Custom fulfillment schedule is an advanced feature (see pricing here).
Cut Offs Days only work with custom fulfillment schedules.
Cut off dates are optional, and you can choose to not use them.
Cut Off Days allow you to control what fulfillment cycle your customer will be included in according to when they purchase the subscription product.
✅Cut off dates are helpful for planning your fulfillment for subscription products.
✅Cut off dates are helpful for planning your inventory & shipping
✅ Cut off dates prevent customers from receiving 2 deliveries very close to one another
You can think of Cut Off Days as a window period, and if the customer orders a subscription product within that window period, they get thrown into the next date that you plan to ship.
With custom fulfillment schedules, the first delivery is always immediately fulfilled.
The second shipment follows the custom fulfillment schedule, and Cut Off dates can determine whether the customer will skip or get that shipment.
If a customer orders a subscription within the Cut Off window period, then their 2nd shipment will get pushed into the next cycle.
REAL-LIFE EXAMPLE:
Let's suppose we have a prepaid annual custom fulfillment schedule with 4 deliveries.
The dates are January 1st, March 1st, June 1st, and September 1st.
Let's suppose we have a Cut Off is set to "30 days". (this guarantees the customer will not receive more than one shipment in a 30-day timeframe).
If the customer orders on May 15th, an order will be created immediately to be fulfilled, and then Ongoing will schedule the other 3 deliveries for the year.
Since the customer is within the 30-day window of the next scheduled fulfillment date (June 1st) they will skip the June 1st delivery and the next delivery will be September 1st.