Readyby help and guide

Let customers choose when their order is ready, for store pickup or local delivery, with real lead times, so every order is one you can actually make on time.

Forty seconds: a lead time set per product, a mixed cart keeping a date on each line, and the date landing on the order. Watch on YouTube →

What Readyby does

Readyby adds a date picker to your product pages. A shopper chooses pickup or local delivery and a ready-by date (and an optional time slot). Readyby offers only the dates your schedule allows. It enforces your lead time, a same-day cutoff, your open days, any closed days, and a daily capacity cap, so a day that has reached its limit stops being offered. The chosen date and method are saved to the order, so your team knows exactly what's due and when.

Before you start: three Shopify settings Readyby depends on

Read this first. Readyby records when an order is collected and how. Shopify decides what your checkout actually offers and charges. They are separate systems, and Shopify does not let any app read or change your delivery configuration, so if these are not set, Readyby will look broken when the problem is one toggle in Shopify.

1. Your location must be able to fulfill online orders, by some method. Go to Settings → Locations, open your location, and look at Fulfillment. The main toggle (“Use inventory at this location to fulfill online orders”) must be on, and so must at least one of Shipping, Local delivery or Pickup in store. On a brand-new store all three are frequently off.
2. Offering store pickup? Turn on Shopify’s Local pickup. Settings → Shipping and delivery → Local pickup, enabled for your location. Readyby records the customer’s choice; this is what makes checkout offer pickup instead of asking for a shipping address.
3. Offering local delivery? Set it up in Shopify too, with matching prices. Settings → Shipping and delivery → Local delivery, enabled for your location, with a delivery zone (ZIP codes or a radius) and a rate. Turning local delivery “on” without defining a zone covers nowhere. Readyby cannot charge a delivery fee, the fee in Readyby is shown to the shopper, and Shopify collects the real one. Set them to the same number.
   
   While you are in that zone, fill in Delivery information with something like “Delivered on the date you chose at checkout.” That message appears under the delivery option at checkout and again in the order confirmation email. Without it, Shopify invents its own estimate (usually “Ships next business day”) which sits inches from the date your customer actually picked and contradicts it.
   
   For the same reason, turn off Settings → Shipping and delivery → Estimated delivery dates (or give your rates real transit times). Automated dates are guesses, and guesses beside a chosen date read as a mistake.
4. Enable local delivery on the location Shopify actually routes to, which may not be the one holding your stock. Shopify picks a fulfillment location from your inventory and order-routing rules, and only then checks whether that location has a delivery zone covering the customer. If you have more than one location, the safest move is to enable local delivery on all of them, or reduce yourself to one. Nothing in the admin tells you which location a given order will use, so this is otherwise invisible.
5. Check your location’s address is in the right country. Local delivery zones are scoped to the delivering location’s country, so a location whose address is in one country can never deliver to another. New development stores are seeded with a placeholder address (often 123 Main St, Toronto, Canada) and it will silently defeat every delivery zone you set up until you change it.

If something looks wrong, check here first

Getting started

1. Install Readyby and open it from Apps in your Shopify admin.
2. Set your schedule. Go to Schedule and set your lead time, same-day cutoff, open days, capacity, and which methods you offer (pickup, local delivery, or both). Turn on “Show the date picker on my storefront.”
3. Add per-product lead times (optional). Under Product rules, give specific products their own notice. A custom cake might need 72 hours while cookies need 24.
4. Add closed days. Under Blackout dates, add holidays, vacations, or fully-booked days. Closed for a stretch? Set a last day closed and the whole range is blocked as a single entry. Tick Every year for holidays that fall on the same date each year.
5. Add the picker to your product pages. Use the “Open my theme editor” button on the home screen or on the Schedule page. Readyby does not place the block for you. You choose where it goes. Open your product template, then in the product section click Add block → Apps → Readyby date picker. Shopify adds new blocks at the bottom of the section, under your description, so drag it up so it sits directly beneath Add to cart and Buy it now, then Save. Left at the bottom it gets lost below the description and most shoppers never scroll that far.
6. Add the picker to your cart page too. In the theme editor switch the template to Cart, then Add block → Apps → Readyby cart picker and place it above the Checkout button. This catches shoppers who never saw a product page: quick add, a cart drawer, or a direct link.

If your theme has no place to add the block

Most current themes let you add an app block inside a section, but not all of them do, and themes do not agree on what to call it. Some say Add block, others say Add feature or Add element. Before assuming your theme cannot do it, click into the product section itself rather than the page, and look for an Apps group in whatever add list appears. App blocks only live inside a section, so looking at the page level shows nothing.

If there is genuinely no Apps group in any section on your product template, you can place the picker by hand. Open Online Store → Themes → … → Edit code, find the template or section that renders your product page, and paste this where you want the picker to appear, usually just after the Add to cart button:

<div class="readyby"
  data-proxy="/apps/readyby"
  data-context="product"
  data-product="{{ product.id }}"
  data-currency="{{ shop.currency }}"
  data-available="{{ product.available }}"
  data-variants="{% for v in product.variants %}{{ v.id }}:{% if v.available %}1{% else %}0{% endif %}{% unless forloop.last %},{% endunless %}{% endfor %}">
  <p class="rb-loading">Loading available dates&hellip;</p>
</div>
<link rel="stylesheet" href="/apps/readyby/asset/readyby.css">
<script src="/apps/readyby/asset/readyby.js" defer></script>

That is the whole install. Everything you set in the app still applies: lead times, blackout dates, capacity, pickup and delivery labels, and your wording. The picker keeps updating with the app, because those two files are served by Readyby rather than copied into your theme.

Paste it once into the template every product uses. Which products then show it comes from Which products can be scheduled on the Schedule page and from Product rules, exactly as with the theme block, so keep the snippet in your main product template where it sits next to the buy button. Moving it to another file to limit where it appears is not needed and usually puts it in the wrong place on the page. For the cart picker, use the same snippet with data-context="cart", no data-available or data-variants lines, and this data-product line instead, so the picker knows what is in the cart. Paste it into your cart template above the checkout button.

  data-product="{%- assign sep = '' -%}{%- for item in cart.items -%}{%- if item.properties['Ready by'] == blank -%}{{ sep }}{{ item.product_id }}{%- assign sep = ',' -%}{%- endif -%}{%- endfor -%}"

That line lists the cart items that do not already have a date from the product page. With it in place the cart picker follows the same rules as the theme block: it appears only when one of those items can be scheduled, and uses the longest lead time among them.

How available dates are decided

For any product, Readyby starts from “now” in your store's time zone and removes any date it can't safely offer:

• Lead time: the minimum notice you need. Each product keeps its own date, so a 72 hour cake and a 24 hour pastry can be bought together, each with its own ready-by date. The cart picker works differently: it sets one date for the whole cart, and uses the longest lead time in it. Shoppers see it as a quiet line under the date field, “Please allow 2 days”, which answers “why can’t I pick today?” before they email you. You set the lead time in hours, and shoppers are told in days whenever it’s a whole number of them: 24 reads “1 day”, 48 reads “2 days”, 72 reads “3 days”. A half day has no honest day wording, so it stays in hours: 36 reads “36 hours”, and so does anything under a day, like 4.
• Same-day cutoff: orders placed after your cutoff time are treated as if they came in the next day.
• Open days: only the weekdays you're open are offered.
• Blackout dates: closed days are removed entirely.
• Daily capacity: once a day hits its cap, it stops being offered to shoppers.
• Booking window: how far in advance customers can book (e.g. up to 30 days out).

Pickup & local delivery

Store pickup is on every plan. Local delivery is a Starter feature: you can configure it on Free, but shoppers only see it once you subscribe. For local delivery you can limit it to specific postal codes (one per line, or a wildcard like 902*). A shopper outside your zones is told so and can only continue with pickup. Leave the list empty to accept anywhere. You can also enter a delivery fee, which Readyby displays on the product page so shoppers know what to expect; Readyby can’t add money to a Shopify cart, so set the actual charge under Settings → Shipping and delivery → Local delivery and it applies at checkout. You can rename both methods under Storefront text (e.g. “Curbside pickup,” “Local drop-off”), which also lets you translate the picker for non-English stores.

Why you choose pickup or delivery twice

Readyby asks how you want the order on the product page, and Shopify asks again at checkout. That is not a bug, and no app can remove it, Shopify does not let apps preselect or read the checkout delivery method.

Asking early is still worth it: it’s how a shopper outside your delivery area finds out before filling a cart and typing an address, instead of after. Your choice in Readyby is recorded on the order as Requested, next to what Shopify actually charged for, so if the two ever differ, you can see it.

Requiring a date

Turn on “Require a date before add-to-cart” to make the picker mandatory. While no date is chosen, Add to cart and Buy it now are both dimmed, and hovering either one shows “Choose a date first.” Clicking anyway scrolls the shopper back to the picker with a short message rather than doing nothing. Leave the setting off to keep the picker optional.

Capacity caps

Set Max orders per day to protect your production. Each scheduled order counts against that day's cap; when it's full, the date drops out of the picker automatically. Set it to 0 for unlimited.

If you use time slots, each slot can carry its own capacity. A slot that fills up is grayed out for that date while your other windows stay open, and if every slot on a date is full, the date itself stops being offered. A window that has already started is dropped the same way. Readyby offers only windows that begin at least your lead time from now, so if you need an hour’s notice, a shopper standing in front of the picker at 3pm is not offered your 8am window. Once the last window of the day has gone by, so does the day.

Upcoming orders and your prep list

Open Upcoming orders in the app menu. Every order with a Readyby date is listed under the day it is due, soonest first, with the time window and pickup or delivery beside it. Each day starts with a prep list: how many of each item those orders need, so you can see at a glance what to bake or pack. Fulfilled orders are greyed out and left out of the prep list. Anything past its date that is not fulfilled yet is shown at the top under Past due. Click an order number to open it in Shopify.

Use All, Pickup or Delivery at the top to show just one kind of order; the prep lists update to match. Print gives you a clean copy for the kitchen, and Download CSV saves the same list as a spreadsheet, one row per item.

See your orders in your calendar

At the bottom of Upcoming orders, click Create calendar link. You get a private link that shows each dated order as an all-day entry on its day, with the order number, pickup or delivery, the time window and the items. In Google Calendar choose Other calendars, then From URL, and paste the link. Apple Calendar and Outlook both have a subscribe-by-URL option too. Calendar apps refresh the link on their own schedule, usually every few hours, so check Upcoming orders for up-to-the-minute numbers. No customer names or contact details are in the calendar. Anyone with the link can see it, so if it is ever shared by mistake, click Reset link: the old link stops working at once, and you add the new one to your calendar again. Turn off removes the link completely.

The page reads your orders from the last 45 days each time you open it, and nothing from them is stored by Readyby.

What lands on the order

When a shopper checks out, their choice is saved to the order as Ready by (the date), Requested (pickup or local delivery), Time (if you use slots), and Delivery postal code (for local delivery). Where they appear depends on which picker the shopper used.

A date chosen on a product page is attached to the item itself, so it appears in two places: on the line item, directly beneath the product, and under Additional details in the order's right-hand column. A date chosen on the cart page can only be saved at the cart level, because the cart page has no add-to-cart form to attach it to, so it appears under Additional details and nowhere else. If you have added the cart picker but not the product picker, every order will be the second kind.

Requested, not Fulfillment: Shopify's checkout has its own pickup and shipping selector, and that choice is the one that actually happens. Readyby records what the shopper asked for, which is worth knowing even when the two disagree.

Customize the look

By default the picker matches your store theme: it inherits your theme's fonts, text color, and background automatically, so it looks right the moment you add it. To adjust anything, open the Readyby date picker block in your theme editor; settings are grouped into Text, Colors, Layout, and Advanced. Leave any color blank to keep the theme default.

• Text: a custom Heading (otherwise it uses the heading from your Readyby settings).
• Colors: Accent color (selected option & focus ring), plus optional Text color, Card background, and Card & field border. Any left blank inherit your theme.
• Layout: Show as a bordered card (or blend into the page), Corner roundness, Border width, and the widget Max width.
• Advanced → Custom CSS: target .readyby, .rb-box, .rb-h, .rb-m, and select for full control.

Plans & usage

• Free ($0): store pickup, pickup time slots, per-product lead times, same-day cutoff, open days, booking window, capacity caps and blackout dates, up to 25 scheduled orders per month, with a small “Powered by Readyby” badge.
• Starter ($24.99/mo): everything in Free, plus up to 500 orders with a date per month, local delivery limited to the postal codes you serve, and no badge. Includes a 7-day free trial.
• Pro ($49/mo): everything in Starter, with up to 1,500 orders with a date per month. Includes a 7-day free trial.
• Scale ($99/mo): everything in Pro, with no monthly limit on orders with a date. Includes a 7-day free trial.

Time slots are on the free plan, not held back. Setup, settings, product rules and blackout dates are never metered. Every plan meters one thing only: the number of orders that carry a date, per calendar month. An order with no date on it never counts, whatever plan you are on. The home screen shows a usage count so you always know where you stand, and the monthly count resets on the 1st. Billing runs through Shopify and you can cancel anytime.

Email updates (optional)

At the bottom of Readyby’s home screen there is an Email updates box. It is optional: add an email and press Save to receive updates, or leave it empty and Readyby never emails you. Emails greet you by your store’s name.

If you add one, you get a note when your store has used 80% of its plan’s monthly dated orders, another if it reaches the limit and the picker steps aside until the 1st, and an occasional note when there is a major update. Every email has an unsubscribe link, and Unsubscribe under the box removes your address straight away.

Frequently asked questions

Need more help?

Email support@dropfeed.io. We typically reply within 1–2 business days.