Get Started with Delivery Estimation for Order Management

Learning Objectives

After completing this unit, you'll be able to:

• Explain why displaying estimated delivery dates on the product detail page increases shopper conversion and reduces cart abandonment.
  
• List the licensing and org prerequisites required to activate Delivery Estimation, including the Order Management System, Growth License and Omnichannel Inventory integration.
  
• Describe how the Commerce Delivery Service calculates a delivery estimate using inventory availability, fulfillment sourcing, processing time, and carrier transit times.
  
• Identify the four systems involved in the Delivery Estimation flow: Order Management System, Omnichannel Inventory, Commerce Delivery Service, and B2C Commerce.
  
• Describe the two-part setup required to activate Delivery Estimation: Order Management System Core configuration and B2C Business Manager configuration.
  

Increase Cart Conversions with Delivery Dates

Imagine browsing an online store for running shoes. You find the perfect pair, but there's no information about when they'll arrive. Do you risk ordering them—or do you search elsewhere?

According to product team research, 83% of shoppers say an accurate delivery date is important when deciding to buy a product. Delivery transparency turns browsers into buyers and reduces the number of shoppers who abandon their carts during checkout.

Accurate delivery estimates on the product detail page (PDP) are vital for retailers with multiple fulfillment locations, such as those using ship-from-store or distributed warehouses. This transparency is especially critical when managing options like Buy Online, Pickup In Store (BOPIS). Without it, shoppers receive no estimate at all or simply a generic "ships in 5-7 business days" message. This message doesn’t account for inventory location, processing time, or carrier transit differences, and doesn't satisfy the shoppers desire to know the product delivery date.

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Delivery Estimation changes that. With this feature, your product detail pages can display a personalized delivery date based on the shopper's location, real-time inventory availability, fulfillment source, and carrier transit times.

This badge covers Delivery Estimation setup for B2C Commerce storefronts only.

Licensing Requirements

Before you configure Delivery Estimation, it’s helpful to understand what licenses and data objects Delivery Estimation requires. This unit explains the prerequisites and data model. In the next unit, you create the Delivery Estimation Setup record and complete the Order Management System (OMS) Core configuration.

Your org needs two licenses to use Delivery Estimation.

Order Management Growth License

Delivery Estimation requires an Order Management Growth License. This feature is not available on OMS Lite. The Growth License includes access to advanced routing capabilities and the Commerce Delivery Service integration. Work with your Salesforce account executive to verify your license type.

Omnichannel Inventory

Omnichannel Inventory (OCI) provides the real-time inventory availability data that Commerce Delivery Service (CDS) queries when calculating delivery estimates. When a shopper requests a delivery date, CDS checks OCI to see which fulfillment locations have the product in stock. Without OCI, the delivery estimate calculation cannot determine product availability, which is the first step in the routing decision. Turn on OCI in Setup and integrate it with OMS before you configure Delivery Estimation.

Permissions

The Order Management Operations Manager permission set grants complete access to Order Management objects and APIs, including the ability to create and sync Delivery Estimation Setup records. Users with this permission set can configure all aspects of Delivery Estimation in OMS. Assign this permission set to the admins who will perform the configuration tasks.

Alternative permission sets—Order Management Agent and Order Management Shopper—provide view-only or API-only access and don’t grant the configuration permissions required for setup.

Turn On the Delivery Estimation Service

Once you understand the prerequisites and data model, you're ready to turn on Delivery Estimation at the org level.

1. From Setup, go to Feature Settings | Order Management | Setup.
   
2. Turn on Delivery Estimation Service.
   

This org-level setting makes Delivery Estimation available for configuration. In the next unit, you create the Delivery Estimation Setup record, configure processing times and business hours, connect B2C Commerce to CDS, and link locations to shipping carriers.

Deconstruct the Delivery Date Calculation

As an Order Management admin, you configure Delivery Estimation so that every PDP shows shoppers an accurate delivery date based on their specific situation.

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Here's what happens when a shopper visits a PDP.

1. B2C Commerce sends a request to the CDS with the product ID, delivery estimation name, shipping carrier, shipping methods, and the shopper's delivery address.
   
2. CDS queries OCI to check real-time stock across all fulfillment locations.
   
3. CDS uses routing rules from OMS to identify the best fulfillment source based on inventory availability, determines if fulfillment is improved by dividing an order into multiple shipments (splits optimization), and proximity to the shopper.
   
4. CDS calculates the processing time using the configuration you set in OMS, including location, business hours, processing time, and carrier pickup schedules.
   
5. CDS adds the carrier transit time (either from precomputed transit time tables for supported carriers or from the static fallback time you configure).
   
6. B2C Commerce displays the estimated delivery date on the PDP for the shopper to review before they add the product to their cart.
   

The entire calculation happens in real time, so the estimate reflects current inventory and fulfillment conditions.

Explore the Systems Behind Delivery Estimation

Delivery Estimation is a multi-system feature. Here's what each component does.

CDS is a Hyperforce microservice, and is part of the Salesforce platform architecture. B2C Commerce authenticates to CDS using Account Manager, and CDS pulls configuration metadata from OMS to perform the calculation.

How the Delivery Estimation Setup Works

Delivery Estimation setup happens in two places.

1. OMS Core configuration:
   
   • Enable the Delivery Estimation Service.
     
   • Create a Delivery Estimation Setup record.
     
   • Configure location groups and locations.
     
   • Set processing times and business hours.
     
   • Create shipping carriers and methods.
     
   • Create the connection to B2C Commerce.
     
2. B2C Business Manager configuration:
   
   • Configure Account Manager authentication.
     
   • Create custom product attributes to store the delivery estimate response.
     
   • Set site preferences for the CDS connection.
     
   • Create the service credential.
     
   • Deploy the cartridge so the estimate displays on the PDP.
     

Both parts are required before delivery estimates appear on your storefront.

Buy Online Pickup in Store Support

Delivery Estimation supports BOPIS in two modes.

• My Store Mode: This mode estimates pickup time at the store closest to the shopper based on their IP address or location.
  
• Nearby Store Mode: This mode lets shoppers provide a postal code or searches within a radius, and the estimate reflects the selected store.
  

Review the Limitations

• Product Listing Page (PLP) isn’t supported: Delivery estimates appear on the PDP and checkout pages, but not on category or search result pages.
  
• SFRA and SiteGenesis: Require custom cartridges and UI elements to display estimates on B2C Commerce storefronts.
  
• Storefront Next native component requires a custom cartridge: For now, you use a custom cartridge to display estimates on B2C Commerce storefronts.
  
• Managed carrier transit times currently limited to the United States (US), United Kingdom (UK), and Canada: Order Management supports Canadian Post, FedEx, Royal Mail, UPS, and USPS as managed carriers in these regions. For other regions or carriers, you configure static transit time fallback values.
  

Next

In this unit, you learned the value of adding delivery estimation to your product display page. You also learned how Delivery Estimation works and the systems involved. Next, you turn on the service, create the Delivery Estimation Setup record, configure locations and business hours, and connect shipping carriers.

Resources

• Salesforce Help: Delivery Estimations for Order Management Overview
• Salesforce Developer: Commerce Delivery Service API Reference