Setting up different delivery durations/ lead time

Payments + Shipping & Fulfilment

Topic summary

A Shopify merchant is seeking ways to display different delivery lead times for dropshipped products from multiple warehouses, with processing times ranging from 3-10 days for some items to 25-30 business days for products shipped from China.

Proposed Solutions:

• Custom metafields approach: Create a metafield to assign expected shipping times to each product, making this information visible below the “Add to Cart” or “Buy Now” button. Implementation requires editing theme code, with a YouTube tutorial provided.

• Custom shipping rates workaround:

  • Disable automatic estimated delivery dates in Settings > Shipping & Delivery
  • Create separate shipping rate groups for each lead time (e.g., “Made to Order - 2 weeks”)
  • Use the “Custom delivery description” field to display lead time text (e.g., “Ships within 2 weeks”)
  • Note: This prevents estimated delivery dates from showing at checkout for all products

Current Status: The discussion remains open with multiple implementation options suggested but no confirmed resolution from the original poster.

Summarized with AI on November 7. AI used: claude-sonnet-4-5-20250929.
1

Hi, I’m just starting with Shopify and I have a lot of question but I may start with the most important one at the moment :grin:

So basically I offer different products by dropshipping which will be shipped from different warehouses. The processing time is different and the shipment time/ lead time is also different for each. Since one of the warehouse is in China (I guess no surprise for you guys :slightly_smiling_face: ), I have to set t to 25 to 30 business days. Others take between 3 to 10 days. Depends if it’s customized orders.

so where can I set this? At Etsy was this easy going with different shopping profiles but in the admin section at Shopify under shipment and delivery I couldn’t find such an option.

or should I rather indicate it in each product description? Of course this requires that the buyer reads it.

2

Hi @DaveD ,

The best way to do it is to create a custom metafield and assign the expected shipping time to it.

Make this field visible below of buynow or add to cart button.

Hope it helps…

3

@gr_trading Thank you for your advise. Maybe below the share button would it be good to add the information. But at least under customize is it not possible, I have just 3 options there. I guess I have to edit somewhere the code to do so?!

Screenshot 2023-01-24 091757.png
Screenshot 2023-01-24 091757.png870×292 17.3 KB

4

@DaveD Don’t know if you implement it or not. Refer to the below video to implement the same.

1 Like
5

I have the same issue with our store. Some of our items are made to order.

A workaround you could try;

  1. Go to Settings > Shipping & Delivery > Expected Delivery Dates - disable ‘Manual Delivery Dates’. This will stop an estimated delivery date from being shown at checkout

  2. Create a custom shipping rate for each lead time and include the products related to that lead time. For example ‘Made to Order - 2 weeks’

  3. Add zones and shipping rates to this custom group.

  4. For ‘Rate Name’ - set as ‘Custom’ under ‘shipping rate’, name the ‘Custom rate name’ something like Standard/Express or whatever you want.

  5. The important bit - under ‘Custom delivery description (optional)’ add text to describe the lead time. I.e. Ships within 2 weeks.

Now when a customer is checking out there are no estimated delivery dates shown, but it does show the lead time text.

Please bear in mind that this will mean there are no estimated delivery dates shown for items with no lead time, either.

Hope this helps.

Thanks