Delivery dates, time windows and zones

A delivery zone is an area a shop agrees to deliver to, with its own fee. A time window is the stretch of the day when the flowers should arrive. A cut-off is the hour after which the shop stops taking orders for that day. Order software lets a shop set all three once, so staff don't answer the same questions by phone.

Delivery zones

A zone is drawn in one of two ways. One general store maker lets a shop deliver within a set distance of its location, or to certain postal codes.¹

A distance zone is a circle around the shop. A postal code zone is a list of codes instead.

The same page sets some limits. These belong to that product, and others differ.

• Up to 10 delivery zones per location.¹
• A largest delivery radius of 160 kilometers or 100 miles.¹
• Entries for the starting characters of a code, followed by an asterisk, which cover every code that begins that way.¹

For United Kingdom postcodes, you enter the postcode area or outward code.¹ Matching is by whole area or whole outward code. One entry doesn't catch another with similar letters.¹

Fees by zone

Each zone gets its own fee and, if wanted, a minimum order value. The help page gives a worked example with three radius zones, at 5, 10 and 20 kilometers, each with a higher fee than the one inside it.¹

Zones can overlap. When a customer sits in several, the page says they're always charged the lowest applicable delivery price.¹ Overlap zones by accident and a far address could get a near fee.

Date and time windows

A florist form usually asks for a date first, then a time type. One florist program's list of time choices is "After, Around, Before, Exactly At, AM, PM, and Any."² Its date is chosen from a calendar.²

In that list, "Before" means deliver before the chosen time, "After" means after it, and "Around" leaves some room either side.²

Cut-off times

A cut-off protects the shop from late orders it can't fill. One delivery-date plugin for a web store describes it as the time after which you don't want further orders for today.³ After that hour, today's date can't be picked and the customer chooses a later day.³

Time zones matter for online shops. That plugin runs its cut-off on the website's time zone, not the customer's.³ A customer in another zone sees the shop's clock.

Whether a program allows a different cut-off for each area is a question for its own documentation.

Exceptions

Not every web shop combines zones, dates and cut-offs in one place. Shopify's local delivery covers zones and fees. The date and cut-off tools above come from a different plugin for a different platform. Mixing tools is common, and it's where mismatches show up.

Busy day order limits covers what to do when a date fills up. These settings were read in the makers' help pages on 2026-11-03.¹