Manage Customer Dock Hours and Delivery Schedules in Odoo

Customers do not always accept deliveries whenever your warehouse is ready to ship.

Some receiving docks operate only during specific hours. Others close for lunch, accept deliveries only on certain days, or have designated days for regular stock orders. When this information lives in emails, notes, spreadsheets, or employee knowledge, it can easily be missed during order processing.

Steersman’s Customer Delivery Dock Schedules feature brings this information directly into Odoo. Delivery addresses can now have their own receiving schedules, time zones, and preferred Stock Order Delivery Days, giving sales and operations teams important delivery information where they already work.

What Are Delivery Dock Schedules?

A Delivery Dock Schedule defines when a specific customer delivery address is available to receive shipments.

For example, a customer might accept deliveries:

• Monday through Friday from 7:00 AM to 3:00 PM
• Monday from 7:00 AM to 11:30 AM and again from 12:30 PM to 3:30 PM
• Monday through Friday, with Wednesday designated as the normal Stock Order Delivery Day

Each delivery address can have its own schedule, making the feature especially useful when customers operate multiple locations with different receiving requirements.

Schedules can contain multiple receiving windows on the same day, allowing businesses to account for lunch breaks or other periods when a dock is closed.

Enabling Customer Delivery Dock Schedules

An administrator first enables the feature from:

Settings > Inventory > Shipping

Enable Customer Delivery Dock Schedules and save the settings. Once enabled, delivery schedules can be configured on customer delivery addresses.

Using Delivery Schedule Templates

For customers with common receiving schedules, users do not need to enter every day’s hours manually.

Steersman includes Delivery Schedule Templates, which act as reusable starting points when configuring an address.

Several common schedules are provided by default, including:

• Monday–Friday, 6:00 AM–12:00 PM
• Monday–Friday, 7:00 AM–3:00 PM
• Monday–Friday, 7:00 AM–11:30 AM and 12:30 PM–3:30 PM
• Monday–Friday, 7:00 AM–3:00 PM with Saturday 7:00 AM–12:00 PM

Inventory administrators can manage these templates from:

Inventory > Configuration > Delivery > Customer Delivery Schedule Templates Templates can be created, edited, duplicated, or deleted as needed.

A template is only used to populate the address when selected. After the schedule has been copied to the customer, that customer’s schedule becomes independent. Changing or deleting the original template does not modify addresses that were previously created from it.

Setting Up Dock Hours on a Customer

Dock schedules are configured on contacts whose address type is Delivery Address.

Open the delivery address and navigate to the SO & PO tab. The Delivery Dock Schedule section appears when editing the address.

You can either start with a template or build the schedule manually.

Starting From a Template

Select a schedule from Delivery Dock Schedule Template.

Odoo copies the template’s receiving windows into the delivery address, giving you a starting point that can then be customized for that customer. Selecting a template replaces the schedule currently entered on the address, including any Stock Order Delivery Day selections.

Creating a Schedule Manually

Click Add a line and enter:

• Day of Week
• From
• To

Add additional lines for each receiving window.

For example, if a customer’s dock closes for lunch, Monday could contain:

7:00 AM–11:30 AM

and

12:30 PM–3:30 PM

Multiple receiving windows can be entered for the same day as long as they do not overlap.

Identifying Stock Order Delivery Days

Individual receiving windows can also be marked as a Stock Order Delivery Day.

This identifies the customer’s normal receiving day or window for stock orders and makes that information prominently available to the Sales team.

For example, a customer might receive shipments throughout the week but prefer regular stock deliveries on Wednesday. The Wednesday receiving window can be marked accordingly.

These preferred windows are then summarized directly on Sales Orders shipping to that address.

Setting the Dock Time Zone

Each Delivery Dock Schedule includes a Timezone.

The time zone becomes required once receiving windows have been entered. This ensures that the schedule represents the customer’s local receiving hours rather than the time zone of the salesperson or Odoo user viewing the order.

Times displayed on Sales Orders remain in the delivery dock’s own time zone and are not converted based on the current user’s location.

This is particularly valuable for companies shipping across multiple time zones.

Dock Schedule Validation

Steersman also validates schedules to help prevent incorrect receiving windows from being entered.

When creating a schedule:

• The end time must be later than the start time.
• A single receiving window cannot continue past midnight.
• Multiple windows on the same day cannot overlap.
• One window may end at the exact time another begins.

If an overnight schedule is required, it should be split between two days.

For example:

Monday: 10:00 PM–12:00 AM

Tuesday: 12:00 AM–2:00 AM

If the schedule violates one of these rules, Odoo displays a validation message and prevents the changes from being saved until the schedule is corrected.

Viewing Dock Information on Sales Orders

Once a delivery schedule has been configured, Sales users do not need to open the customer’s contact record every time they process an order.

When the Sales Order’s Delivery Address has a Dock Schedule, Odoo displays the relevant information directly on the order.

The Sales Order can show:

• Delivery Dock Timezone
• Stock Order Delivery Day

These fields are highlighted to help ensure the information is noticed during order processing.

A Stock Order Delivery Day might appear as:

Wed 7:00 AM–11:30 AM, 12:30 PM–3:30 PM; Sat 7:00 AM–12:00 PM Only receiving windows specifically marked as Stock Order Delivery Days are included in this summary.

Keeping Orders Up to Date

The information displayed on a Sales Order reflects the current Dock Schedule of its Delivery Address.

This means that if a customer’s receiving schedule changes, users can update the delivery address rather than editing individual Sales Orders.

Existing orders will also reflect the delivery address’s current schedule.

Removing a Dock Schedule

If a delivery location no longer requires a schedule:

1. Remove all receiving windows.
2. Clear the Timezone field.
3. Save the delivery address.

The Delivery Dock Schedule section will no longer display when viewing the contact once nothing is configured.