Lead times Free
Tell customers when an item will actually ship, on every surface they meet it — and record the promise on the order so it does not change later.
Updated September 14, 2026
A lead time is a short message about when an item will ship: "Ships in 3-5 working days", "Made to order, 2 weeks". Praetor shows it on the shop listing, the product page, the basket, checkout, the order and the order emails.
Setting one
Praetor → Lead time → Add message. Target it at everything, at a category, or at specific products. Category messages inherit to subcategories.
Where more than one message could apply, the highest-priority one wins and the rest are ignored — two contradictory promises on one product would be worse than none.
The promise is recorded on the order
When a customer buys, the message they were shown is written onto the order line. Editing the rule afterwards does not rewrite that order.
This matters more than it sounds. Without it, an order placed in a quiet week would silently start displaying the lead time from a busy one, and a customer’s own record of what they were told would change under them.
The stored promise appears on the order screen, in the customer’s account and in the order emails, labelled as the lead time promised at purchase.
Conditions
A message can depend on the product, the category, the tag, the variation, the stock status, the customer’s role and the rest of Praetor’s shared condition fields — all of which are in every edition. So "Ships in 3-5 working days" and "Back-ordered, 3 weeks" can be two rules on the same product, separated by whether it is in stock.
What the free edition covers
Everything above: static messages at any scope, on every surface listed, with the purchase-time record.
Calculated dates that count working days around your closures are Pro, and have their own article.
Still stuck? Email [email protected].