Take only the cake orders your oven can make
OrderRules caps how many orders your bakery takes per day or per pickup date, gives cakes the notice they need with a same-day cut-off, and closes your store on holidays. Checkout enforces every rule with a Shopify Function, including Shop Pay. Store hours and a daily cap are free; pickup and delivery dates are on the Advanced plan.
Full setup guide: cut-offs, notice and caps for food and bakery shops β
A daily cap that matches your oven
Set the most orders you can bake in a day. Checkout stops at that number and reopens at midnight in your store timezone. Free up to 100 orders a day.
A limit on the cakes alone
Give a product its own daily limit, for example 10 celebration cakes, while bread and pastries stay on sale. It's a shared total for the whole store, in orders or units.
Notice and a cut-off per product
Give custom cakes 3 days' notice and bread next-day, with a same-day cut-off in your local time. Lead time counts calendar days. Advanced plan.
A cap per pickup or delivery date
Each future date gets its own counter, so Saturday can fill up without closing Sunday. Count a cake's daily limit by the day you bake it, not the day it was ordered. Advanced plan.
- Checked at checkout on every Shopify plan
- Free plan: store hours, holidays and a daily cap
- Pickup and delivery dates on Advanced
- No code
Why bakeries outgrow a plain Shopify store
Shopify takes orders around the clock and has no idea how many cakes fit in your oven. Inventory counts stock, not baking time, so a busy weekend arrives as one pile of orders for the same morning.
The fix is to decide your capacity up front: how many orders a day, how much notice each product needs, and which days you're closed. OrderRules turns those numbers into rules that checkout enforces.
What happens at checkout
Every rule is checked again at checkout by a Shopify Function, so it holds through Shop Pay, Apple Pay and direct checkout links, not only on the cart page. A missing date, a closed date or a full date is blocked with your message.
The date picker sits on the product or cart page on every Shopify plan. Showing it on the checkout page itself needs Shopify Plus; the checkout check works on any plan.
Example setup: a two-oven bakery
IllustrativeThis is an example, not a customer. The bakery makes about 40 orders a day, closes on Sundays and Mondays, and bakes custom cakes to order.
Its settings: a daily order limit of 40; custom cakes with 3 days' notice and a 10:00 cut-off; Maximum orders per delivery date of 40; Sundays and Mondays switched off as delivery days; holidays copied from the store calendar. A customer ordering a custom cake on Friday at 15:30 is past the cut-off, so the earliest date they can pick is Tuesday.
Bakery needs: what OrderRules does and doesn't do
Checked against the app on October 24, 2026.
| Need | OrderRules | Plan |
|---|---|---|
| Stop orders after a daily number | Yes. One storewide daily limit, reset at midnight | Free (up to 100 a day) |
| Limit one product per day | Yes. A shared total in orders or units | Free (3 products), Pro unlimited |
| Opening hours | Yes. One window per day | Free |
| Holiday closures | Yes. Holiday calendar and one-off dates | Free |
| Notice before pickup or delivery | Yes. Lead time in calendar days, per product or collection | Advanced |
| Same-day cut-off | Yes. In your store's local time | Advanced |
| Cap orders per pickup or delivery date | Yes. One number for every date | Advanced |
| Pickup time slots with a cap | Yes. A Cap/day on each slot | Advanced |
| A different cap on Saturdays | No. The cap is one number; change it by hand before a busy day | β |
| Delivery zones by postcode | No. Use Shopify local delivery | β |
| Cake builder or message-on-cake field | No. Use a product options app | β |
Weekly and monthly limits, collection limits and per-customer limits are on Pro. Delivery and pickup dates, slots and per-date caps are on Advanced, which includes everything in Pro.
Set it up in four steps
- 1
Set your hours and closed days
In Schedule, set the days and hours you take orders. Add holidays and one-off closures in the Calendar.
- 2
Add a daily order limit
In Order Limits, enter the most orders you can bake in a day and save.
- 3
Cap your custom cakes
In Product Limits, give the cake product a daily limit. With delivery dates on, set Count daily limits by to Delivery date so it follows bake day.
- 4
Turn on pickup or delivery dates (Advanced)
In Delivery Dates, add a rule with lead time and a cut-off, set Maximum orders per delivery date, and add the date picker block to your product or cart page.
Frequently asked questions
Yes. Set a daily order limit for the whole store, or a daily limit on the cake product alone. Both reset at midnight in your store timezone and are checked at checkout. Both are on the free plan: a daily limit up to 100 orders and up to 3 product limits.
No. The daily limit and the per-date cap are one number for every day. Change the number by hand before a busy weekend, or close the days you don't bake.
The date picker only offers dates that every item in the cart allows, so the cake's longer notice wins. Checkout runs the same check.
Yes. Cancelling an order in full releases its count. A refund on its own doesn't.
No. The checkout check works on every Shopify plan. Only showing the date picker on the checkout page itself needs Shopify Plus; otherwise it sits on the product or cart page.
Bake to a plan, not to your inbox
Start free with store hours and a daily cap. Add pickup and delivery dates on Advanced when you need them.