Live carrier transit times (UPS and FedEx)
Updated 23 July 2026
Instead of guessing "2–3 days", connect UPS or FedEx and Flare calculates real transit for each shopper's address — so a ZIP two states away automatically sees later dates than one across town.
Carrier integrations are available on the Pro plan and above.
Set it up
- Open Shipping settings and find UPS Settings or FedEx Settings.
- Enter your origin (the warehouse ZIP/postcode and country you ship from — plus city for UPS).
- Connect your carrier account credentials.
- Optionally set a maximum transit days cap — destinations beyond it simply don't get that service.
- On each shipping profile that should use live transit, choose UPS or FedEx as its transit source, and set a fallback transit time (used if the carrier can't be reached).
How it behaves
- For each candidate dispatch date, Flare asks the carrier when the parcel would arrive at the shopper's address, and builds the calendar from real answers. Frequently used routes are cached, so checkout stays fast.
- Saturday delivery is off by default on live profiles. Enable it per profile if your carrier account supports Saturday service; for FedEx Ground residential, shoppers see an "allow Saturday deliveries" checkbox at checkout.
- Cross-week delivery is also off by default: a dispatch in one week normally delivers within the same week. Enable cross-week on the profile if a Friday dispatch may deliver Monday+.
- Ambiguous ZIPs (UPS): where one ZIP maps to several towns, the picker asks the shopper to choose their city so transit is exact.
- If the carrier is slow or down, Flare uses the profile's fallback/static transit time rather than showing nothing. If the carrier answers "no service to this address", the profile is correctly withheld instead.
Good to know
- Live transit affects dates. Live carrier pricing comes through the same profiles as dynamic courier rates where configured.
- Long calendars (many weeks ahead) use exact carrier answers for the near term and project the pattern forward for far-future dates — exact answers always win where they exist.
- No UPS/FedEx account? Use fixed transit days per profile — see zones — with business days only counting if you don't ship weekends.