How to block holiday dates for pickup and delivery on Shopify

Shopify has no closed-days calendar. What it can do before Thanksgiving and the December holidays, and how to stop customers choosing a day you are shut.

It happens every year. You close for Thanksgiving, Christmas Day or a week after New Year, and an order still comes in for pickup on a day the shop is dark. Then you are on the phone moving the order, or refunding it.

If customers choose a pickup or delivery date, closed days have to come off that calendar. A note saying "closed December 25" helps, but people skim it. This guide covers what Shopify does on its own, a workaround for short closures, and what to look for in a date picker so holidays are blocked once and stay blocked.

What Shopify does on its own

Shopify has no setting for closed days or holiday dates. That follows from a bigger gap: the online store checkout has no native way for a customer to choose a pickup or delivery date in the first place.

Pickup settings work per location. You can turn pickup on for a location, choose an expected pickup time from a list of processing times, and write pickup instructions that go out in the "Ready for pickup" notification. Local delivery settings cover the delivery area (a radius or postal codes), a minimum order price, a delivery price and an optional message. None of these settings know about dates, so none of them can skip a holiday.

For closing the whole store, Shopify's help center says there is no built-in vacation setting. It points to two options instead:

Private mode (password page). Visitors cannot view products or place orders without a password, and they see a message you write. Your plan keeps billing as normal.
The Pause and Build plan. Your store stays visible but checkout is turned off. It is meant for longer breaks, and the change can take effect at the end of your billing cycle.

Both stop all sales. That is the opposite of what most bakeries, butchers and florists want in November and December, their busiest weeks. You want to keep taking orders for the days you are open and only skip the days you are closed.

A native workaround for short closures

If you close for a day or two and most orders are for today or tomorrow, this can be enough:

Say it wherever a customer looks. Put the closed dates in your theme's announcement bar, on the product pages that are picked up or delivered, and in each location's pickup instructions so they appear in the ready for pickup notification.
Raise the expected pickup time for the location in the days before the closure, so the time shown at checkout does not promise a day you are shut. Put it back afterward.
Turn pickup off for the location during the closure if you do not want any pickup orders at all, and turn it back on when you reopen.
Check new orders every morning in the run up to the closure, and contact anyone whose note asks for a closed day.

Where it breaks down: customers can still type a closed date into an order note, an expected pickup time is one setting for every day, and every step has to be undone by hand. If you take orders weeks ahead, such as holiday pies or Christmas Eve roasts, there is no way to say "any day except the 25th".

A note says you are closed. A blocked date makes it impossible to choose. Only the second one stops the phone call.

Plan your closed days before you set anything up

Write the list down first. It usually holds four kinds of days, and each one is best handled a little differently:

Weekdays you are always closed, such as Sunday and Monday. These belong in your normal opening days, not in a holiday list.
Holidays on a fixed date, such as Christmas Day, New Year's Day and July 4. Ideally you add these once and they repeat every year.
Holidays that move, such as Thanksgiving (Thursday, November 26 this year) and Easter. They fall on a different date each year, so they need adding each year.
Ranges, such as a week off after New Year or a few days closed for repairs. A range should be one entry, not seven.

Then look at the days around each closure. The Friday after Thanksgiving may be open but short staffed, so it may need a lower daily limit rather than a full block. Our guide on how to limit orders per day on Shopify covers that side.

Lead times matter too. If a cake needs 3 days' notice, the last day to order it for Christmas Eve is December 21, and the last day for a Saturday after a closed Friday moves as well. The guide on lead times for a bakery on Shopify walks through this.

What a holiday-ready date picker needs

If you use an app for pickup or delivery dates, check these before the season starts:

Closed dates disappear or grey out in the picker, for pickup and for delivery.
Repeating holidays can be set once for every year, including a range that crosses New Year.
A range is one entry you can edit or remove in one click.
The reason shows. A shopper who taps December 25 should see "Closed" or the holiday name, not a day that simply will not respond.
Carts are rechecked at checkout. Someone who added a date to their cart last week, before you blocked it, should not be able to check out with it.
Your store's time zone is used, so "closed tomorrow" means the same day for every shopper.

For a side by side look at the main apps, see which Shopify app for delivery dates and pickup. If you are setting up pickup for the first time, start with click and collect on Shopify.

How Readyby handles holiday closures

Readyby is our app for pickup, local delivery and shipping dates. Customers pick a date, and optionally a time slot, on the product page or in the cart, and only dates that fit your schedule are offered. For closures:

Blackout dates remove closed days from the picker. Set a first and last day closed and the whole range is one entry, even across months or years.
Every year repeats a fixed-date holiday or range from then on, such as December 24 to January 2. Holidays that move, like Thanksgiving, are added as one-time entries.
Open days cover the weekdays you are always closed, and ready days per product cover items you only make on some days, such as cakes only at weekends.
Shoppers see why. A closed day shows its reason, for example "Closed: Thanksgiving", and you can change the wording.
The cart guard, an app embed you switch on in the theme editor, stops checkout with a date that has since closed or filled up.

Blackout dates are included on the free plan and are never metered. Local delivery dates start on the Starter plan. You can find Readyby on the Shopify App Store.

Quick checklist

List your closed weekdays, fixed holidays, moving holidays and ranges for the next 12 months.
Decide which days near a holiday need a lower limit or more notice instead of a full block.
Work out the last order date for each holiday from your lead times.
Block the dates in one place, and put them in your announcement bar too.
Place a test order and confirm a closed day cannot be chosen.