Getting orders with a blank delivery date even though you made it required? In almost every case we’ve traced, the customer never passed through the widget — they used an express/dynamic checkout button. Here’s how to close that gap.
First, confirm the date is actually required:
- Go to General Settings → Set up Delivery Dates.
- Turn on Delivery Date Required (“When Enabled, customers will not be able to proceed to checkout without a delivery date selection”).
Then understand the real cause — and why the setting alone isn’t enough. The date picker is only enforced on the cart/product page. Dynamic checkout buttons — Shop Pay, PayPal, Google Pay, “Buy it now” — and links that jump straight to checkout take the customer around the cart, so the widget never loads and no date is captured. That’s why your own test order (going through the cart) always captures a date, but roughly half of real orders don’t.
The fix:
- In your theme, hide/disable the dynamic checkout buttons on the product and cart pages so every customer is routed through the cart, where the picker is enforced. (Note: removing them on the cart page isn’t enough on its own — express checkout can still appear on the checkout page itself, so disable it in both spots.)
- For PayPal buttons that can’t be removed, we can’t configure the button directly. Instead, enable General Settings → Global → Pre-select Delivery Date so at least a default date is captured on those orders.
A rarer cause we’ve seen is a slow or interrupted internet connection dropping the date-selection step — worth ruling out if only isolated orders are affected.
If still stuck: Send us 2–3 order numbers that came through blank and we’ll trace the exact checkout path used — reach us at support.