What is Offset Time, Order Throttling, and how they work together?

Important: Please note that Offset Time and Order Throttling will only be applied for guests if Order Ahead is enabled by Ready. When Order Ahead is enabled, guests will be able to select a pickup time for their orders. Please reach out to support@readytopay.com if you have any questions about your current configuration. 

Offset Time:

Offset time is used to help ensuring that the kitchen can fulfill incoming orders and it is set up in our system to be applied to each order independently. It changes the first available pickup time for guests according to what is set up in Ready Dashboard.

Please note tooling is not currently available for clients in Ready Dashboard. Please reach out to support@readytopay.com for configuration requests. 

Example of a 30 min Offset time for all days of the week:

offset_time

Order Throttling: 

Order Throttling can be enabled to limit the number of orders that can be submitted within a certain time period with the same purpose of help ensuring that the kitchen can fulfill incoming orders.

This feature is available for all Ready Dashboard users who have access to the Orders screen. Please refer to the Order Settings (Orders screen) article for instructions on how to access Order Throttling and other settings available for Orders. 

  • The first input field allows for entering a number of orders.
  • The second input field allows for selecting a time period between 5 to 30 minutes in 5-minute intervals. Please note that this configuration also determines pickup time windows available for guests when using the Ready mobile app.

Example of a configuration with a maximum of 5 orders per 15 min:

 

How do Offset time and Order throttling work together?

Taking the examples above into consideration, the available pickup time windows for guests will be every 15 min with an offset time of 30 min. Only 5 orders will be accepted for each 15-min pickup time window.

As a consequence, there is a high probability the first pickup time will be greater than the offset time of 30 minutes depending on the time the guest is placing the order and available pickup time windows.

 

Example 1:

  • Current time: 12:00pm.
  • Orders previously submitted by guests:
    • 1 order to be picked up at 12:30pm, 3 orders at 12:45pm, 2 orders at 01:00pm.
    • No orders to be picked up afterwards.
  • Next available pickup times: 12:30pm, 12:45pm, 01:00pm, etc.
  • First available pickup time: 12:30pm.
Example 2:
  • Current time: 12:02pm.
  • Orders previously submitted by other guests:
    • 1 order to be picked up at 12:30pm, 4 orders at 12:45pm, 3 orders at 01:00pm.
    • No orders to be picked up afterwards.
  • As the first available pickup time cannot be at 12:32pm (12:02pm + 30 min offset time) due to the 15-min pickup time windows, the next available pickup times will be at: 12:45pm, 01:00pm, 01:15min, etc. 
  • First available pickup time: 12:45pm.

Example 3:

  • Current time: 12:03pm.
  • Orders previously submitted by other guests:
    • 2 orders to be picked up at 12:30pm, 4 orders at 12:45pm, 5 orders at 01:00pm.
    • No orders to be picked up afterwards.
  • As the first available pickup time cannot be at 12:33pm (12:03pm + 30 min offset time) due to the 15-min pickup time windows, the next available pickup times will be at: 12:45pm, 01:15pm, 01:30min, etc. Please note 01:00pm will not be available as this pickup time window has been already fulfilled with the maximum # of 5 orders. 
  • First available pickup time: 12:45pm.

Example 4:

  • Current time: 12:07pm.
  • Orders previously submitted by other guests:
    • 2 orders to be picked up at 12:30pm, 5 orders at 12:45pm, 5 orders at 01:00pm.
    • No orders to be picked up afterwards.
  • As the first available pickup time cannot be at 12:37pm (12:07pm + 30 min offset time) due to the 15-min pickup time windows and 12:45pm and 01:00pm will not be available as these pickup time windows have been already fulfilled with the maximum # of 5 orders each, the next available pickup times will be at: 01:15pm, 01:30pm, 01:45min, etc.
  • First available pickup time: 01:15pm.