How To Begin Taking Orders That Have An Order Deadline

Bottle allows you to send images, messages, and shopping carts over text. When your customers place their first order from your Store they will typically decide what type of order they are going to place. With Bottle, you can easily setup one time orders and recurring orders.

If customers are ordering from your main Bottle page (sendbottles.com/yourhandle), then they will be presented with a set of choices. Each of those choices is what we call a Store. You can create various types of Stores on Bottle. Below we outline how to create a Store.

When setting up your store, you have the choice of accepting orders with a cutoff and without a cutoff. A cutoff is an order deadline that tells customers they have until a certain time to order. To learn more about setting up Stores without a cutoff click here.

How To Setup Your Store To Receive Orders When You Have An Order Deadline

Go to the Bottle messenger and open up the dashboard.
From the dashboard, click on the tab titled Stores. Click on New Store.
When creating a new store, you will be guided through a number of prompts and sections.
1. This first question asks whether orders will be subject to an order cutoff time. An order cutoff time is a deadline when customers must place their order. For example, if you run a meal delivery business you may have an ordering deadline of Thursday night for Sunday deliveries.
2. On this screen choose "Yes, there are cutoff time" and then select your Store Name. Your Store Name will appear on your Bottle ordering site when customers are picking their plans.
Once you've created your store, you're now taken to the settings page. On the settings page you'll see a number of fields, detailed below.
1. Name: The name customers will see when they are selecting which of your plans to purchase from.
2. Image: This is the image that will be displayed next to your Store on the customer selection page.
3. Visible: If this box is checked, the plan will appear on your Bottle page. If it is not, customers will not be able to select the plan/
4. Paused: Pausing a plan on Bottle allows you to stop all notifications and auto-charges. If you Pause a plan, customers can still sign up for the plan and place an order.
5. Order: This determines what order the plan will appear on your Bottle ordering page.
6. Description: This is the description that will appear on the Bottle ordering page.
7. Price Description: This is the descriptor giving more details on pricing.
8. Product Selection Message: You can include a message for the menu page, such as store hours. If you'd like a message to appear on the menu page, enter it here.
9. Minimum Products: This field lets you dictate the total number of minimum products a customer must have before they can checkout.
10. Minimum Total: This field lets you dictate the minimum number of products a customer must have before they can checkout.
11. Maximum Number of Unique Products: This is a rarely used field that lets you specify the maximum number of unique products a customer can have in their cart.
12. Opt in or Opt Out: If you select opt-in the customer will need to confirm their order and hit pay every week. If you select opt out, the customer will be auto-billed unless they skip or pause their order.
13. Default Interval: This is the default interval for when charges and order reminders will run for the store. You have the option of weekly, biweekly, monthly, quarterly, or yearly.
14. Availabilities: Allowing add-on products allows you display menu items that are marked as "available as an add on" in the Products section. Allow discount codes allows customers to enter discount codes when checking out.
15. Show Base Price: For certain pages, this will display the base price of the subscription.
16. Show Product Prices: This will show the price of your products.
17. Prefill Cart: You can have the cart pre-filled at several points throughout the ordering time frame. If you'd like the customer to have a pre-filled cart before they receive the first ordering reminder, select "Fill Cart Before Customer Gets First Reminder". If you'd like the cart to be pre-filled when orders are created at the beginning of the week select "Fill cart when order is created". If you don't want the cart pre-filled, leave both boxes unchecked.
18. Ask for cutoff: If you check "Ask to confirm cutoff/delivery every time", this will always ask the customer to confirm which day they want their product delivered. We recommend checking this box.
Next, you'll want to determine which items customers will be able to purchase on this plan. You can do this under the Products / Categories section.
1. Customer Choices allows you to select which categories from your Products page will be visible in the store. You can read more about how products appear in your store here.
2. From the drop down, you will see all of the menu categories that are available on your products page.
3. Once you choose a category you'll now want to select an autofill option. The auto fill option is relevant for opt out plans. The autofill options will trigger for a customer that is on an opt out plan and who does not make selections. The different types of autofill are choose meals, chosen box, minimum meals or no autofill. To learn more about what these options mean, check out this article on the different auto fill options with Bottle.
4. Price Per Item: This is an optional box. If you leave it blank, Bottle will pull the price from the Products page. If you add a price, Bottle will apply this price to all products in this category. For example, let's say all your breakfast items are always $12. You can put $12 in the price box. However, let's say your breakfast items vary in price. Just leave the box blank, and the price the customer sees will be from the product page. More on the product page can be found here.
5. Discount Rate: Discount rate is the discount applied to each category. For example, if you want to offer 5% off of breakfast items, you would enter 5.
6. Minimum Products: The minimum number of products a customer can choose before they can proceed to checkout.
7. Maximum Products: The maximum number of products a customer can choose before they can proceed to checkout.
8. Order: The order of this section on the product selection page. For example, if you wanted this item to appear at the top of the product selection page, enter 1.
9. Availabilities: Allowing add-on products allows you display menu items that are marked as "available as an add on" in the Products section. Allow discount codes allows customers to enter discount codes when checking out.
10. Show Product Prices: This will show the price of your products.
The final section, Cutoff Times, allows you to determine when reminder notifications are sent to customers and what those notifications say. Each reminder notification includes a unique link for customers to click and place their order.
1. Cutoff Times vs. Cutoff Time Templates: When setting up cutoffs you can either create a Cutoff Time template or a specific Cutoff. If you click Add Another cutoff you are adding a cutoff for one specific date. If you click add a cutoff template, you are creating a template that is used for all future dates.
To add a single cutoff time, click on "add another cutoff" and enter the following information:
1. Cutoff Time: This is the time orders cutoff for the week. This is a "soft cutoff" time. This is the time displayed on the product selection page.
2. Grace Period: This is the amount of additional time you give customers to get in any last minute orders. We suggest a minimum of a 1 hour grace period so that customers can adjust any billing issues and get in last minute orders.
3. Base Fulfillment Day On:
  1. The Delivery Option: This means that you will use the delivery option to determine when you will deliver. Here is some more helpful info on setting up delivery options.
  2. A Specific Day: This means you will pick the day for fulfillment.
4. Delivery Time: This is the delivery day. If you leave this field blank, the delivery day that is listed in the delivery tab will appear.
5. Scheduled Reminder: This is what your ordering reminder will say. A unique link will be included with this message automatically. You can create as many reminders as you'd like.
To add a Cutoff Time Template enter in the information below:
1. Cutoff Day: Select the interval and the day of the week.
2. Cutoff Time: This is the time orders cutoff for the week. This is a "soft cutoff" time. This is the time displayed on the product selection page.
3. Grace Period: This is the amount of additional time you give customers to get in any last minute orders. We suggest a minimum of a 1 hour grace period so that customers can adjust any billing issues and get in last minute orders.
4. Base Fulfillment Day On:
  1. The Delivery Option: This means that you will use the delivery option to determine when you will deliver. Here is some more helpful info on setting up delivery options.
  2. A Specific Day: This means you will pick the day for fulfillment.
5. The First Order Reminder: The first scheduled reminder that is sent to customers of the Store.
6. The Second Order Reminder: The second reminder that is sent to customers of the Store.
7. Create cutoffs for this many days out: The system will automatically schedule future cutoffs based on the template's parameters. You can decide how many days out you'd like cutoff times to be scheduled.