If you make things to order, some days sell out and some don't. A delivery date picker lets customers choose when — but on its own it happily books 120 orders onto a Saturday you can only fulfill 50 of. Delivery capacity limits are what stop that: a cap on how many orders each date, and each time slot, can take.
The overbooking problem
Made-to-order merchants — bakeries, florists, meal-prep kitchens, furniture makers — have a hard daily ceiling. Shopify doesn't know about it, so it keeps accepting orders. You find out you're overbooked when you're already behind, and someone's Saturday cake isn't getting made.
Capacity limits move that ceiling into checkout, where it belongs.
How per-date and per-slot caps work
With OrderRules on the Advanced plan you can set:
- A cap per date: one number for every delivery date, e.g. 50 deliveries on any given day. It counts orders by the date the customer picks.
- A cap per slot: set on the slot template, e.g. 15 in the 14:00–16:00 window, so a single window can sell out without closing the whole day.
When a date or slot hits its cap, it greys out live on the storefront picker — customers simply can't choose it.
What happens at the last slot
Once a date or slot reaches its cap, checkout stops accepting it — and if an order is cancelled, its slot is released automatically and becomes bookable again, with no manual bookkeeping. Because enforcement is server-side, Shop Pay, Apple Pay and direct checkout URLs are validated the same way as the standard checkout.
One limit is worth stating plainly, because the alternative is you finding out. Checkout validation reads a snapshot of what's booked; it can't reserve a place the way Shopify reserves stock. Two customers checking out within roughly the same second, for the same date, with a single slot left, can both succeed. It needs near-simultaneous checkouts on a date already down to its last place, so it's rare — but it's a platform limitation, not a gap a later release closes.
It's the same idea as order limits
Delivery capacity is OrderRules' order-caps idea pointed at a future date. The difference is which day gets counted. A storewide "50 orders/day" limit counts the day orders are placed; a per-date cap of 50 counts the day they're delivered. Both live in one app, so you can run them side by side. More on that in Order limits + delivery scheduling: why they belong in one app.
Florists: same-day cutoffs and peak days
For a florist the limit is the van, not the flowers. Stops per route and hours per driver decide how many deliveries a day can take. Set the per-date cap to that number. If you're unsure, start a little under it and raise it once you've watched a few busy weeks.
Same-day cutoff
Give the availability rule a lead time of 0 days and a cutoff of 14:00. Before 2 PM, today is on the picker. After 2 PM it drops off and tomorrow is the earliest date. Pick the time from your dispatch: if the afternoon run leaves at 2:30, a 1:45 order can still be arranged and loaded, and a 4 PM order can't. A noon cutoff that checkout enforces beats a 2 PM one a late buyer can slip past.
The cutoff and the cap work together, and whichever hits first closes today. If today's deliveries fill by noon, it closes at the cap. If 2 PM comes first, it closes at the cutoff.
Valentine's Day and Mother's Day
Both bring several times a normal day's orders, and most are booked ahead. Counting by delivery date is what makes that workable: an order placed on 2 February for the 14th uses the 14th's capacity. The 14th can sell out days early while the 12th stays open.
Set it up in January:
- Give the seasonal range its own rule. Put the Valentine's bouquets in a collection with their own availability rule and an earlier cutoff, say 11:00, to leave the routes some margin. To lock the list the night before instead, use a 1-day lead time and a 22:00 cutoff: after 10 PM on the 13th, the 14th is gone.
- Cap the range per delivery date. A daily product limit counted by delivery date holds each bouquet to what your team can arrange on the day.
- Raise the day's cap by hand. The per-date cap is one number for every date, and there's no scheduled override for a single day. If you add drivers for the 14th, raise it the week before and set it back on the 15th. Until then the extra room applies to every bookable date, so keep that window short. Put the reminder in your calendar now.
- Treat Mother's Day as a weekend. Friday, Saturday and Sunday all surge. Per-date counting lets Sunday fill while Friday stays open.
- Black out the days you're shut, such as Christmas Day or a summer break, as blackout dates.
A composite florist setup:
| Setting | Normal day | Valentine's week |
|---|---|---|
| Deliveries per date | 50 | 90, raised the week before |
| Same-day cutoff | 14:00 | 11:00 on the Valentine's rule |
| Valentine's bouquets per date | — | Capped to arranging capacity |
For surge planning beyond florists, see managing holiday order surges. For cutoff patterns in general, see setting up cutoff times.
Set it up
- Open Delivery Dates and set Maximum orders per delivery date under Delivery date behavior.
- Optionally, give each slot a capacity in Time slot templates. Availability rules that use the template share its slot caps.
- Save. Full dates and slots grey out automatically; checkout blocks anything sold out.
Full detail: Delivery capacity limits · Time slots.
Capping a product's output rather than a whole delivery date? See order date vs delivery date.
Ready to cap your calendar? See the Delivery Dates feature or start a free 14-day trial.