How does EasyRoutes handle pickup orders?

In-store Pickups

Generally, EasyRoutes is designed to let you plan routes for any type of Shopify order in your system that has a shipping address. Whether it's someone checking out from your storefront, your POS, or whether you are using a draft order, you can use those orders for route planning even if it's a pickup order. It's possible that you're looking to handle these orders in EasyRoutes for whatever reason (e.g. bring them to a pickup location, use a consistent interface to prepare and handle orders, etc.).

To use a Shopify Local Pickup order on a route, all you have to do is add a shipping address to the order or on the stop itself. When an order does not have a shipping address associated with it, then EasyRoutes for Shopify will reject the stop. You will need to edit the stop and add a shipping address to the stop in order use it on a route, even if that address is the same as your physical store or warehouse. Instructions here. You can also consider marking these stops as a Pickup stop type.

If you're looking to manage your pickup orders, we also work with Shopify's native pickup features, so you could update these orders in the Shopify admin directly. If you are looking for options that help you with providing a widget or cart options to manage pickups or local deliveries, you can use third-party apps that integrate well with EasyRoutes instead.

While EasyRoutes is primarily designed for deliveries (and pickup 'tasks' on location), we do support capturing signatures and photos for pickup 'tasks' that you can generate from an order. While in-store pickups aren’t a native feature, read this article for a workaround using EasyRoutes directly to manage this process.

Mid-route pickups

EasyRoutes can also be used to accommodate mid-route pickups - for example, where your driver needs to stop at a specific location in the middle of their route to pick up additional orders/supplies that are required to complete the rest of their route. To do so, take advantage of the following EasyRoutes features:

• Custom stops & Address Book: Use EasyRoutes' custom stop feature to add and configure address details for the location your driver will need to stop at mid-route. If this address is a location that will be visited again on future routes, save it to the EasyRoutes Address Book for quick addition on any routes planned in the future. Full details here: How do I add a custom stop to a route?
• Pickup stops: Mark any custom stops as pickup-type stops to clearly communicate to drivers what this stop represents, plus independently customize or disable any notifications associated with this type of stop. Full details here: Stop Types (Delivery, Pickup, Task)
• Time windows: Add a custom time window to your mid-route pickup stop to give EasyRoutes' algorithm an additional data point of when you expect it will be completed. When creating optimized routes, EasyRoutes will attempt to respect any existing time window data to ensure these stops are routed/scheduled at the appropriate point within the route. Full details here: Time Windows & How can I adjust a route to have stops deliver at the start or end of a route?
• Re-order route stops: Once an optimized route has been created, users can manually re-configure the order in which stops are ordered - this can be particularly useful if the mid-route pickup needs to be completed before/after certain stops, but ordering stops in this manner does not necessarily create the most "optimal" stop ordering. Full details here: How do I re-order stops in a route?