Can customers book new inventory in advance before it's physically arrived in the shop?

If you've just added items that won't physically arrive until a later date, it's natural to want customers to be able to book them online right away, with the item only actually appearing in availability search from the day it lands. There isn't a setting that does this for you. An item's status is what controls whether it's offered to customers, and status has no date attached to it — nothing switches it on automatically on a day you choose. You have to change it by hand.

What actually controls whether an item can be booked

See Asset (inventory) Lifecycle for the full list of item statuses. For this situation, two of them matter:

• Ordered – for stock you know is coming but don't have yet. An item left in Ordered status is excluded from availability searches completely: it won't be offered for any date, including dates after it's actually arrived, until you manually change its status. It's the right status to log incoming stock against, but it cannot be pre-booked while it's Ordered.
• Ready – fully operational and available for every date a customer searches, including today. There's no in-between state: once an item is Ready, it's open for any date, near or far.

There's nothing that sits between these two — no status or field that hides an item for near-term dates while leaving it bookable for dates after a chosen point.

Your options

1. Simplest – wait and switch it on when it arrives. Keep new items as Ordered until delivery day, then change each one to Ready. From that point customers can search and book it, including for future dates — but you won't be able to take advance orders for it before delivery day.
2. Take advance bookings sooner, with a manual block. Set the item to Ready now so it's open for booking, then place a booking against it (any reservation type works) covering every date from today up to the day before delivery. That booking occupies the item's calendar for those dates only, exactly the way any other reservation does, so nobody can book – or check out – stock you don't actually have yet. Dates from the delivery date onward are unaffected and stay open for genuine advance reservations. Remove the placeholder booking once the item is actually in the shop and confirmed ready to go.

There's currently no built-in "available from" date on an item. This is a genuine gap rather than something you're missing in the settings — if you find yourself needing this regularly (e.g. seasonal fleet refreshes), let us know via support so it can be considered for the roadmap.