What is the latest time I can submit orders?

Orders received by 11:59 p.m. can still be processed the same day. That’s a late cutoff compared to what’s standard in the industry, and it gives you the flexibility to promise fast delivery without having to stay up until midnight printing labels yourself.

What exactly is a cut-off?

The cutoff is the time when that day's orders are closed out and the system processes them. Anything received before that time is included in same-day processing. Anything received after that time is carried over to the next batch.

Why 11:59 p.m. Matters

A large portion of online orders are placed in the evening, after dinner and before bedtime. If your cutoff time is 4:00 p.m., you’ll miss out on that entire evening peak, and your customer will have to wait an extra day. With a cutoff time at midnight, you’ll still capture that peak.

This affects your conversion rate, because the delivery time you display on your product page is one of the factors visitors take into account.

Weekend Orders

Orders received over the weekend are processed on Sunday. This means that delivery on Monday is a possibility, rather than an order placed on Friday evening not being processed until Monday and arriving on Tuesday.

Things You No Longer Have to Do Yourself

You don’t have to work late into the evening to get the last orders shipped out, and you don’t have to schedule staff for the evening or the weekend. For many online stores, that’s when outsourcing starts to pay for itself.

What You Do Get Right

The cutoff only works if your orders actually come in on time. With an integration, this happens automatically. If you’re still using manual exports, your last export determines the actual time, not the warehouse’s cutoff.

What this means for your delivery time

A late cutoff time doesn’t shorten the package’s delivery time, but it does reduce the wait time. An order placed at a quarter past eleven in the evening is shipped that same night instead of not being processed until the next day. In practice, that’s the difference between the package arriving a day earlier or a day later.

Special Days

Around holidays and during peak campaign periods, schedules may vary because carriers also follow different schedules during those times. Coordinate these times in advance so you can set the right expectations on your website instead of having to explain afterward why things went differently.