Shipping Policy Template: Write a Promise You Can Keep
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What a shipping policy is
A shipping policy is the page on your store that tells shoppers when an order leaves your warehouse, what shipping costs, how long delivery takes and what happens if something goes wrong. A standard one, sometimes called a delivery policy, covers processing time in business days, domestic and international rates, delivery estimates, tracking, delays, lost or damaged parcels, address errors and PO boxes.
Below are a copy-paste template, a filled-in example and an explainer for each clause. This is a template, not legal advice; have a lawyer check it for your state, products and destinations.
My take: shoppers read a shipping policy as a set of deadlines before they pay. Each clause is a date or a duty that some order will test this week. So I only write a clause when I can name the system status that would tell me it was broken. Every order is a promise. Keeyu keeps it.
The copy-paste shipping policy template
This template runs from the heading below to the Contact clause and covers the sections Shopify's own shipping policy guide lists. Replace every bracket with your own number, carrier or contact, and delete any clause you cannot keep.
Shipping policy for [Store Name]
Last updated: [date]. This policy applies to all orders placed at [store URL].
Processing time
Orders placed before [cut-off time] [time zone] on a business day ship the same day. Orders placed after the cut-off, or on a weekend or [list of holidays], ship the next business day. Our business days are [Monday to Friday]. Personalized, preorder and made-to-order items ship within [X] business days, as shown on the product page.
Shipping rates
Standard shipping within the United States is [$X], or free on orders over [$X] after discounts and before tax. Expedited shipping is [$X]. Rates for your address are shown at checkout before you pay, and the rate you see at checkout is the rate you pay.
Delivery estimates
Once shipped, standard orders arrive within [X to X] business days and expedited orders within [X to X] business days. Delivery estimates start on the day your order ships, not the day you place it. We ship with [carrier list].
Tracking
You will receive a tracking number by email [and text] within [X] hours of your order shipping. If your tracking has not updated for [X] business days, we will contact you with next steps and open an investigation with the carrier. You can also reach us at [support email] at any time.
International shipping
We ship to [list of countries or regions]. International orders arrive within [X to X] business days of shipping, subject to customs. [Duties and taxes are collected at checkout and you will pay nothing on delivery.] OR [Duties, taxes and customs fees are charged by the destination country on delivery and are the recipient's responsibility.] Orders refused because of unpaid duties are [refunded minus return shipping costs] OR [not refunded].
Delays
If we cannot ship your order within the time stated above, we will email you before that time with a revised shipping date, or the reason for the delay if we do not have a date. If your order is delayed, you can cancel any unshipped item for a full refund at any time before it ships by contacting [support email].
Lost, stolen and damaged packages
If your package stops moving in transit for [X] business days, we will treat it as lost, tell you, and [send a replacement] OR [issue a refund] while we handle the claim with the carrier. If tracking shows your order as delivered but you have not received it, check with neighbors and your building's mailroom, then contact us within [X] days of the delivery date. If your order arrives damaged, email [support email] within [X] days of delivery with photos of the item and the packaging. We will [send a replacement] OR [issue a refund] OR [open a claim with the carrier and resolve it within X business days].
Address errors and undeliverable packages
Please check your shipping address at checkout. We can change an address only before your order ships; contact us within [X] hours of ordering. If a package is returned to us as undeliverable because of an incorrect or incomplete address, we will [reship it at your cost] OR [refund the order minus shipping costs].
PO boxes and military addresses
We [do] OR [do not] ship to PO boxes. [PO box orders ship with USPS only and expedited shipping is not available.] We [do] OR [do not] ship to APO, FPO and DPO addresses.
Local pickup and delivery
[We offer local pickup at [address], [days and hours]. Pickup orders are ready within [X] business hours and we will email you when yours is ready.] OR [We do not offer local pickup or local delivery.]
Returns
For returns and exchanges, see our [link to returns policy].
Contact
Questions about an order? Email [support email] or call [phone number], [hours] [time zone]. Please include your order number.
A filled-in example
The example below completes the clauses that carry numbers for a fictional store, Halverline Supply Co., a US apparel brand shipping from one warehouse in Ohio. The numbers are made up but consistent with each other, which is the part a copied template usually breaks.
Shipping policy for Halverline Supply Co.
Orders placed before 2 PM Eastern on a business day ship the same day. Orders placed after 2 PM Eastern, or on a weekend or US federal holiday, ship the next business day. During our November sale, processing may take up to 3 business days, and we will show that on the site before you order.
Standard shipping is $6.95, or free on orders over $75 after discounts and before tax. Expedited shipping is $14.95. Standard orders arrive within 3 to 5 business days of shipping; expedited orders within 1 to 2 business days of shipping. We ship with USPS and UPS.
We ship to the US and Canada only. Canadian orders arrive within 6 to 10 business days of shipping, subject to customs, and duties and taxes are collected at checkout.
If tracking stops updating for 5 business days, we treat the parcel as lost, email you and send a replacement. Delivered but not received: contact us within 7 days of the delivery scan and we will open a claim with the carrier and resolve it within 5 business days. Damaged: send photos of the item and the packaging within 7 days and we will send a replacement. Address changes are possible within 1 hour of ordering; if a parcel comes back undeliverable because of an address error, we refund the order minus shipping. We ship to PO boxes by USPS only, and we do not offer expedited shipping to PO boxes.
Notice what the example does not say: "delivery in 3 days" from the order date. Halverline controls processing but not transit, so it promises a ship date it can check against its cut-off and a transit window it can check against carrier scans.
Processing time: the cut-off is the promise
Processing time, which Google Merchant Center calls handling time, is the time from when an order is placed to when it is handed to the carrier. The order cut-off time is the hour after which a new order rolls into the next business day.
A 2pm US warehouse cut-off is an SLA in its own right, so treat the sentence that states it as one: it needs an owner, a clock and a defined breach. Google's own example works the same way: a 3 PM EST cut-off means orders placed after that time are not processed until the next business day. My rule: state the cut-off in the time zone of the warehouse, list your processing days, and keep the policy, your checkout copy and your Merchant Center settings identical.
Then make sure something checks it. At one Shopify brand we work with, 70 orders in the US didn't sync to the warehouse and hadn't shipped for 3 days. A "ships within 1 business day" line would have been false for all 70, and the policy page would not have shown it. Keeyu detected it instantly, preventing 70 inbound "where is my order" tickets. A processing-time clause is only as good as the alert that fires when an order misses it.
Shipping rates and free-shipping thresholds
The rates clause states what each shipping speed costs and the order value at which shipping becomes free. It should match checkout to the cent.
In Baymard Institute's checkout research, 40% of US online shoppers who abandoned a cart (excluding those just browsing) did so because extra costs such as shipping, tax and fees were too high, and 20% because delivery was too slow. My rule: publish the threshold as a number ("free on orders over $75"), say whether it is measured before or after discounts, and never let the policy page and the cart disagree. For carrier mix and rate strategy, see ecommerce shipping best practices.
Delivery estimates: a window you can detect
Transit time is the time from the carrier handoff to delivery, and shipping speed is processing time plus transit time, according to Google's shipping attribute definitions. A delivery estimate in a policy is usually a business-day window for each shipping speed.
I write the window from the ship date, because processing and transit are two promises owned by two different parties, and each needs its own way to be checked. One outdoor brand could see on-time dispatch perfectly and went blind at the carrier handoff, with about 20% of weekly negative feedback tied to late delivery.
My rule: only publish a transit window you can measure against carrier scans, order by order. If you cannot tell which orders are outside it today, it is a guess. How to compute the date you show at checkout is a separate job, covered in our delivery promise guide.
International shipping, customs, duties and taxes
The international clause lists the countries you ship to, the transit window, and who pays duties, taxes and customs fees: either collected at checkout, or billed to the recipient on delivery.
The word that matters is "who". A shopper who meets an unexpected duty bill at the door can refuse the parcel. My rule: pick one model per country, name it, and say what happens to a refused parcel. If you ship into the US from a warehouse overseas, be precise: U.S. Customs and Border Protection tells online buyers that "when you buy goods online, you become an importer," and its duty rules for low-value parcels have been changing, so check them before you promise a US shopper "no extra fees". Add a customs caveat to every international window; a customs hold is a leg you do not control.
Delays and exceptions
The delays clause says what you will do when an order cannot ship or arrive within the time you stated: how you will tell the shopper, and what choices they get.
In the US this clause has teeth, but only for the ship date. Under the FTC's Mail, Internet, or Telephone Order Merchandise Rule, if you cannot ship on time you must send a delay notice with a revised shipping date, or the reason for the delay when you cannot give one, plus the shopper's right to cancel and get a prompt refund, with a way to cancel at your expense. The rule covers shipping, not arrival, so a late-delivery promise is one you choose to make; say what you will do when transit runs late too.
My take is that by the time an issue becomes a ticket, the damage is done: the shopper already knows, and the promise is broken. So the delay notice has to leave your side first. Before peak, I would rather tell shoppers up front that usual service levels might not happen. Add a peak line to the policy before the sale starts, then use a tested delay message example when an order actually slips. Every order is a promise. Keeyu keeps it.
Lost, stolen and damaged packages
A lost package stops moving in the carrier network, a stolen package is marked delivered but never reaches the shopper, and a damaged package arrives broken. The policy should say how to report each, by when, with what proof, and what remedy you offer.
My rule: set the remedy and the deadline, and own the carrier conversation yourself. USPS, for example, pays domestic claims for lost or damaged parcels only when the item was insured, either as part of the service or bought separately, so whether you insure changes what you can promise.
For lost parcels, write the trigger as a number of days with no carrier scan. Keeyu's lost-in-transit flag fires after 5 days with no scans or updates, so a policy line that promises contact after 5 business days of silence is one the operation reaches before the shopper does. At Clutch, orders at risk of breaching SLA are flagged before they affect customers. For what each carrier status means, see delivery exception.
Address errors, undeliverable parcels and PO boxes
The address clause covers how long a shopper has to fix an address, what happens when a parcel is returned as undeliverable, and whether you ship to PO boxes and military addresses.
Address errors are cheap to catch before the label prints and expensive to fix after the parcel moves. My rule: give a short change window ("within 1 hour of ordering") that matches when your warehouse actually picks, validate the address at checkout, and state who pays to reship a returned parcel. Keeyu's address validation flags orders held back by an incorrect address, so the fix happens before the parcel ships.
PO boxes need a deliberate answer. USPS offers Street Addressing at many PO Box locations, which lets packages from other carriers such as UPS and FedEx reach the box, subject to availability. If your carrier mix cannot reliably reach a PO box, say so and route those orders to USPS.
Where to publish it: Shopify and Google Merchant Center
Publish the policy as a store policy page linked from the footer, cart and checkout. On Shopify it lives under Settings > Policies, where Insert template generates a default draft, and Shopify's Help Center is blunt that although it can generate templates, "you're responsible for following your published policies."
My rule: after you paste this template, open your Google Merchant Center shipping settings and make the cut-off, handling days and transit days match the policy exactly. A mismatch is a second, conflicting promise.
Give every clause a status your team can see
Keep a shipping policy by pairing each clause with an order status that shows when it is about to break: a missed cut-off, a tracking scan gone quiet, an address the carrier cannot reach. A clause with no status behind it breaks silently, and the first to notice is the shopper.
At SurfStitch, a business doing $80 to 100 million in revenue, I saw 50 people focused on attracting customers, five in customer service and just one person ensuring on-time delivery. At P.E. Nation I combined operations and customer service for this reason: fulfillment problems become customer service problems, so the people answering shoppers need to see the whole order journey.
This is what proactive e-commerce operations means in practice, and it runs on three steps: Detect. Decide. Act.
- Detect: Keeyu tracks broken SLAs with cut-off times per channel, with an "at-risk" status for orders nearing the close-of-day cut-off and a "broken" status once the cut-off passes, anchored on the warehouse window.
- Decide: each status maps to a clause in your policy, so the team knows which promise is at stake and what the policy says to do.
- Act: the fix starts, and the shopper hears from you through your shipping notifications before they have to ask.
Run one test before you publish: for each clause, name the status that would tell you it broke. Delete or soften any clause you cannot name. Keeyu gets shoppers what they want, on time, as promised. See how Keeyu detects broken promises, pair this page with our refund policy example, or book a demo to map your policy against your live orders.
Every order is a promise. Keeyu keeps it.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I write a shipping policy?
Start from a template with a clause for processing time, rates, delivery estimates, tracking, international shipping, delays, lost or damaged packages, address errors and PO boxes. Fill each bracket with a number your operation already hits, and delete any clause you cannot check order by order. Then make sure the policy, your checkout copy and your Google Merchant Center shipping settings say the same thing.
What is a standard shipping policy?
A standard shipping policy states a processing time in business days (Google Merchant Center lets you set 0 for same-day processing), an order cut-off time, domestic rates and any free-shipping threshold, a delivery window per shipping speed, and how delays, lost parcels and damage are handled. Most also cover international shipping and duties, address changes and whether the store ships to PO boxes.
Do I need a shipping policy?
In practice, yes. If you sell online in the US, any shipping time you advertise is a claim you need a reasonable basis for under the FTC's Mail, Internet, or Telephone Order Merchandise Rule, and if you state no time you are expected to ship within 30 days. A written policy makes that time explicit and tells shoppers what happens if it slips. It also gives your support team one answer to point to when a shopper asks where an order is.
How do I add a shipping policy to a Shopify store?
In the Shopify admin, go to Settings > Policies, open the shipping policy, and either paste your own text or click Insert template to generate a default. Shopify's Help Center notes that you're responsible for following your published policies, so replace every default number with one your operation actually hits. Keep its delivery window consistent with your delivery promise at checkout.
Can you provide an example of a return policy?
Yes. Our refund policy example walks through a full returns and refund policy clause by clause, with bracketed numbers to set. It pairs with this shipping policy, which should link to your returns policy rather than repeat it.
Should a shipping policy promise a delivery date?
A policy should promise a window measured from the ship date, such as 3 to 5 business days after shipping, rather than a fixed date from the order date. Processing and transit are owned by different parties, so each needs its own window and its own way to be checked. The exact date shown at checkout is a separate calculation.
What should a shipping policy say about delays?
It should say that if an order cannot ship on time, you will tell the shopper before the promised date with a revised date or the reason for the delay, and that they can cancel any unshipped item for a full refund. That matches the FTC's delay-notice requirements for US sellers. For the message itself, see this delay message example.
References
- 1. Federal Trade Commission, "Mail, Internet, or Telephone Order Merchandise Rule", https://www.ftc.gov/legal-library/browse/rules/mail-internet-or-telephone-order-merchandise-rule. Reasonable basis to ship in the stated time, or 30 days if no time is stated.
- 2. Federal Trade Commission, "Business Guide to the FTC's Mail, Internet, or Telephone Order Merchandise Rule", https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/resources/business-guide-ftcs-mail-internet-or-telephone-order-merchandise-rule. Delay notice contents: revised shipping date or reason, right to cancel, cancellation at the seller's expense.
- 3. Google Merchant Center Help, "Set up shipping settings for an entire account", https://support.google.com/merchants/answer/12577710?hl=en. Order cut-off time example (3 PM EST) and handling time settings.
- 4. Google Merchant Center Help, "Shipping [shipping]", https://support.google.com/merchants/answer/6324484. Definitions of handling time, transit time and shipping speed.
- 5. Baymard Institute, "50 Cart Abandonment Rate Statistics 2026", https://baymard.com/lists/cart-abandonment-rate. 40% abandoned over extra costs, 20% over slow delivery (excluding just browsing).
- 6. Shopify Help Center, "Adding store policies", https://help.shopify.com/en/manual/checkout-settings/refund-privacy-tos. Shipping policy as one of the store policies Shopify supports.
- 7. Shopify, "How To Create a Shipping Policy (Free Template)", https://www.shopify.com/blog/shipping-policy. Common sections of a shipping policy, including PO boxes.
- 8. USPS, "Rent a PO Box", https://www.usps.com/manage/po-boxes.htm. Street Addressing for packages from other carriers, subject to availability.
- 9. USPS, "File a USPS Claim", https://www.usps.com/help/claims.htm. Domestic claims for lost or damaged packages require insurance.
- 10. U.S. Customs and Border Protection, "E-Commerce", https://www.cbp.gov/trade/basic-import-export/e-commerce. Online buyers become importers; check current duty rules for low-value parcels.
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