Schedule price changes on Shopify

Shopify has no built-in way to say “change these prices on Friday and put them back on Monday”. Stores work around it with alarms, weekend logins and a spreadsheet of old prices — which is fine until the person with the spreadsheet is on holiday.

The scheduler in Bulk Product Edit by MITS carries both halves of that promise: a start time for the change and a revert time that restores the previous values.

What the scheduler controls

• Start time — the moment the task runs. Leave it empty and the task runs immediately.
• Revert time — the moment the previous values are written back.
• Recurring schedule — repeat on chosen weekdays at a chosen time, with a visible next-run time.
• Email notification — told when the task finishes, so you do not watch a progress bar.
• The revert time cannot be before the start time, and neither can be in the past — the app rejects those combinations when you create the task.

What you can schedule

• Price and compare-at price changes — the classic sale.
• Product status changes — a collection that goes live at midnight.
• Tag changes — add a “sale” tag for the duration, remove it after.
• Inventory and policy changes — for a timed pre-order window.
• Any combination of these in one task, so a promotion is a single scheduled unit.

A worked example: a weekend sale that ends itself

1. Filter: collection is “Outerwear”, inventory quantity more than 0.
2. Editor: compare-at price → set the same as the price.
3. Editor: price → decrease by 25%, round to .99.
4. Editor: tags → add “weekend-sale”.
5. Scheduler: start Friday 00:00, revert Monday 06:00.
6. The task changes prices, marks the products, and restores everything on Monday including the tag.

What happens if something changes in between

The revert writes back the values the task recorded when it ran. If a product was edited separately during the sale, the app reports it in the skipped list instead of silently overwriting the newer value.

Scheduled tasks are visible in the task list with their start and revert times, and can be cancelled before they run.

How to schedule a sale on Shopify, step by step

1. Tag the sale products. Run a quick task that adds a tag such as sale-oct to everything in the promotion. Filtering on a tag keeps the selection stable between start and revert.
2. Create the sale task. Filter by that tag, set compare-at price the same as the price, then decrease price by your percentage with rounding.
3. Set the start time. If you leave it empty, the task runs now (rounded to the minute). Scheduling is available on paid plans.
4. Set the revert time. The moment the sale ends; it cannot be before the start time.
5. Turn on the notification. Get an email when the task runs and when it is reverted.
6. Check the Tasks screen. Scheduled tasks show as Scheduled, then In revert queue, then Reverted.

Flash sales: hours, not days

A flash sale is the same task with a short window — start at 18:00, revert at 22:00. Because the revert is part of the task, nobody has to be online at 22:00, and the prices go back even if the team is asleep in another time zone. Use the email notification as the signal to post the sale on social media.

A Black Friday to Cyber Monday plan

Overlapping tasks on the same products are best avoided: let one task revert before the next one starts, or each revert restores the price the previous task left behind.

What happens to products added after the task started

A task edits what matched when it ran. A product published during the sale keeps its normal price, and the revert does not touch it. If new arrivals should join the promotion, run a second task on them with the same revert time.

Status values you will see

• Scheduled — waiting for the start time.
• In revert queue — the sale is live and the revert is booked.
• Reverting / Reverted — old values are being or have been written back.
• Not fully reverted — some items could not be restored; the log lists which ones.

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