A cookie bakery in the UK sells three things online: cookie boxes, giant cookies and mini cookie boxes. Customers choose a delivery date from Tuesday to Saturday, the cut-off is 7am, and a courier delivers across England, Scotland and Wales. The ovens can make 100 of each, per delivery date.
They're on the standard Shopify plan, not Plus. Before installing anything, they sent us 10 questions. They're the right questions, and most bakeries only find the answers after a bad weekend. So here they are, answered against what OrderRules actually does today, including the answers that are "no".
The 10 answers at a glance
| # | Question | Answer |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Can two designs share one limit, counted by delivery date? | Yes, if they're variants of one product |
| 2 | Can one date have a lower limit? | No, it's one number for every date |
| 3 | Are UK bank holidays handled? | Partly: import them, then copy them to delivery dates |
| 4 | Does Buy It Now skip the date? | Yes, but checkout still stops it |
| 5 | What if a date fills up before they pay? | Blocked at checkout, express included |
| 6 | Can we exclude Northern Ireland? | Yes, in Shopify's shipping settings |
| 7 | Do edits and cancellations free up space? | Cancellations yes, edits no |
| 8 | Will a build-a-box or photo upload work? | Test it: it depends how they add to cart |
| 9 | Is it all on one plan? | Yes, Advanced at $19.99/month |
| 10 | Can we test first? | Yes, on a development store |
1. "Classic and Print giant cookies share 100 a day. Can that count by delivery date, in units?"
Yes, if Classic and Print are two variants of one product. In OrderRules, a product limit can count by the delivery date the customer chooses, and a product-level limit adds up every variant.
Set it up in Product Limits:
- Open the Giant Cookie product and click Edit Limits
- Set Count daily limits by to Delivery date
- Under Quantity Limits, set Daily to 100
- Don't add separate limits to the variants. A variant limit replaces the product limit for that variant.
Now 60 Classic and 40 Print for Friday fill Friday. Thursday, and the cookie boxes on Friday, aren't affected. Give the cookie boxes and the mini boxes their own product limits of 100 the same way.
What doesn't work: if Classic and Print are two separate products, they can't share one limit by delivery date today. Collection limits count by the day the order is placed, not the delivery date. The other per-date caps ("Maximum orders per delivery date" and the time-slot "Cap/day") count orders, not cookies. Use the quantity limit for units: it counts what the ovens make. The full setup, and what we saw when we tested it, is in limit cookies per delivery date, not orders.
Why counting the delivery date matters at all: your daily limit is counting the wrong day.
2. "Can 14 November be 60 instead of 100?"
Not today. The limit is one number for every date. If you change 100 to 60, every delivery date becomes 60 straight away, including dates customers are booking right now.
What you can do:
- Close the date completely with a delivery blackout date, if you can't bake at all that day
- Change the number on the day and accept that it applies everywhere for that moment. This only works if no other date is close to its limit.
If your bakery runs at different capacity on different days, ask before you install. It's a common request, and it's on our list.
3. "Does the holiday calendar include UK bank holidays? Are future years added for us?"
Partly. In Calendar, choose Import Holidays, pick United Kingdom and import the year. That closes the store for orders on those days.
For a delivery bakery there's a second step that's easy to miss. Imported holidays close the store. To stop customers choosing a bank holiday as a delivery date, open Delivery Dates and click Copy store holidays. Run it again whenever you add more holidays.
If you still want to take orders on a bank holiday and only stop deliveries, skip the import. Add the dates under Delivery blackout dates instead.
Check two things before you rely on it:
- Your region's days. England and Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland have different bank holidays. Scotland has 2 January and St Andrew's Day, and a Summer bank holiday in early August instead of late August. Check every day you close is on the list, and add any missing ones as blackout dates.
- Next year. Import each year when you need it, and do next year's before customers can book that far ahead.
Your courier's own closed days matter too. If they don't collect on a bank holiday Monday, Tuesday deliveries may need a blackout as well. More on peak season: holiday cut-offs and blackout dates.
4. "If a customer picks a date and then uses Buy It Now, Apple Pay or Shop Pay on the product page, is the date carried over?"
No. The date doesn't travel with Buy It Now, but checkout still stops the order. We tested this on a development store: we picked a delivery date on the product page, clicked Buy it now, and checkout showed:
Please choose a delivery date before checking out.
Here's why. A date picked on the product page is saved when the customer clicks Add to cart. Buy It Now and the express buttons on the product page skip the cart, so the date never gets added. On the standard Shopify plan there's no date picker inside checkout, so the customer has to go back to your store.
What still works is the checkout rule. OrderRules checks the delivery date with a Shopify Functions rule that runs on every checkout, express ones included, on any Shopify plan. With Require a delivery date at checkout on, an order without a date can't go through.
Our recommendation: turn off the dynamic checkout buttons on dated products, so every customer goes through Add to cart. Most themes have a Show dynamic checkout buttons option on the product page's buy buttons. Keep Require a delivery date at checkout on as the safety net. The details are in Buy It Now and Apple Pay skip your delivery date.
5. "If Friday fills up while someone is checking out, is the order blocked?"
Yes, at checkout, including Shop Pay, Apple Pay and Google Pay. Two things happen:
- In the picker: full dates are greyed out, and full time slots show "(Full)". The customer can't pick a full date, and adding more than the daily limit is refused when they click Add to cart.
- At checkout: if the date filled up while they were shopping, checkout shows one of these messages:
Delivery on {date} is fully booked. Please choose another date.
Only {n} left for delivery on {date}. Please reduce the quantity or choose another date.
The second one appears when there's room for some, but not all, of the cookies in the cart.
One honest limit: if two customers check out for the very last cookie at the same moment, both can get through, because the count updates when each order arrives. On a 100-a-day limit that's rare, but it's why we'd never say "prevents overselling".
6. "Can delivery be limited to England, Scotland and Wales?"
Yes, in Shopify's shipping settings, not in the date app. In Settings β Shipping and delivery, edit your shipping zone. Shopify lists the United Kingdom as five regions: British Forces, England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. Tick only England, Scotland and Wales. Customers with a Northern Ireland address then get no shipping option, so they can't check out. If you also have a Rest of World zone, test a BT postcode to make sure it doesn't pick Northern Ireland up.
There's no postcode field in the zone editor, so forum advice to "exclude BT postcodes" doesn't apply here. Shopify has also announced that shipping settings move into Markets, so the menu names may change. The region choice stays the same.
7. "If we edit an order's quantity or date, or cancel it, does the capacity update?"
Cancellations yes, edits no.
- Full cancellation: the order's place on its delivery date is released, along with its counts against your limits
- Editing an order in Shopify admin (quantity or date): the count doesn't change. The original date and quantity stay counted.
- Refunds: don't change the count
If you move an order to another date, remember the original date still counts it, and the new date doesn't.
8. "We use a custom cookie box builder and a photo upload. Will they work?"
Test it on a development store. What decides it is how the other app adds items to the cart:
- A photo upload or personalisation app that adds the product through your theme's normal Add to cart usually keeps the delivery date on the item.
- A box builder that adds several items in one go may not carry the product-page date. In that case, collect the date on the cart page instead: in Delivery Dates, choose one date for the whole order.
Either way, the checkout rule checks the date that reaches checkout. The worst case is a customer being asked to choose a date again, not an order without one.
9. "Is all of this on Advanced at $19.99 a month?"
Yes. Delivery dates, time slots, per-date caps, product limits counted by delivery date, the holiday calendar and the checkout rule are all on Advanced ($19.99/month, 14-day free trial). Items 2 and 7 aren't available on any plan yet.
10. "Can we test everything on a development store first?"
Yes, and you should. Install OrderRules on a Shopify development store, copy in your real products, and run these tests with Shopify's test payment gateway:
- Fill a date: set a product limit to 2, order 2 for Friday, then try a third
- Buy It Now: pick a date on the product page and click Buy It Now
- Bank holiday: check the date can't be picked in the calendar
- Cancel: cancel one test order and check its place comes back
- Northern Ireland: try a BT postcode at checkout
If all five behave, go live. Start with the 2-minute quick start, then the delivery date setup.
What this bakery's setup looks like
| Setting | Where | Value |
|---|---|---|
| Deliverable weekdays | Delivery Dates β rule | Tue, Wed, Thu, Fri, Sat |
| Lead time (days) | Delivery Dates β rule | 1 |
| Cutoff (HH:MM) | Delivery Dates β rule | 07:00 |
| Require a delivery date at checkout | Delivery Dates β rule | On |
| Giant Cookie (Classic, Print variants) | Product Limits | Delivery date Β· Daily quantity 100 |
| Cookie Box | Product Limits | Delivery date Β· Daily quantity 100 |
| Mini Cookie Box | Product Limits | Delivery date Β· Daily quantity 100 |
| UK bank holidays | Calendar β Import Holidays, then Copy store holidays | Each year |
| Northern Ireland | Shopify β Shipping and delivery | Not in the zone |
| Dynamic checkout buttons | Theme β product page | Off on dated products |
With lead time 1 and a 7:00 cut-off, an order placed before 7am can choose tomorrow. After 7am, the earliest date is the day after. The cut-off uses your store's timezone in Shopify.
More for food shops: delivery date picker for food & bakery shops Β· OrderRules for bakeries Β· best delivery date picker apps compared