---
title: "Limits by delivery date"
description: "Switch a product's daily limit to count against the delivery date the customer chooses, so \"10 a day\" means ten for Friday however early those orders arrive."
contentType: "docs"
locale: "en"
localized: true
source: "https://orderrules.com/docs/delivery/delivery-date-limits"
slug: "delivery/delivery-date-limits"
---
A product's daily limit normally counts orders on the day they are placed. With delivery dates enabled, you can switch a product's daily limit to count against the delivery date the customer chooses instead.

"Maximum 10 per day" then means ten for each delivery date — ten for Friday, ten for Saturday — no matter when those orders arrived.

## When to use it

Use the delivery-date basis when your limit describes what you can **produce**. Use the order-date basis when it describes how many orders you want to **take**.

A bakery capping Friday's output wants delivery date. A shop limiting itself to 20 orders a day while it catches up on a backlog wants order date.

| Your constraint | Basis to choose | Example |
| --- | --- | --- |
| How much you can make on a given day | **Delivery date** | Ten medium cakes for Friday, however early they were ordered |
| How many orders you want to handle today | **Order date** | Twenty orders a day while clearing a backlog |

## Requirements

- The Advanced plan
- Delivery dates enabled, with at least one availability rule
- A daily quantity limit (or daily order limit) on the product or variant

## Setting it up

1. Go to **Products** and open a product — or select several and use bulk edit.
2. Under **Count daily limits by**, choose **Delivery date**.
3. Set the daily limit as usual, on the product or on individual variants.
4. Save.

The control only appears when delivery dates are enabled on your store.

## What counts toward the cap

- Delivery orders for that date
- In-store pickup orders for that date — pickup and delivery share one cap
- Every variant counts against its own cap where it has one; variants without their own limit fall back to the product's

## What your customers see

When a shopper picks a date, they see how many are still available for it. A date that cannot fit what is in their cart shows as unavailable, so they choose again before investing in a cart rather than being turned back at checkout.

If they do reach checkout with more than the date can hold, checkout is blocked with a message naming the date and the number still available.

## The one limit worth knowing

The cap is enforced at checkout for every normal case, and it holds against express checkouts as well as the cart. What it does not do is hold a lock. Checkout validation reads a snapshot of what is already booked, so two shoppers completing checkout within roughly the same second — same date, one place left — can both succeed.

The window is narrow, and it is a platform constraint rather than something a setting changes. Where a date's capacity is small, size it with a place of headroom rather than to the exact maximum.

## What the Products table shows

A product counted by delivery date shows its most constrained upcoming date — for example "Fri 14 Nov · 9/10" — rather than a usage percentage. A percentage would mislead here: usage is a series, one figure per upcoming date, and a product could read 0% while next Saturday is completely full.

## Weekly and monthly limits

Only the daily limit changes basis. Weekly and monthly limits continue to count by order date. The app notes this where you make the choice.

## Bulk editing and CSV

The setting applies to a whole selection when you bulk-edit, and it travels in CSV export and import as a **Count By** column. A CSV with no Count By column imports as order-date counting, exactly as before.

## Cancellations

Cancelling an order returns its capacity to the delivery date it was booked for.

## Turning it off

Switch the product back to **Order date**. Its daily limit immediately reverts to counting by order date, and any delivery-date capacity it was holding is released.

## Related

- [Getting started with delivery dates](/docs/delivery/getting-started-delivery-dates) — this feature needs delivery dates enabled first
- [Delivery capacity limits](/docs/delivery/capacity-limits) — caps per date and per time slot, set on the availability rule rather than the product
- [Per-product limits](/docs/product-limits/per-product-limits) — the daily limit this setting changes the basis of
- [Scoping rules](/docs/delivery/scoping-rules) — applying different rules per product, collection or tag