Picker visibility, out-of-stock and non-physical items
Updated 19 August 2026
Three layers control when the date picker appears at all.
1. Built-in behaviour (no setup)
- Non-physical carts: the picker only renders when the cart contains physical, shippable products. Gift cards and digital goods alone never trigger it.
- Make sure products you do deliver are marked "This is a physical product" in Shopify. An unticked shipping section is the most common "picker missing" cause.
2. Out-of-stock items
Open Storefront experience, go to the checkout advanced settings, and turn on Hide the date picker for out-of-stock items. The checkout picker then steps aside when the cart contains an out-of-stock line. This is useful when backorders follow a different, manual schedule.
- For Shopify native bundles, stock is checked against the bundle's component variants.
- Orders arriving without a date because of this are expected. Schedule them from the order page when stock lands.
3. Your own visibility rules
Use Product & customer rules with the Hide the date picker and Only show the date picker when this rule matches actions to control visibility by product, collection, cart contents, or customer:
- Hide for a "ships whenever" collection.
- Show only when the cart contains items from your scheduled range.
- Hide for wholesale customers who follow a fixed calendar.
Hide always beats show when rules overlap.
The quick-start template Hide picker for specific products builds the whole rule for you. Use it for digital goods, gift cards, and preorder items.
What a hidden picker means downstream
When rules hide the picker, checkout proceeds dateless for that cart by design. The required-date guard knows the difference between "shopper skipped the date" and "Flare chose not to ask". Orders arrive untagged, so they do not appear on the daily shipping calendar and Flare does not count them as missing a date.