Scheduled orders

Scheduled orders (pre-orders) let customers place an order now for a delivery or pickup slot later — tonight’s dinner ordered at lunchtime, or a Friday office order placed on Monday. Scheduled orders wait in the partner app’s upcoming orders view and surface into live orders close to their slot, so your kitchen starts preparing at the right time rather than the moment the order was placed. It’s a natural fit for catering-style advance orders and busy-period smoothing.

How it works for the customer

At checkout, the customer chooses a future time slot instead of ordering for right now.
They pay exactly as they would for an immediate order — online, wallet, or a pay-on-arrival method. See Payments overview.
Once the order goes live, they get the same status updates and tracking as any other order — ACCEPTED, PROCESSING, READY, out for delivery or ready to collect.

From the customer’s side a scheduled order feels identical to a normal one; the only difference is when the kitchen springs into action.

How it works for your kitchen

The order doesn’t interrupt service the moment it’s placed. It sits in the upcoming orders view, where staff can review what’s coming — items, quantities, slot times — and plan prep and staffing.
As the slot approaches, the order surfaces into Partner app → Orders → Live Orders and behaves like any fresh order: the new-order alert sounds, staff accept it, and it moves through the normal lifecycle.
You can also use the date picker at the top of the orders screen to look at a specific day’s orders — useful for reviewing tomorrow’s pre-orders during a quiet moment.

Statuses and timing

A scheduled order follows the same statuses as any other order — NEW, ACCEPTED, PROCESSING, READY, then handover. The difference is purely when it enters the live flow. Once live:

Accepting it commits your kitchen to the slot the customer chose, so prep should target the slot time, not “as fast as possible”.
For delivery, driver assignment works exactly as usual — manual, auto dispatch, or a third-party network — timed against the slot.

Editing and cancelling scheduled orders

Scheduled orders can be edited or cancelled like any other order, subject to the same rules you’ve configured:

Edits follow your edit window and permissions — see Editing orders & refunds. Advance orders are where edits earn their keep: the customer who scheduled Friday’s office lunch on Monday often calls Wednesday to add two more mains.
Cancellations follow your cancellation statuses, reasons, fees, and refund settings — see Cancelling orders.

Payment

Prepaid scheduled orders are paid at placement, days before fulfilment if need be — the money side is settled before the kitchen ever sees the order.
Pay-on-arrival scheduled orders are collected at handover, exactly like their immediate counterparts.

Receipts and kitchen tickets

Printing follows acceptance, not placement. If you’ve enabled auto-print, the receipt and kitchen order ticket (KOT) print when staff tap Accept on the surfaced order — so a pre-order placed on Monday doesn’t leave a ticket curling on the printer until it actually matters. Staff can also print on demand from the order at any point. See Receipt & kitchen printing.

Notifications

At placement, the customer gets a confirmation that their slot is booked.
Once the order goes live and is accepted, the normal step-by-step notifications take over — ACCEPTED with the estimated time, READY, out for delivery or ready to collect, completed — per your communication settings.
If the order is edited or cancelled before its slot, the customer is told what changed, exactly as with any other order.

Frequently asked questions

Does the kitchen ticket print when the order is placed? No — auto-print fires when staff accept the order as it surfaces into live orders, so tickets appear when the kitchen should act on them.

Do scheduled orders look different from normal orders once live? No. Once surfaced, a scheduled order moves through the same statuses, prints the same documents, and supports the same actions — edit, cancel, driver assignment — as any other order.

Can staff see scheduled orders before they go live? Yes — the upcoming orders view in the partner app lists everything booked ahead, and the date picker on the orders screen lets staff review a specific day.

Can customers pay on arrival for a scheduled order? Yes, where you’ve enabled pay-on-arrival methods — cash, card on delivery, or card terminal are collected at handover, exactly as for an immediate order. See Payments overview.

Why offer scheduled orders

Capture demand you’d otherwise lose — the customer deciding at 10 am what to eat at 7 pm orders from whoever lets them lock it in.
Smooth the rush — pre-orders give the kitchen a head start on peak periods instead of stacking everything into the same 20 minutes.
Win larger orders — office lunches and gatherings are planned in advance and skew bigger than impulse orders.