The holiday season is the busiest time of year for online retailers, and ensuring your customers receive their orders before Christmas is crucial.

To help you navigate the festive shipping rush, we've compiled key shipping deadlines and some handy tips for a smooth delivery experience.

Whether you're shipping across town, across the country, or across the world, make sure you can deliver on your shipping promises.

These dates are based on a combination of historical Shippit transit time data, and the carriers' indicative dates for cut off.

These dates are based on a combination of historical Shippit transit time data, and the carriers' indicative dates for cut off.

Each carrier also publishes its own individual cut-off dates for the holiday season. You can see the dates for individual carriers for 2024 in this list:

Shippit and our partner carriers are closed on all local public holidays between December 2024 and January 2025.
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Carrier pickups and Shippit support is limited between Christmas and New Year (27-31 December), and you might experience delays during this period.

Download a printable key dates calendar

Start your peak period shipping preparations early. Here are our tips to stay ahead:

Have your packing workflow ready to go: make sure you have enough packing supplies, your inventory is organised, you have warehouse staff coverage, and you have notified customers of shipping deadlines and potential delays. For more information about packaging, see the Packaging guidelines article.

Protect your parcels: you can also consider transit protection to ensure that orders arrive in the same condition they left your warehouse. For more information about transit protection, see the About transit protection article.

Enable authority to leave on all orders: make it easy for customers to receive their deliveries the first time around, without having to visit collection points or wait for redelivery.

Avoid international delays: for international shipments, make sure you have the correct labelling and required documentation on the order before you ship. This helps to avoid delays with customs clearance. For more information about international shipping, see the About international shipping article.

Manifest in the morning: manifest goods early in the day to avoid missed collections and delays with data transfers which can result in surcharges from carriers. For more information about manifests, see the Manifests article.

Organise your pickups by carrier, early: you can also separate packages by carrier in an easy-to-access dispatch location. This helps to avoid confusion when drivers arrive to collect their packages. Make sure you have carrier pickups organised ahead of time where you can. For more information about pickups, see the Understanding pickups article.

Dispatch interstate orders first: prioritise dispatching interstate orders before intrastate and local metro orders, so that they are collected by the carrier and on their way sooner.

Keep watch over your processes: keep a close eye on how your warehouse is performing, so that you can spot inefficiencies early and ensure your carrier mix is optimised. You can do this with the data provided in your Shippit dashboard. For more information about what data is available, see the Shippit insights article.