Purpose: Once you've configured Dynamic Checkout, you can offer nominated day delivery to your customers on your checkout page. Follow the steps below to create your nominated day shipping methods and learn how Sendcloud helps you process them in time for the chosen delivery day.
Nominated day deliveries through Dynamic Checkout
Nominated day delivery lets your customers decide on which day they want to receive their orders. You can configure this checkout method for both domestic and international orders.
How does it look?
Once you've added nominated day shipping methods, a date picker will appear on your checkout page. Your customer can then select a delivery day up to 14 days in the future.
The default style of the date picker is a horizontal layout. If your webshop has a theme or layout which creates a checkout section less than 560px wide, the date picker automatically switches to a mobile friendly, vertical layout. You can see how it will appear in the preview section when you configure your Dynamic Checkout method.
Step 1: Set up nominated day delivery
First, make sure you've installed Dynamic Checkout for your integration and configured your delivery zones. Then proceed as follows:
- In the Dynamic Checkout tab, next to your integration click
Edit
- Next, click on
New delivery method
next to the delivery zone where you want to offer nominated day delivery. - Select Nominated day delivery from the list of delivery methods
Step 2: Select your shipping product
This section of the configuration menu allows you to select which carrier and options you want to offer on your checkout page.
Q: What is a shipping product?
A shipping product is a group of similar shipping methods offered by a carrier. The specific shipping method will be chosen automatically (when the order is imported) based on the weight of the products, the chosen delivery day and the additional options you want to offer (e.g. signature required, age check).
For example, the shipping product PostNL Standard includes several shipping methods, such as:
- PostNLStandard 0-23kg
- PostNL Standard 23-31.5kg
- PostNL Standard with signature 0-23kg
- PostNL evening delivery + home address only 0-23kg
- ...etc.
Sendcloud will automatically apply the correct shipping method based on the additional options you want to offer (such as evening delivery, or signature required) and the weight of the order.
By default, all of the carriers which you've enabled in your Sendcloud account will be shown here for you to choose from. Under column Transit time, the estimated time it takes for a parcel to arrive with the end-customer is noted. This is an indication only and is used to determine when customers will be able to select a delivery date at checkout.
How to select your shipping product
- Click
Select
next to the shipping product you want to offer. - You can use the
+add filter
button to filter the list based on which additional shipping options are available*. - Continue to Step 3
Step 3: Choose your shipping options
Once you’ve selected your shipping product, it’s time to add on the extra delivery options you want to offer.
- Make your choices based on the available options. For example, under Signature required you can select
Yes
orNo
depending on your preference. - The options you choose will then be used to calculate which shipping methods will be applied to your incoming orders. The applicable shipping methods will be listed under Shipping methods used to process orders.
Q: Why can't I select a shipping functionality?
If the shipping product you select only contains one shipping method, it could be that this method does not offer any additional functionalities such as Age Check, Signature Required, etc. You will therefore not be able to select any shipping functionalities for this shipping product.
Alternatively, if the shipping method you select always includes a specific functionality (for example, UPS Express Saver always requires a signature) then this option will already be selected. You can click the dropdown menu ▼View applied functionalities to check which options are already included.
Step 4: Configure shipping rates
Before your delivery method can be displayed, you need to add pricing.
- Click on
Use shipping rates to add pricing for your shipping method. Find out more about shipping rates and how to enable free shipping and discount coupons in this article.
- If you decide
not to use shipping rates, you can still set up manual pricing in WooCommerce by following this guide.
Step 5: Holidays
In this section you can enter the days during the year in which you or the carrier won't be able to process or deliver parcels. For example, you can create a holiday for national holidays, workshops, training events, etc. You can select either a single day or a range of dates as a holiday, and you can mark a holiday as yearly recurring or as a one time event
For nominated day shipping methods, any holidays you add here will be used to calculate which dates are available as delivery day options to your customers at checkout. We calculate the delivery days based on:
- The parcel handover days and cut-off time you enter (step 5)
- Carrier working days
- Transit time of a shipping method
- Holiday days of a shipping method.
Step 6: Parcel handover days, cut-off times & transit times
- Parcel handover days
Select the days you hand your parcels over for delivery, either directly to a service point or via a carrier collection. Leave the days you don't hand your parcels over unselected. - Cut-off time
Enter the time from which this shipping method will no longer be available in your checkout for your customers to select. For example, if you don't plan to process, pack and handover parcels from 15:00 onwards, this would be your cut-off time. From 15:00 onwards, this method won't appear in your checkout. Don't forget to include the time it takes to process orders and hand them over to the carrier when calculating your cut-off time for next day deliveries. - Transit time
This is automatically pre-filled based on the estimated transit time provided to us by the shipping carrier. Any time indicated here will have an effect on the available delivery dates shown to your customers at checkout.- If the transit time for a particular shipping method is not available, you can enter the time manually into this field. For example, the transit time for DPD France is not indicated, however your account manager or your carrier contract states a transit time of 48 hours, therefore you can enter this into the Transit time field.
- If you believe the actual transit time to be longer than is indicated by Sendcloud, you can edit this field and enter your own transit time. For example, the time indicated is 24 hours, but you know through experience that deliveries with this shipping method always take at least 48 hours, therefore you can overwrite 24 hours with 48 hours.
Step 7: Save and publish
- Under the section Method details, give your shipping method an external and internal title, e.g. “PostNL - Signed for delivery”
- Click the
Save delivery method
button at the bottom of the page to save. - To publish your delivery method to your webshop, click the
Publish
button in the Dynamic Checkout configuration
Style the date picker
You can change the appearance of the date picker to reflect your brand and website theme. Click here to see how.
Troubleshooting & FAQ's
If you're having difficulties setting up your nominated day delivery methods, click here to read our troubleshooting article.
Step 8: Process your nominated day deliveries in time
Orders will be imported into your incoming order overview in the Sendcloud panel as normal, however you will now be able to see an additional column in your overview called Parcel handover date. This column tells you when to process your orders so they reach your customer on time.
- Orders which must be processed and handed over to the carrier today will appear with this icon:
- Orders which are overdue will appear as follows:
Filter by parcel handover date
You can also filter your orders using the +add filter
button. For example, you can filter your view to show all the orders which must be processed today:
Q: I don’t want to see the Parcel handover date because I’m not using Dynamic Checkout. What do I do?
A: You can filter your column view by clicking the column selector button≡
, located next to the search bar in the incoming order overview. For more information about filtering your orders, see the following article: How to use the +add filter function.
Q: Can I change the shipping method for a nominated day order with shipping rules?
Some shipping actions do not apply to Dynamic Checkout orders, since you've already configured the correct sender address, shipping product and shipping method that should be used for these orders in the Dynamic Checkout tab.
The following shipping rules actions don't apply to Dynamic Checkout orders:
- Ship with address
- Ship with shipping method
You can still manually change the shipping method and sender address for a Dynamic Checkout order from the Edit Order View.