Dynamic Checkout: Nominated day delivery

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: 

1. In the Dynamic Checkout tab, next to your integration click Edit
2. Next, click on New delivery method next to the delivery zone where you want to offer nominated day delivery. 
   
   
3. 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.

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 

1. Click Select next to the shipping product you want to offer. 
2. You can use the +add filter button to filter the list based on which additional shipping options are available*. 
3. 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. 

1. Make your choices based on the available options. For example, under Signature required you can select Yesor No depending on your preference.
2. 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.

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

1. Under the section Method details, give your shipping method an external and internal title, e.g. “PostNL - Signed for delivery”  
2. Click the Save delivery method button at the bottom of the page to save.
    
3. 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.