There may be occasions where you wish to prepare your orders and parcels, but deliver them on a later date. This can be done by creating future dated orders and batches.
To activate this feature, navigate to Settings > Miscellaneous, and check the 'Allow future dated orders' box.
There are two ways you can apply a future date to your orders, when applying postage to an order, or when importing an order via spreadsheet.
How to apply a future date when applying postage to an order
Once the change has been made, when applying postage to your orders, you will see a new field, 'Planned despatch date' under ‘Step 4. Confirm and Submit’:
In the ‘Planned despatch date’ field, type the date that you are planning to despatch your mail on, or select the date from the interactive calendar.
You can now apply the postage and generate labels as usual for one or more future dated orders.
How to manifest future dated orders
The easiest way to manifest your future dates orders is to do so from your 'Batch History' page. Hover your mouse pointer over the 'Orders' link from any page in Click & Drop, and a drop down menu will appear. Click 'Batches'.
You can add a filter to your 'Batch history' page to display your batches by the date they are due to be manifested.
Click on the 'Columns' icon on the top right of the column headers. This will allow you to select the columns you wish to view. Check the button beside ‘Manifest date’. This will add a new column to your ‘Batch history’ page, and will allow you to view your batches by the date they are due to be manifested.
To filter the view to that you see only your future dated batches, click the ‘Future dated batches’ button. Your future dated batches will now be visible by their date.
Please note that If needed, you can manifest the batch earlier than the planned date. Otherwise, the batch will be automatically manifested on the correct date by the auto manifest feature. If you have the auto manifest feature switched off, you will need to manifest these orders manually on the planned date.
How to apply a future date when importing an order via spreadsheet
To import an order with a planned despatch date, you will need to map a 'Planned despatch date' column in your spreadsheet. When your order is imported, you will be able to process the future dated batch from the batch page as described above.
Please note that if your import contains orders that have a planned despatched date alongside orders which do not, Click & Drop will split these into separate batches.
For more information on how to import your fields via spreadsheet, please see the following guides: