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.
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.
Setup is fast because the system only asks you for a few values. Get them right before you sit down at the dashboard.
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.Each step takes between five and thirty minutes. Plan on about three hours total, including breaks.
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.These are easy to avoid if you know they're coming:
The Orders Dashboard shows you everything you need. Three metrics matter more than the rest:
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%.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.
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.
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