Delivery Exceptions

The Easter bank holiday is one of the first major pressure points of the year for hospitality operations. With suppliers running reduced hours, limited delivery availability, and adjusted cut offs, teams using Acquire must be prepared to avoid missed orders, stock shortages, or disrupted service.

As Customer Success professionals, part of our role is to help operators stay proactive. Below is a practical set of tips, reminders, and step-by-step guidance you can share with your Acquire users to ensure a smooth run up to the Easter weekend.

Along with many of the product guides, we aim to highlight key topics - delivery exceptions being a key one when bank holidays and half terms breaks are imminent.

Why Delivery Exceptions Matter at Bank Holidays

Suppliers often alter their delivery schedules over holiday periods, which means the standard delivery calendar in Acquire may no longer apply. Updating delivery exceptions ensures:

Users do not accidentally place orders for a day suppliers aren’t delivering
Sites can clearly see the new one-off delivery date
Teams know cut-off times and restrictions well in advance

Given that all suppliers can vary, it is your responsibility to ensure any changes to your suppliers schedules are updated avoid ordering errors.

Creating Exceptions to a Delivery Schedule

You can find more information for delivery exceptions here or view our quick steps below.

Navigate to Acquire Head Office → Admin Functions → Delivery Schedules → Exceptions

Select the Supplier to add an exception | click Create Exception
Enter an Exception Name

Zonal would recommend that you include the supplier’s name and the exception day within the name
Click the Green Plus (+) icon twice, two date fields will be displayed
In the Top Date, enter the date that the exception should apply to (a change to the standard delivery schedule)

This is the only information you need to fill out on this date field, do not tick the delivers box, as this is the date the supplier will not be delivering to you on (the bank holiday)
On the Bottom Date field, enter the new delivery date that has been allocated for this time period | tick the Delivers check box, this will allow the addition of a day outside of the normal schedule
Enter how many Days in advance this order needs to be placed by to ensure delivery on this exception date
Enter the Cut Off time, if the supplier will only allow 1 order to be placed per site prior to cut off time you will also need to select Limit Ordering

If the supplier allows multiple orders prior to cut off time limit ordering is not required
Select the Assign Schedules, this will open your Assign Delivery Schedules to an Exception page
Select the delivery schedule that this exception should be applied to, apply to by selecting the check box on the right-hand side
Click OK

The exception has now been added and applied to the selected supplier schedule, the changes to the schedule can be previewed by selecting Preview Schedules, this will then display the delivery schedule calendar indicating the actual delivery date for the exception.