Managed WordPress Ecommerce Help

Understand Lead Time Calculation in open hours

Lead time calculation for the Local Pickup Plus extension is a fairly complex setting which allows you to set a minimum time period that a customer needs to wait to pickup their order. As such, it is divided in two calculation methods: a) count open/business hours, or b) count calendar days.

In this article, we're going to discuss setting the calculation method to Count only open hours. Pauses outside business hours and on holidays.

Required: Local Pickup Plus is a premium WooCommerce extension included with WordPress Ecommerce Hosting or as a standalone purchase.

This method will calculate the lead time based on the business hours you've set for your shop in a previous step. This is ideal for merchants that want to ensure that lead time will only be calculated based on their business hours, which can be a good option for handmade and catering products.

However, if you set your lead time in days (or weeks!) with the Count only open hours. Pauses outside business hours and on holidays option - then you will likely run into a problem where no one can select a date to pick up their order. Or, if they can, that date is further away than expected.

This is because "days" are always calculated as a period of 24 hours, even with the "Count only open hours" setting. Since most shops aren’t open for 24 hours in a single day, the idea of the “day” is split across the opening hours. That means that it will overlap to the coming days if needed to ensure that the Default Lead Time is respected fully.

For example, if you have a shop that’s open on Saturdays and Sundays from 12pm until 6pm, that’s 12 hours over the course of a weekend and still doesn’t add up to the 24 hours duration that is considered a “day”. As such, if you have a lead time of one “day” that counts open hours only, you’ll have to wait for two full weekends to pass before the next available appointment opens up on the following Saturday.

We recommend that you set your lead time in hours if you plan to use the option to only count open hours.

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