Manage your pickup and delivery volume with me&u order-ahead windows offering a maximum number of orders per window (or you can make it unlimited).

How to set up order-ahead windows for pickup and delivery

You can manage your pickup and delivery volume with me&u order-ahead windows offering a maximum number of orders per window (or you can make it unlimited). This helps you to manage your own deliveries if you know you can only do 4 per hour, for example.

You can also choose what time intervals you would like to show availability for. For example, every 15 minutes. It's similar to how you manage table bookings! 

You can set up different windows for pickup and delivery to suit your business.

By default, there is a 15-minute buffer which means that customers can not order less than 15 minutes ahead. You can edit this to be sooner or later.

If you are using me&u POS Integrated or our Direct to Printer solution, you can choose how long before the order is due that you want the docket to print. 🖨👌🏽

1. Go to Orders > Ordering Windows.
2. Select either Pickup, Delivery, Counter Pickup or In-venue Delivery from the tabs at the top.
3. Click Get started using ordering windows for pickup/delivery.
   1. Note: If you see a similar message as the following, enable them using the steps here (click)

      

4. For each day you want people to be able to order on, click + Add Window.
5. Using the drop-down, select the Start Time and End Time you'd like customers to be able to order for.
6. Select the window Interval length you would like. For example, 15 minutes would mean that customers can choose any 15-minute window between your start and finish time.
7. Enter your Max orders per interval. This is the maximum amount of orders you will sell in this window before it is sold out and becomes unavailable, in which case, the customer would have to select the next available window. For example, you may be able to deliver four orders per hour so enter 4 as your maximum for a one-hour window interval.
   If you do not want to set a limit to the orders per window, you can toggle on the 'Allow unlimited orders?' option.
8. Where it says: Orders will be accepted up until 15 minutes before the window start time, click Change to edit the buffer period from 15 minutes to what you prefer. This means, customers will not be able to select that window time after the buffer period, this gives you enough time to prepare the order.
9. Once your ordering windows are finished and ready, toggle on 'Is Enabled?' at the top of the page.

Add an ASAP ordering window option

Once you have set up your ordering windows, you can choose to add an ASAP option. 

1. Set up your ordering windows.
2. Select the Change button on the blue callout box.
3. Toggle on Allow customers to choose an ASAP order time
4. Click Update.

Choose when you want pre-orders dockets to print

For pre-orders, me&u can delay sending the order to the POS to print the docket until the order needs to be prepared. You can adjust how long before the order is due that it prints.

1. Go to Orders > Ordering Windows Select Change.
2. Under Pre-order printing setting,  enter the amount of time when should we send an order to the POS (e.g. 15 mins before, 30 mins before).
3. Click Update.

Editing your pickup and delivery windows

You can edit the maximum number of orders anytime.

1. Go to Orders > Ordering Windows.
2. Select either  Pickup, Delivery, Counter Pickup, or In-venue Delivery from the tabs at the top.
3. Go to the day and interval you would like to change.
4. Edit the number in the Max Orders column.
5. Click Apply for each Max Order field you edit.
6. To edit the intervals on a specific day, click the change button for that day then Delete.
   To edit the interval of each days windows , scroll to the bottom of the page and click the red Delete all delivery/pickup ordering windows button.
7. Recreate your ordering windows with the new interval.

We do not recommend changing them too much.

Editing the ordering buffer period for pre-orders

The Ordering Buffer is the number of minutes before a window's end-time that you stop accepting orders for that window. For example, 45 minutes ordering buffer = stop accepting orders at 3:15 for 4:00–5:00 window.

Customers will not be able to select an ordering window that finishes earlier than within the buffer period. This allows you enough time to prepare the order.

If you want to ensure you have at least 45 minutes to prepare a customer's order before the time they are expecting to receive their order, then set this to 45 minutes.

1. Go to Orders > Ordering Windows.
2. Select either Pickup, Delivery, Counter Pickup, or In-venue Delivery from the tabs at the top.
3. Click Get started using ordering windows for pickup/delivery.
4. Where it says Orders will be accepted up until 15 minutes before the window start time, click Change to edit the buffer period from 15 minutes to whatever you prefer.
   If you want to set a specific time when the windows will not be available you can choose a time and date on the Cut off time dropdown.
5. Click Update.