Promise Dates
Use the Promise API to get an estimated delivery date to display during conversion and checkout to reduce uncertainty that leads to cart abandonment and improve customer delivery satisfaction.
Overview
parcelLab provides an API you can call to get forecasted delivery dates. This date can be used to display a delivery date promise on the product details page or at checkout. It can be shown in a format you want on your website so customers can see when a product should arrive before buying it.
For more information on the scope and requirements of this feature, please contact your parcelLab representative.
Get Promise Date
Details of how the v2/prediction endpoint can be used to generate a forecasted delivery date in the parcelLab system are described below.
GET Promise Date
You can retrieve the estimated delivery date of an order with the v2/prediction endpoint.
The details of the Get Promise Date API are described in the following section.
API Details
GET https://api.parcellab.com/v2/prediction
Query Parameters
user*
string
parcelLab user ID.
destination*
string
The destination country of the delivery.
Can be any of the following formats:
<country> – any country as a ISO 3166-1 alpha-3 code (for example:
USA,GBR,DEU<zip>_<country> – a zip code consisting only of letters and numbers (without spaces, dashes, or any other characters), with an underscore character and the country (for example:
02108_USA)
lang
string
The language of the recipient as a
ISO 639-1 code for displaying localized representations of date predictions. Defaults to English.
courier
string
The logistics courier to be used. Defaults to returning all configured couriers.
courierServiceLevel
string
The courier service level mapped in your Promise configuration (for example: express delivery). Defaults to returning all courier service levels.
warehouse
string
The warehouse the delivery shipped from (input field: key). Defaults to the default warehouse for the destination.
agent
string
The source of the request (for example: product-page, checkout), which can be used for reporting purposes but has no other impact on the prediction.
dispatchNow
boolean
Forces the forecasted delivery date to skip any warehouse calculation and generate a prediction if the parcel is shipped at the moment of the API call, if set to true.
_now
date and time
Locks the prediction for a specified request date as a ISO 8601 date and time in UTC format like 2022-06-10T06:42:00Z. Defaults now to the current time if omitted, which is required for production usage.
Responses
200 - delivery prediction successfully returned, the response contains applicable predictions based on the query sent
An example successful response is displayed below to show the format for retrieving estimated delivery dates.
{
"requestId": "abcd1234",
"success": true,
"prediction": [ ... ]
}Result Structure
The API always returns a list of applicable predictions according to the specified query. The requestId is for tracing and troubleshooting purposes only.
{
"requestId": "abcd1234",
"success": true,
"error": null,
"prediction": [ ... ]
} Each entry in the prediction array represents one delivery method, including a delivery prediction like the following structure:
Delivery Prediction Details
The details included in a delivery prediction are described in the following table.
min
Integer
The minimum number of expected courier working days until delivery. Note: The value for minimum and maximum can be equal.
max
Integer
The maximum number of expected courier working days until delivery.
Note: The value for minimum and maximum can be equal.
likely
Integer
The most likely number of expected courier working days until delivery.
earliest
ISO 8601 date format: YYYY-MM-DD
The earliest expected delivery date taking into consideration working days of the courier, holidays in the destination, and warehouse cut-off and handling times.
latest
ISO 8601 date format: YYYY-MM-DD
The latest expected delivery date taking into consideration working days of the courier, holidays in the destination, and warehouse cut-off and handling times.
earliestLocale
Defaults to dddd, MMM DDD, YYYY
Localized representations of the earliest expected delivery date in the specified format.
latestLocale
Defaults to dddd, MMM DDD, YYYY
Localized representations of the latest expected delivery date in the specified format.
mostLikelyLocale
Defaults to dddd, MMM DDD, YYYY
Localized representations of the most likely delivery date in the specified format.
cutoff
Integer
The time in minutes until cut-off for the estimated delivery dates.
cutoffLocale
String
Localized representations of the cut-off. Can be used within a sentence like "Order within [2 hours | an hour | 20 minutes] to receive your order by [Saturday, Mar 23rd, 2022]".
Sample Calls
The sample API calls below show different information in the request (for example: home delivery as the courier service type) for the delivery prediction.
Calculating Delivery Dates for Orders with Known Dispatch Date
For orders where you know the actual dispatch date, you can calculate accurate delivery dates based on when the order will ship. This is useful for scenarios where:
An order's dispatch date is confirmed after placement
You need to provide customers with updated delivery expectations based on actual shipment dates
Customer service agents need to communicate accurate timelines for existing orders
How It Works
To calculate a delivery date for an already placed order when you know the dispatch date, use these two parameters together:
_now=<date>- set this to the known dispatch date/time in ISO 8601 UTC format (for example:2025-07-01T16:00:00.000Z)dispatchNow=true- this forces the API to skip warehouse cutoff calculations and calculate the delivery date as if the parcel ships at the exact time specified in_now
The _now timestamp must be in UTC (Zulu time), not local time. Always include the Z suffix or .000Z to indicate UTC.
When using dispatchNow=true with a specific _now value for already placed orders, the cutoff will be 0 as you're bypassing warehouse calculations and calculating delivery based on the known dispatch time.
Testing Your Promise Configuration
To preview saved but unpublished changes to your Promise configuration in a staging environment:
Integrate the Promise API call to your staging environment.
Add the query parameter
&draft=trueto your Promise API call.
This will generate a promise date based on your unpublished Promise configuration, that can be used to review the effect of any configuration updates on the frontend of your staging environment.
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