Cutoff times

Updated 23 July 2026

A cutoff is your order deadline: order before it and we can dispatch today; order after it and dispatch moves to the next day. Flare updates the calendar in real time as the cutoff passes, so a shopper can never book a date you can't make.

Set one up

1. Open Date availability and find the cutoff section.
2. Add a cutoff and set:
   • Cutoff time — e.g. 12:00.
   • Warehouse timezone — the clock the cutoff runs on (e.g. Europe/London). This matters: it's your warehouse's time, not the shopper's.
   • Days it applies — which weekdays this cutoff is active. Leave all selected for an everyday cutoff, or create different cutoffs for different days (e.g. earlier on Fridays).
   • Before cutoff / After cutoff — how many days out the earliest dispatch is on either side of the deadline. The standard "order by noon, ships same day" is before = 0, after = 1.
3. Watch the live preview — it shows the calendar exactly as a shopper would see it right now.
4. Click Save.

How before/after works

Think of it as two promises:

• Before cutoff = 0: an order at 11:59 can dispatch today.
• After cutoff = 1: an order at 12:01 dispatches tomorrow.

Set larger numbers for a batching operation, e.g. before = 1, after = 2 means "order by Tuesday noon for Wednesday dispatch; after noon it's Thursday".

Rules to know

• Cutoffs act on the dispatch (ship) date, and delivery dates move with it via transit time. A missed cutoff shifts every downstream delivery date, not just "today".
• Multiple cutoffs: you can scope a cutoff to all orders or to specific shipping options (profiles). When both match, the profile-specific cutoff wins — useful for "express orders by 2pm, standard by 5pm".
• Preparation/lead-time products are cutoff-aware: prep days count from the first dispatch day that hasn't already missed the cutoff, so a lead-time product can't sneak into next-day dispatch after the deadline.
• At checkout, if a shopper takes long enough that their selected date's cutoff passes mid-checkout, Flare blocks completion and asks them to pick a new date — and the same rule is enforced server-side.
• Customers rescheduling their own orders follow a separate change-date cutoff — see self-serve rescheduling.

Same-day delivery

Same-day is just: earliest date 0 + a cutoff with before = 0 + zero transit. Full recipe in Same-day delivery.