Stock and availability
Delivery dates and backorder dates in your store: a date instead of "out of stock"
The expected receipt date sits on a purchase order line in your ERP and in a column of most supplier files. We carry it to the product page as a ship date, converted with your handling time, your cut-off time and a business-day calendar, and we update it when the supplier moves it.
A zero without a date
"Out of stock" gives a buyer nothing to plan with. Two items with zero on the shelf can be one day or six weeks away, and the number 0 is the same for both. The date that separates them already exists in two places: as the expected receipt date on a purchase order line in the ERP, and as a column in most supplier files.
Keeping ship dates current by hand works for 40 backordered items. A catalog of 4,000 SKUs with 6% on backorder has 240 dates, and suppliers revise them weekly. A date typed into a product description in March is still on the page in October.
The quantity side of this flow is described on the stock and availability page. This page covers the date.
How it works
Three different fields are called "delivery date". None of them converts into another without extra data.
| Field | Example | What it needs to become a date on the product page |
|---|---|---|
| Lead time, a duration | 5 |
a start date, the unit and a holiday calendar |
| Expected receipt date | 2026-11-30 |
your handling time after receipt |
| Promised ship or delivery date | 2026-12-04 |
the cut-off time, the transit time and the carrier's calendar |
From a lead time to a date
A supplier file gives lead time 5. The order goes to the supplier on Monday, November 23, 2026. Read as calendar days, the goods arrive on Saturday, November 28. Read as business days without a holiday calendar, they arrive on Monday, November 30. With Thanksgiving on Thursday the 26th skipped, they arrive on Tuesday, December 1.
The unit is set per feed, and the calendar is set per party. Wednesday, November 11, 2026 is Veterans Day, a federal holiday, and UPS picks up and delivers on that day. A calendar built from the federal list removes a shipping day that the carrier works. The integration keeps three calendars: the supplier's, your warehouse's and the carrier's.
From receipt to ship date to delivery
Item 00123457 has zero available. The supplier file lists it with 11/30/2026 in the eta column.
Mon 2026-11-30 expected receipt in Reno
Tue 2026-12-01 ship date, after 1 business day of put-away
Fri 2026-12-04 delivery date, after 3 business days in transit
The product page shows "Ships December 1". With the carrier's transit time to the buyer's ZIP code added, the cart shows "Arrives by December 4".
Incoming units are counted against the backorders that already exist. The purchase order due November 30 brings 240 units and 150 are promised to open orders, which leaves 90. A new order for 100 units gets 90 from that receipt and 10 from the next purchase order, due December 14. Whether the order ships complete on December 15 or in two parts is a rule you set.
Cut-off times
"Order by 2:00 PM, ships today" is true in one time zone. The Reno warehouse cuts off at 2:00 PM Pacific. A buyer in New York who orders at 4:30 PM Eastern is at 1:30 PM Pacific, and the order ships today. At 5:15 PM Eastern it is 2:15 PM Pacific, and the order ships the next business day. A store that checks the cut-off in the buyer's time zone, or in UTC on the server, promises the wrong day for part of every afternoon. The cut-off is stored with its zone, as 14:00 America/Los_Angeles, and checked when the order is placed.
Formats
sku;qty;eta
00123457;0;11/30/2026
00123460;0;03/04/2026
00123461;0;wk 6
00123462;0;2-3 weeks
00123463;0;12/31/2099
00123464;0;09/28/2026
This file was read on October 3, 2026. Five of its six dates need a rule.
03/04/2026is March 4 in a US file and April 3 in a European one. The row above it has 30 in the second position, so this file is month first. The order is set per feed and checked on every file; a file that contradicts it is rejected as a whole.wk 6has no year and no numbering system. In 2027, ISO week 6 runs from Monday, February 8 to Sunday, February 14. Excel'sWEEKNUMfunction with its default setting counts the week that contains January 1 as week 1 and starts weeks on Sunday: its week 6 runs from January 31 to February 6. In 2026 both systems put the same working days in each week, so an integration tested this year is a week off from January 2027.2-3 weeksis a range in text. The rule per feed says which end is used: 3 weeks is 21 calendar days.12/31/2099is the supplier's way of writing "unknown". It is stored as unknown.09/28/2026lies in the past. The purchase order is overdue, and "ships September 29" is wrong. A past date counts as unknown and goes on the run report.
Every date is stored as ISO 8601, 2026-11-30, without a time. A ship date is a calendar day at the warehouse. The notes on dates and time zones and supplier CSV and Excel files cover the parsing in detail.
When the supplier moves the date
A date that was right on Monday can be wrong on Thursday. The file of November 19 lists item 00123457 with 12/14/2026 instead of 11/30/2026.
run 2026-11-19 06:00 feed: stock_20261119.csv
00123457 eta 2026-11-30 -> 2026-12-14 (+14 days)
ship date 2026-12-01 -> 2026-12-15
open orders with the old date: 9
The product page changes to "Ships December 15" on that run. The 9 orders that were placed with December 1 are listed with their order numbers, and the ship date on each order is updated in the store and in the ERP. A move of more than a set number of days can wait for your approval first.
Two more cases have a rule. When the goods are received, the quantity goes above zero and the date is cleared. When the item is missing from the file, the absence rule of that feed applies, as described on the supplier feeds page.
What it covers
- Purchase order dates. The expected receipt date per item and location, from the earliest purchase order line with units that are not promised yet.
- Supplier dates and lead times. Read from the feed, with the unit, the date order and the calendar set per feed.
- Your own handling. Put-away time, cut-off time and time zone per warehouse.
- The date in the store. On the product page, in the cart and on the order, and sent to the ERP as the requested ship date of the order line.
- Changes. A diff per run, the open orders that hold the old date, and a hold rule for large moves.
Which systems
| System | Where the date lives | Detail |
|---|---|---|
| NetSuite | Expected Receipt Date on the purchase order line | defaults to the date of the purchase order until a lead time or a person changes it |
| Business Central | expectedReceiptDate on the purchase order line |
planned receipt date plus safety lead time plus inbound warehouse handling time |
| Shopify | metafield of type date on the variant |
ISO 8601, without a time zone |
| Adobe Commerce | product attribute, next to the backorder setting | No Backorders, Allow Qty Below 0, or Allow Qty Below 0 and Notify Customer |
The NetSuite default is a trap. A purchase order entered on October 1 with no date filled in says the goods arrive on October 1. A line whose expected receipt date equals the order date is treated as "no date" unless you say otherwise. NetSuite calculates lead time in calendar days: its own example counts a purchase order of 1/1 received on 2/1 as 31 days.
Business Central stores lead time as a date formula such as 5D or 1W and calculates the dates itself, as described in Microsoft's documentation on date calculation for purchases. On Shopify, the variant's inventory policy is CONTINUE or DENY, which decides whether an item at zero can be ordered at all. The date belongs to the first case.
B2B buyers who order from their procurement system send and receive dates in the standard's own fields. A cXML order can carry a requestedDeliveryDate on each ItemOut line. An OCI basket returns NEW_ITEM-LEADTIME per item, a number of days that the buyer's system adds to the current date. Both are part of PunchOut. Trading partners on EDI confirm dates in the 855 purchase order acknowledgement and announce the shipment in the 856 advance ship notice.
Where standard connectors stop
Standard connectors and iPaaS platforms document their inventory flow as a quantity per item and location. Order status and tracking numbers are in their field lists. A field for an expected receipt date, a backorder date or a promised date is not. The store shows 0 and "out of stock", or it keeps selling at zero without telling the buyer when the order ships. The usual workaround is a line of text in the product description that someone maintains by hand.
In an integration built for your data the date is a field like the quantity: it has an owner, a conversion and a rule for the missing and the moved case. Each run can be tested first as a dry run that writes nothing, and the controls are described on the dry run and approval page. Send us one supplier file and an export of your open purchase orders, and you get a concrete answer on which dates can be shown. Tell us what you run.
Frequently asked questions
What does the product page show when no date is known?
The text you choose for that case, for example "Ship date on request". An unknown date is stored as unknown and is never filled with a guess or with a placeholder such as 12/31/2099 from the supplier file. Whether the item can still be ordered is a separate setting: on Shopify the variant either continues selling or denies orders at zero, and that rule is set per item group.
What happens when the supplier moves the date?
The next run recalculates the ship date and writes it to the product. Orders that were placed with the old date are listed in the run report with the order number, the old date and the new date, and the date on those orders is updated in the store and in the ERP. A move of more than a set number of days can be held for your approval before anything changes.
Where does the date come from when we have no supplier feed?
From the open purchase orders in your ERP. Every purchase order line has an expected receipt date and an open quantity. The integration reads the earliest line that still has units not promised to an existing backorder. In Business Central that field is expectedReceiptDate on the purchase order line, in NetSuite it is the Expected Receipt Date column.
Can the date differ per warehouse?
Yes. A purchase order line is received at one location, so the date is kept per item and per location, together with the handling time, cut-off time and time zone of that location. A store that fulfills from Reno and from a second warehouse shows the earliest date among the locations that may ship the order. The multi-location inventory page covers which locations count.
Does the store need an app to show the date?
No. On Shopify the date is written to a metafield of type date on the variant, in ISO 8601 form such as 2026-12-01, and the theme prints it on the product page and in the cart. On Adobe Commerce it is a product attribute. The text around the date, such as "Ships December 1", is a template you set.
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