DeliveryIQ user guide

DeliveryIQ helps one Shopify store manage local delivery and store pickup: service areas, bookable windows, your own drivers, supported couriers, delivery proof, cash records and customer tracking.

Availability: the last recorded status is Shopify App Store review. Public installation is pending; these instructions are for stores with access. Contact support@kernvellabs.com for setup help and current availability.

Before you take an order

1. Open DeliveryIQ in Shopify admin and complete the setup steps. These save preferences; they do not publish your theme or connect a courier for you.
2. In Zones & slots, create an enabled service area and the delivery windows you want to offer. If offering pickup, add an active pickup location and pickup windows.
3. In Drivers, add an active driver, or use Couriers to connect a supported account on Starter or above. Couriers require their own approval and account credentials.
4. In the Shopify theme editor, add Delivery & pickup to the Cart page, and Order tracking to a Page. Save and publish the intended theme. These are app blocks; there is no DeliveryIQ entry in App embeds.
5. Test a complete order, delivery selection, dispatch, tracking and enabled email updates. Finish onboarding after checking the visible theme and test-order acknowledgements.

Cart drawers and Buy Now need attention. The picker belongs to the cart page. It is not automatically added to a drawer cart or product-page Buy Now checkout. Direct shoppers through the cart page for a local-delivery reservation, and test your theme's checkout paths. An order without a valid reservation is not a confirmed delivery booking.

Dashboard and deliveries

Dashboard shows delivery metrics for the last 30 days, launch checks, feature status and high-risk or failed deliveries requiring review. If a service cannot load, the app shows an unavailable state instead of treating it as an empty list or zero balance.

Deliveries lets you filter and page through records, open an order's delivery details, review payment and dispatch state, assign an own-fleet driver, change an allowed status, open tracking and inspect delivery proof. Courier quotes, dispatch, cancellation and reconciliation controls appear where the delivery state and plan allow them.

A delivery record counts once toward your monthly allowance when created; cancelling it does not refund that usage. At the cap, incoming orders are kept for visibility as plan-limit exceeded; they do not consume a slot or run dispatch, AI or notifications. Upgrade before processing further deliveries.

There is no bulk-action or CSV-export workflow in the deliveries list. There is no manual slot-reschedule or address-edit form. On Starter and above, address analysis can offer a postal-address suggestion that you explicitly confirm and apply.

Zones and prices

Create a zone with a name, active status, currency, priority, minimum order and delivery fee. You can also set the displayed delivery estimate and cash-on-delivery eligibility/cap. These COD settings do not add or remove Shopify payment methods.

• Pincode / postcode list: enter exact codes separated by commas or newlines. Ranges and wildcard prefixes are not supported. This is the option that works without location permission.
• Radius: enter a latitude, longitude and distance. You can reuse an active pickup location's coordinates when available. Typing an address does not locate it for you.
• Polygon (Starter+): paste a ring of longitude/latitude coordinate pairs. There is no map drawing tool in the app.

Postal matches take precedence, then polygons, then radius areas. Within the same kind, lower priority numbers win. For radius/polygon matching in the cart, shoppers must choose Use current location. Keep a postal zone for shoppers who decline permission.

The rate form supports a flat fee, a distance-based base/per-km fee with an optional minimum, free delivery, and a free-over-order-amount threshold. The option labelled “Tiered (free over amount)” exposes that threshold and flat fee; there is no arbitrary distance-band editor. Use the serviceability tester to check your configured area and price before launch. Distance calculations are estimates, not road or traffic measurements.

Slots and pickup

A slot template sets one weekday or every day, a start/end time, capacity, lead time, cutoff and optional slot fee. Create separate templates for different weekdays; each one counts toward your plan's template limit. The cart picker requests the next eight days. There is no holiday/blackout-date calendar.

A shopper's selected window is held briefly before checkout. When the order arrives, DeliveryIQ checks the hold and capacity. Expired, invalid or already used reservations need staff attention instead of being treated as confirmed bookings.

Pickup locations have an address, coordinates, contact/instructions, optional Shopify location, prep time and optional weekly hours. Choose the pickup location in the cart; its windows can have independent capacity. When hours are enabled, offered pickup windows must fit inside them. The configured pickup checkout rate is zero in the checkout currency.

Checkout shipping rates

Starter and above can show configured local-delivery/pickup prices in Shopify checkout when the Shopify store is eligible for carrier-calculated rates. Open Couriers and run the setup check; it reports the Shopify and DeliveryIQ plan requirements and active-service state.

These are your configured prices, not live courier quotes. The carrier price at dispatch can differ. The checkout rate does not promise the slot's arrival time. If DeliveryIQ cannot return a safe rate, it returns no DeliveryIQ option; shoppers need another available Shopify shipping option to finish. If your Shopify plan is ineligible, configure suitable manual shipping rates in Shopify and test them alongside the cart picker.

Checkout choice protection

In Settings → Checkout choice protection, you can opt in after the picker and inventory are ready. It is off until you choose to enable it and acknowledge its scope.

It checks carts the picker marked serviceable and blocks completion when their delivery or pickup selection is missing or malformed. It checks the structure of the choice; the order's reservation check is still the authority for dispatch.

Paths that skip the picker, including product-page Buy Now, can complete without a choice. Admin-created orders, order edits, POS and recurring subscription flows need separate testing and must not be treated as protected bookings. Turning the setting off disables protection; removing the cart block alone does not disable it. Test ordinary and accelerated checkout before relying on the setting.

Drivers and dispatch board

Drivers are unlimited on every plan. Create a driver in Drivers and securely share the private sign-in link shown once. Generating a replacement invalidates the old token. Drivers use an installable web app on their phone, see their own assigned work and capture proof/cash where permitted. They can opt into assignment push notifications if configured; phone/browser support and permissions apply.

Free supports manual own-fleet assignment. On Starter and above, Dispatch board can build a route from selected eligible deliveries, assign/reorder stops before starting, and start/complete routes. All stops must reach an allowed terminal state before route completion.

Optimization uses straight-line distances to sequence stops, with estimated travel/handling time. It is a mathematical routing tool, not AI, live traffic navigation or a guaranteed shorter road journey. Verify the route and booked windows before sending a driver.

Couriers

Only Borzo India and Uber Direct can be connected today. You need your own approved provider account and a supported route/region. Borzo COD depends on the account; Uber Direct is prepaid-only. Other named carriers in the app are unavailable roadmap candidates.

In Couriers, enter the required credentials, pickup origin and callback signing secret. Select the right environment; Borzo test mode differs from live mode. Run the read-only credential check, then verify a delivery lifecycle before relying on an account. Authentication alone does not prove the provider can complete your route. Fees are charged under your courier agreement, outside DeliveryIQ's subscription.

Starter supports getting quotes and selecting an eligible provider. Growth and above add smart selection, automatic dispatch and failover after a confirmed provider failure, subject to enabled settings and fee caps. The selection strategy can use price, preference or reliability; it is deterministic automation, not AI.

If an outcome is uncertain, automatic creation retries stop. Review the original provider account/task in the provider portal and use the reconciliation controls before trying again. A cancellation stays pending until the provider confirms it. Deactivating an account stops new use; it does not itself cancel jobs already created.

Proof and cash on delivery

Drivers can capture photo, OTP or signature proof with notes. Photo storage must be configured; access to proof files is private and time limited. The delivery's detail panel shows its proof and offers an artifact download where available.

The COD ledger records collections, remittances, adjustments and shortfalls. It shows driver cash balances and lets you record/reconcile remittances. Repeating a matching remittance with the same retry identity returns the existing entry rather than taking cash twice.

Shopify orders awaiting payment or with an unverified cash balance are held. Do not collect an estimated amount: use the existing payment recheck/get-quotes flow and resolve Shopify payment state first. Collection checks current Shopify balance; updating an already booked courier's cash amount is not an offered workflow. The ledger records cash; it does not move money to a driver or courier bank account.

Tracking, emails and settings

Customers use their private tracking link or paste their tracking ID in Order tracking. There is no order-number-and-phone lookup. Tracking shows recorded progress, booked-window information and available courier estimates/location links; unavailable or ended estimates are not a delivery promise. Custom brand name/color/logo requires Growth or above; the support link remains editable on all plans.

Tracking & notifications manages email preferences, branding, a test send and send history. Customer delivery updates use email only. Customer SMS, WhatsApp and push are not offered. “Sent” means the provider accepted the request, not that it reached the inbox. Preferences, unsubscribe/suppression and provider configuration can prevent a send. Driver push is separate.

Settings also contains delivery/COD defaults, dispatch controls, depot coordinates and feature toggles. Turn on the daily email summary explicitly; it is checked around 9:00 in your store's time zone and skipped on days without delivery activity. Saving a depot address alone does not geocode it; provide both coordinates to use it for routing.

Order console

The console groups incoming tickets so staff can accept, reject, prepare and hand them off. Pause new choices in the DeliveryIQ picker, set handling time, enable busy-mode padding or mark items unavailable. These controls do not close every Shopify checkout path or change Shopify product inventory. A pause can have an automatic resume time. Resolve existing bookings separately when changing availability.

Risk, AI tools and analytics

Starter adds an advisory failed-delivery risk score using your store's area/customer history, address completeness and COD exposure. It does not change checkout, payment methods or an order automatically. On Growth and above, an explicit assessment can add an AI explanation; that explanation does not change the score. Your data is not pooled into a cross-store shopper reputation network.

Starter and above also offer address suggestions, a read-only operations copilot for delivery summaries/proposals and draft messages, and a customer tracking assistant with confirmed supported actions. A draft is not a sent message; a route proposal is not an executed reroute. Review address and delivery changes before confirming them.

AI tools use GPT-5.6 Luna. Older GPT-4o Mini configurations, including dated versions, continue through Luna with the same tool settings and plan allowances.

AI calls and tokens share monthly allowances across these tools. A conversation can use multiple model calls. When allowance or safety checks stop a call, the app reports it and does not automatically bill an overage. Rule-based delivery records and manual operations remain subject to normal plan/payment/dispatch checks. Free has no AI allowance or RTO engine.

Analytics shows headline delivery performance and cash metrics. Growth and above add zone/courier breakdowns and deeper risk breakdowns when enabled. There is no per-driver performance report or analytics CSV export in this release.

Plans and billing

Prices below match the source pricing migration; confirm the active price in Billing and Shopify's approval screen. All amounts are USD. Support times are response targets.

Own-fleet driver app, proof, COD ledger, order console and standard tracking are included on every plan. Carrier rates also require Shopify eligibility; provider dispatch requires approved accounts. Feature toggles and operational checks still apply.

Eligible first-time paid subscribers receive a 14-day trial. Shopify confirms charges and billing changes. After confirmed cancellation, the app moves to Free and its limits apply; saved data is retained. A frozen subscription has a three-day grace period before Free.

Connections and help

DeliveryIQ works independently. A branded shopper-app integration and cross-app risk network are not offered in this release. See the connections guide for boundaries. Growth Services opens a booking conversation for setup help; opening the booking page does not itself book a service. For questions, email support@kernvellabs.com and include the screen, order reference and error text, without sending driver sign-in or customer tracking links.