.

The fix isn’t better staff training on zone schedules. It’s giving staff the same tool customers get at checkout — one that calculates the correct date automatically based on where the order is going and when it needs to ship.

How It Works

The same rules engine — available in Shopify admin.

Draft Order Created
Phone, wholesale, B2B or manual order
Flare Calculates
Zone + transit + cut-off applied
Data Written
Delivery date + ship date + zone on the order
01

Admin button available on any Shopify order

Flare adds an admin button directly in the Shopify order view — visible on draft orders, existing orders and any order your team creates manually. Staff don’t need to know zone schedules, transit times or cut-off rules. They open the Flare admin button, select the customer’s zone or enter their postcode, choose the shipping method, and Flare returns the valid delivery dates for that combination — the same calculation that runs at checkout.

02

Valid delivery dates calculated from your full rule set

The Flare admin button applies your complete rules engine to the order — postcode or ZIP zone lookup, zone-specific transit times, shipping day schedules, cut-off times and blocked dates. The dates returned are the same dates the customer would have seen at checkout. Staff select the appropriate date and Flare writes it to the order — along with the calculated ship date, shipping zone and method — as structured tags, attributes and metafields.

03

Draft order confirmed with complete delivery data

Once a delivery date is assigned through the Flare admin button, the draft order has the same structured delivery data as any online order — delivery date, ship date, shipping zone, transit days and shipping method all written automatically. The order feeds into Flare’s shipping calendar alongside online orders, passes the correct data to ShipStation or your 3PL, and triggers the same Shopify Flow automations. No separate queue for manual orders. No separate process for the warehouse.

What Changes

Three manual order problems that disappear.

Every order has accurate delivery data — regardless of how it was placed

Phone orders, wholesale orders, B2B orders and in-store orders all go through the same Flare rules engine as online orders. The delivery date on a manually created order is as accurate as one placed through your checkout. Your warehouse, 3PL and shipping calendar see a consistent set of orders — not a mix of validated online orders and manually entered guesses.

Staff don’t need to know your zone schedules

Zone rules, transit times, shipping day schedules and cut-off calculations are complex — and different for every region you serve. Expecting staff to apply them correctly when taking a phone order creates inconsistency. The Flare admin button does the calculation automatically. Staff see valid dates. They select the right one. The rules enforce themselves.

Manual orders feed into your fulfilment workflow automatically

A draft order with a Flare-calculated delivery date flows into your shipping calendar, generates the correct ship date and writes all structured data to order tags and attributes — the same way an online order does. Your warehouse team doesn’t need to handle manual orders differently. One view, one workflow, one source of truth for all order types.

Trusted at Scale
★★★★★
Complex shipping rules handled — including custom builds

“This app works amazingly for our perishable products. Both Alex and Daniel have been amazing at setting everything up with all the complicated shipping rules and even helped build something custom for the back end. We would highly recommend this app and team for all shipping needs.”

My Chicago Steak
United States · Shopify Plus
Common Questions

Draft orders and admin scheduling — answered.

Both. The Flare admin button is available on any Shopify order — draft orders being created, existing orders that need a delivery date assigned or updated, and orders where the date needs to be changed after placement. When a delivery date is assigned or updated through the admin button, all order tags, attributes and metafields update automatically.

No. Staff enter the customer’s postcode or ZIP code — or select a delivery zone — and Flare calculates valid delivery dates automatically based on the zone’s transit time, shipping day schedule and cut-off rules. The same logic that runs at checkout runs in the admin button. Staff see the available dates and select the right one — they don’t need to know the underlying zone rules.

Yes. Flare writes delivery date, calculated ship date, shipping zone, transit days and shipping method to order tags, attributes and metafields — identically to a checkout order. The order feeds into Flare’s shipping calendar, passes data to ShipStation and your 3PL, and triggers Shopify Flow automations in the same way as any online order.

Yes. Any order created through Shopify admin — including B2B portal orders, wholesale orders created by your sales team, and phone orders entered manually — can have a delivery date assigned through the Flare admin button. The same zone rules, transit times and cut-off logic apply regardless of the order source or channel.

Give Every Order Accurate Delivery Data — Not Just Online Orders.

Flare’s admin button applies your full zone rules, transit times and cut-off logic to any Shopify order. Phone orders, wholesale orders, B2B orders — all with the same delivery date accuracy as checkout. Read ship date vs delivery date explained.

7-day free trial · Assisted setup included

Most brands are live within a day. No developer required.

See how this works in the Shopify Delivery Date Picker →