Delivery date validation on Shopify: stop orders without a valid date

Making customers choose a delivery date on the product or cart page isn’t enough on its own: some orders still reach checkout without one, or with a date you can no longer deliver. The fix is to check the date again at checkout, the last step before the order goes through. Buunto does this on every Shopify plan, Basic included. If the date or time slot is missing or no longer available, the customer sees a clear message and goes back to choose another one.

How orders slip through without a valid date

You set up a date picker, made the date required, and still found an order with no date in it. Or one booked for a day you’d already closed. It happens more often than you’d think:

• “Buy it now” skips the cart. Shopify’s unbranded “Buy it now” button takes customers straight to checkout (Shopify Help Center), so a date picker on the cart page never gets a chance.
• Your theme or another app gets in the way. A theme update or a new app can stop the date from being saved with the order.
• Slow mobile connections. The customer taps checkout before the date has been saved.
• Customers leave checkout open. Someone picks tomorrow at 3pm, gets distracted, and pays after your 4pm cut-off. Or the slot they picked fills up while they’re typing their address.

Each of these means a phone call, an apology or a refund. On a busy day, like Valentine’s Day for a florist or Christmas Eve for a bakery, one extra order can be one too many.

What Buunto checks at checkout

With Buunto – Delivery Date Picker, customers choose their delivery or pickup date and time slot before they check out. Turn on checkout validation, and Buunto checks the order again in Shopify’s checkout:

• Is there a date and time slot? If the order needs one and it’s missing, the customer can’t pay yet.
• Is the date or slot still available? Buunto checks your cut-off and preparation times to the minute, and whether the day or slot is now full or blocked.
• Is a pickup or delivery location chosen, when you need one?
• Is the delivery surcharge on the order, when it’s required?

If something is wrong, the customer sees a message explaining what to fix, like “The selected pickup date is no longer available. Please go back to select another date.” The message appears in the customer’s language, and you can change the wording.

Validation works alongside the rest of your setup: your order limits decide when a day is full, your time slots decide what can be booked, and checkout validation makes sure nothing gets past them at the last minute. The chosen date also appears in checkout’s delivery options, so customers see it before they pay.

How to turn it on

In Buunto, go to Settings > Validation and advanced settings and click Activate in the Checkout validation card. Buunto sets up its checkout rule in Shopify for you.

Then place a test order or two to check that everything works with your theme. The checkout validation help article covers the details, including how to change the error messages.

Tips

• Turn validation off in Buunto, not in Shopify. If you delete or turn off Buunto’s checkout rule from Shopify’s settings, Buunto shows “Needs attention”. Click Activate to fix it.
• Draft orders show a missing date message. Shopify doesn’t let apps tell a draft order apart from a store order, so you may see it when creating one. You can ignore it: it doesn’t stop the draft order.
• Set your cut-offs and limits first. Validation checks against them, so the clearer your schedule, the fewer surprises at checkout. Our guide to setting up your delivery schedule and order limits walks you through it.

Every order, one you can deliver

A required date on the product page catches most mistakes. Checking it again at checkout catches the rest, so you stop chasing customers for missing dates and stop squeezing in orders for days that are already full.

Try Buunto free on the Shopify App Store and turn on checkout validation in a couple of clicks.