Live DemosContact
Ordering Blog

How to Launch Custom Orders in One Afternoon: A Step-by-Step Setup Guide

tl;dr

Custom Orders on Ordering.co takes under a minute to enable and about an afternoon to launch properly. The toggle is fast — the smart setup work is in three things: pricing your per-km rate against local competition, briefing your dispatch team, and writing one customer announcement. This guide walks you through all of it in order.

What "live" actually means

There are two definitions of "live" for Custom Orders, and they get conflated a lot.

The technical definition: the button appears on your storefront and accepts requests. That happens the moment you toggle Custom Orders on in your admin dashboard. Under sixty seconds.

The operational definition: your dispatch team knows how to handle these orders, your pricing makes sense for your market, and your customers actually know the feature exists. That takes about an afternoon to do well — and it's what determines whether your first month sees ten orders or a hundred.

This guide assumes you want the second definition.

The toggle is the easy part. The hour of thinking before you flip it is what makes the feature actually work.

Before you touch the toggle — gather four numbers

Setup is fast because the system only asks you for a few values. Get them right before you sit down at the dashboard.

The four numbers you need
Maximum weight your fleet can carry — what fits in a moto bag, a bike pannier, or a car trunk for your fleet type
Maximum delivery distance in km — the radius your fleet actually serves profitably
Per-kilometer delivery fee — the price you charge per km between pickup and drop-off
Reference price from your nearest competitor — what a local errand app charges for a 3 km trip, for sanity-checking your rate

The first three you set in the dashboard. The fourth is what stops you from setting them in a vacuum.

WHAT YOU'LL FILL IN — AND WHERE ADMIN DASHBOARD Custom Orders Settings Enable Custom Orders MAXIMUM ORDER WEIGHT 10 kg DELIVERY FEE PER KILOMETER $20.00 MXN / km MAXIMUM DELIVERY DISTANCE 8 km radius BENCHMARK Local app fees (your reference): 3 km trip: $72 5 km trip: $115 Implied per-km: ~$23 ↓ price just under $20/km
Three fields in the dashboard. One reference card on the side. The benchmark is what stops you from pricing in a vacuum.

The afternoon setup — five steps in order

Each step takes between five and thirty minutes. Plan on about three hours total, including breaks.

Step 01 · 15 minutes
Benchmark your per-km rate Open the local errand or courier app most popular in your city. Get a price quote for a 3 km trip and a 5 km trip. Note both. Your per-km rate should land just below the implied per-km from those quotes — close enough to compete, not so low that you're working for nothing.
Step 02 · 5 minutes
Toggle Custom Orders on in the admin dashboard Log into your Ordering.co admin. Find the Custom Orders settings panel. Flip the toggle, enter your weight cap, your per-km rate, and your max distance. Save. The button appears on your storefront immediately.
Step 03 · 30 minutes
Brief your dispatch team Walk your dispatchers through where Custom Orders appear in the Orders Dashboard (the same place as food orders, with a different tag). Show them the item list and declared value fields. Establish a policy for what to reject — typically anything that violates local law, anything that exceeds your weight cap by description even if the customer underclaimed, and anything where the driver would be uncomfortable.
Step 04 · 45 minutes
Place a test order yourself, end to end Open your customer app on your phone. Tap Custom Order. Drop pins for a real pickup and drop-off near your store. Add a test item ("test parcel, please return to office"). Confirm. Have a driver complete it. Watch the live tracking. Pay. Note any friction. Fix what surprised you before customers find it.
Step 05 · 60 minutes
Announce it to your existing customer base Write one email and one push notification announcing Custom Orders. Keep it short — two sentences on what it does, one sentence on why they'd use it ("forgot keys, pharmacy run, parcel drop-off"), one button to open the app. Send to your full customer list. This single send typically generates the first 50–200 requests in the first week, depending on your customer count.

After those five steps, you have a working Custom Orders product with real volume coming in. Everything from here is iteration: watch which use cases dominate, adjust your guardrails, refine your pricing.

YOUR AFTERNOON — START TO LIVE 1 PM 2 PM 3 PM 4 PM 5 PM 01 · Benchmark 15 min 02 · Toggle on 5 min 03 · Brief dispatch 30 min 04 · Test order end-to-end 45 min 05 · Announce to customers 60 min LIVE ≈ 4:30 PM
Start after lunch, be live by 4:30. The longest task — announcing to customers — is the one that makes the first month a real test.
The five most common setup mistakes

What we see go wrong in week one

These are easy to avoid if you know they're coming:

Pricing it too low — chasing volume instead of margin. You can always lower it later; raising it after customers anchor on a cheap price is harder.
Setting a too-generous weight cap — bikes can't carry 30 kg. Match your cap to what your worst-case driver can actually carry.
Skipping the customer announcement — if customers don't know it exists, the button gets a handful of taps. The announcement is what makes the first month a real test.
Not briefing dispatchers — they see a new order type, panic, and call you instead of dispatching. Thirty minutes of training saves a chaotic first week.
Not placing a test order — the only way to find the friction your customers will hit is to be the customer for one trip.

After week one — what to monitor

The Orders Dashboard shows you everything you need. Three metrics matter more than the rest:

Custom Order volume by hour — confirms whether they're filling off-peak hours as expected
Average ticket size — tells you if your per-km rate is anchoring customers on small trips or big trips
Decline / cancellation rate — if it's above 10%, either your guardrails are too loose or your customer expectations need clearer guidance

After 30 days you'll have a clear pattern. Then you tune.

THE THREE METRICS THAT MATTER METRIC 01 Volume by hour 8a 2p 10p Filling off-peak ✓ as expected METRIC 02 Avg ticket size $84 MXN per order +12% vs day 1 Healthy range METRIC 03 Decline rate 10% 4% of orders declined Below 10% threshold ✓
Three numbers tell you whether week one worked. Volume should cluster off-peak. Ticket size should drift up as customers test bigger errands. Decline rate should stay under 10%.

Frequently asked questions

Can I disable Custom Orders during specific hours? +

You can pause Custom Orders any time from the admin dashboard — useful during major holidays or staff shortages. Time-based scheduling for automatic pause/resume is on the roadmap; for now most operators just toggle manually.

What if a driver picks up the wrong item? +

The item list in the order is the source of truth. Encourage drivers to call the customer if anything is ambiguous at pickup — the customer's phone number is in the order details. For high-value items, the declared value gives you a clear basis for resolving disputes.

How do I handle items the customer needs to pay for at pickup? +

Several operators handle this by having the customer pay the goods cost separately to the merchant (in cash or via the merchant's own system) while paying the delivery fee through Custom Orders. Cleaner accounting and no liability for the merchandise.

Can I run a promotional discount on Custom Orders? +

Yes — the standard promotions engine in Ordering.co applies to Custom Orders too. A common launch play is a 50% off delivery fee for the first week, which gets your existing customers to try the feature without much friction.

Start your afternoon now

Two-week free trial. No credit card. Full platform access. Run through the five steps in this guide and you'll have Custom Orders live and announced before close of business today.

Start your free trial
Topics: Business Intelligence Marketing and Loyalty Online Ordering Growth

See all

See all

Start Free | Today