We built a WooCommerce plugin that handles dispatch scheduling, team workflow, PDFs, and customer delivery notices, all in one place!
If you've ever had a customer ask "when will my order ship?" and had to manually check your calendar, your cut-off time, whether it's a holiday, and which staff member is available... this plugin is for you.
We've been building Dispatch Delivery Scheduler PRO for a while now, and we wanted to share it properly because we think a lot of WooCommerce store owners will recognise the problems it solves.
The problem it fixes
Most stores handle dispatch timing through a mix of product description text, manual order notes, and someone mentally tracking what came in before the 2pm cut-off. It works until it doesn't — and then you get support tickets, missed dispatches, and staff who aren't sure what they're supposed to be packing today.
This plugin replaces all of that with one connected system.
Scheduling and date logic
The core of the plugin is a smart dispatch date calculator. You set your dispatch weekdays, minimum lead time, and optional cut-off hour — and the plugin works out the earliest valid dispatch date for every order automatically.
It goes further than most tools though. You can:
- Choose between calendar days or business days for lead time
- Decide whether weekends count toward lead time or not
- Block weekends as selectable dates entirely
- Add holidays and closures as single dates or date ranges, and exclude them from lead time calculation
- Set exceptional dispatch dates that override your normal weekday rules (useful for one-off shipping days)
- Control how far ahead customers can select a dispatch date
- Use quick setup presets — for example "dispatch once per week" — and apply recommended settings in one click
Cut-off hour logic is built in properly. Orders after your cut-off automatically move to the next valid dispatch cycle. You can also apply the cut-off only on business days if that's how your operation works.
For dispatch date mode, you choose: let the customer pick a valid date, auto-assign one silently, or auto-assign and show it to them.
Per-shipping-method rules
This is one of the more advanced features. You can set completely different dispatch rules per shipping method — different dispatch weekdays, lead times, cut-off times, and delivery ETA windows. So your flat rate orders might dispatch Mon/Wed/Fri with a 2-day lead time, while local pickup is available any day with zero lead time. It has a visual rule builder plus a JSON editor for developers who want full control.
Customer-facing notices
The plugin shows delivery expectations in the right places so customers know what to expect before they even reach checkout.
On the product page, you can display a customisable notice using dynamic variables like earliest dispatch date, next dispatch day, estimated delivery window in days or hours, and more. You control the position, colours, icon, and message. There's a live preview as you edit.
At checkout, you can show an estimated arrival with a change link and week selector radio buttons. All the labels are customisable — the arrival summary text, the change link label, the checkout hint, the earliest date label — and you can show relative time formats like "in 3 days" or "in 2 weeks" instead of specific dates.
In emails and the thank-you page, the dispatch date and ETA text appear automatically. You control the message template for customer emails separately from admin emails, with a full set of variables including {dispatch_date}, {arrival_summary}, {eta_text}, and delivery window hours.
If you have a holiday or closure coming up, the plugin can show a notice on both the product page and checkout automatically, with a configurable look-ahead window and a custom message explaining when dispatch resumes.
The dispatch workflow board
This is where your team lives day-to-day.
Orders are grouped by dispatch date, with item counts and shipping method breakdowns per group. You can filter by dispatch status, order status, shipping method, and team member. Quick filter tabs give you instant views for: All, Planned, Packaging, Packed, Ready to ship, Delayed, Blocked, Today, Tomorrow, Upcoming, Overdue not shipped, and Unassigned.
Each order row shows the order number, checklist progress, dispatch status, item count, order total, customer name, location, shipping method, assigned team member, and WooCommerce order status. Internal dispatch notes appear inline — staff can see them without opening the order. You can change the status directly from the row.
Bulk actions let you update multiple orders at once. Each dispatch day group has its own Export PDF and Pick List PDF button.
The dispatch dashboard
Separate from the workflow board, the dashboard gives managers a daily overview at a glance. You see metric cards for: orders due today, overdue orders, unassigned orders, blocked orders, packed but not yet shipped, and upcoming. There's a team workload bar showing orders and items per staff member, a today-by-shipping-method panel, and quick action buttons to jump straight into filtered views. It's designed to be the first thing you open in the morning.
Inside each order
The plugin adds a clean dispatch workflow block to the WooCommerce order screen with everything in one place:
- Dispatch status (Planned, Picked, Packaging, Packed, Ready to ship, Delayed, Blocked, and more)
- Dispatch date
- Assigned team member
- Internal dispatch note (visible to staff only, never shown to customers)
- Ready-to-dispatch checklist: Products picked → Products checked → Packed → Label printed → Courier booked
Recent staff activity log showing who changed what and when
You can assign orders to dispatch staff manually or let the plugin do it automatically using round-robin or least-busy logic. Staff members have a personal "My dispatch jobs" view so they only see what's assigned to them. Managers see a full team workload view across all members.
Printing and PDFs
When it's time to pack, you can print or export:
- Packing slips (per order, per dispatch day, or for selected orders)
- Compact packing slips
- Pick lists showing aggregated quantities across all orders for the day, broken down by product, variant, SKU, and attributes
- Label summaries
PDF settings give you full control over paper size, orientation, layout (smart fit or fixed count per page), orders per page, font size, dashed borders between orders, and which fields to include — SKU, variation attributes, customer phone, customer email, customer note.
If PDF generation isn't available on your server, it falls back to printable HTML automatically.
Settings structure
Everything is organised into clearly separated sections: Schedule, Checkout & Messages, Product Notice, Shipping Methods, Workflow & Team, Printing & PDFs, and Advanced. A sidebar always shows your current active setup — dispatch days, cut-off status, lead time, timezone — so you always know what's live. There's also a setup checklist on the main settings screen that validates your configuration before you go live.