How PopAutomate changes your store and puts it back
A schedule tells PopAutomate what to change in your products and when. At the start time PopAutomate writes the change into your Shopify products, and at the end it writes back the values it saved. A draft never changes anything.
PopAutomate changes the products themselves in your Shopify admin: prices, compare-at prices, collections and visibility on the Online Store. It adds nothing to your theme. Each schedule makes one of six changes:
| The change | What changes in Shopify | At the end |
|---|---|---|
| Discount | The price goes down. The old price becomes the compare-at price, shown crossed out | The original prices come back at the end time, with no box to check |
| New price | Every variant gets the price you enter. The compare-at price stays | Goes back if Put everything back at the end is on |
| Hide from the Online Store | Shoppers cannot see or buy the products on the Online Store | Goes back if the box is on |
| Show on the Online Store | Hidden products become visible on the Online Store | Goes back if the box is on |
| Add to a collection | The products join a manual collection | Goes back if the box is on |
| Remove from a collection | The products leave a manual collection | Goes back if the box is on |
Hide and show change the Online Store sales channel only. Other sales channels stay as they are.
Example
Lina sells candles. She wants 20% off every product in her "Winter" collection for one weekend.
- In 1. What to change, she chooses Collections and selects "Winter".
- In 2. The change, she chooses Discount, keeps Percentage off and enters 20.
- In 3. When, she keeps Once and sets the start on Friday at 9:00 AM and the end on Sunday at 11:00 PM.
- In 4. Review and save, she names the schedule, keeps Turn it on and selects Save.
At the start time, PopAutomate reads the products in "Winter" and changes every variant: the price goes 20% down and the old price becomes the compare-at price. A candle at 40.00 shows 32.00, with 40.00 crossed out next to it. At the end time, PopAutomate puts back 40.00 and the compare-at price the candle had before.
When it happens
- Before you turn it on: a draft "does not run and does not count toward your plan until you turn it on."
- At the start time: PopAutomate checks every minute for schedules that are due and starts the run. Your times are in the time zone shown at the top of 3. When ("Times use" followed by the zone). That zone is your Shopify store's time zone: PopAutomate reads it from Shopify when you first open the app and again at most once a day, and your active schedules keep their wall-clock times in the new zone if your store's zone changes. Settings shows the zone and your store's country and does not let you change them. If a change started at another time than you picked, see A schedule ran at the wrong time.
- On a weekly schedule: you pick the days of the week, a start time and an end time, and the run starts at the start time on each chosen day. Without a Last day (optional) it repeats until you turn it off.
- During the run: every variant of each product changes. You cannot pick single variants. For a collection, PopAutomate reads the products in it when the schedule runs, so a product you add to the collection later is part of the next run.
- A variant already on a deeper sale: a discount is counted from the compare-at price when the variant already shows one above its price. If that would leave the new price at or above the current price, the variant is skipped and keeps its price: a discount never raises a price. With 20% off, a variant at 45.00 with a compare-at price of 60.00 would become 48.00, so it stays at 45.00. The run shows the variant as Skipped: "The product already sells at or below the discounted price, so we left it as is."
- At the end: Shopify has no end date for a sale price, so a discount ends when PopAutomate runs the end at your end time. The other five changes go back at the end when Put everything back at the end is on (it is on by default). On a weekly schedule, everything goes back at each day's end time.
- An end time of 12:00 AM is read as exactly that time, midnight at the start of the end date.
- Your own edits win: if you change a price, a compare-at price or a product's visibility yourself while the schedule is on, PopAutomate keeps your change and does not put back what you changed. The run shows that row as "Kept: changed in Shopify after the run".
- Paused or deleted schedules: a put-back that is due still happens.
- A run that stopped because of a problem with the store after it had changed some products: those changes are put back at the end time too.
PopAutomate does not put products back when:
- Put everything back at the end was off. The review says "The change stays after the schedule ends."
- A price change "could not be confirmed". Those prices are not put back, because PopAutomate did not record them as changed. Check them in Shopify.
- You removed PopAutomate from your store before the end. After the app is uninstalled, PopAutomate cannot change your products back, and Home reminds you to end or put back live schedules before you uninstall.
If a put-back could not finish, PopAutomate tries again after 15 minutes, then 1 hour, then 6 hours, and then stops. A row it could not put back reads "Couldn't be put back", and the Restore now button of that run then reads Retry restore.
What to do in each case is in Prices did not go back after the schedule ended.
End an offer now, or put changes back yourself
When an offer is live, you can end it early. On Schedules, the schedule's row has End now, and the run's page in History has it too. A confirmation says "PopAutomate puts back everything this offer changed that is still in your store" and "The schedule ends and won't run again." Select End the offer now to confirm. The row then shows when you ended it and when it was planned to end.
Every row of a run's details shows what happened when its change was put back: "Put back (run #N)", "Kept: changed in Shopify after the run", "Couldn't be put back", "Still in your store", or "Nothing to put back" with the reason.
To put a finished run's changes back yourself, open the run in History, click View details, then Restore now. While an offer is still live and its run went through, Restore now is not offered: the page says "This offer is still running in your store. It ends by itself at its end time. To end it now, use End now." See Follow your schedules: Home, history and restore.
What you can do
- A discount that starts and ends on time: Schedule a discount that starts and ends on time
- A new price for a while: Schedule a price change
- Hide or show products: Hide or show products on your Online Store on a schedule
- A sale collection: Add or remove products from a collection on a schedule
- Choose what goes back: Put everything back at the end of a schedule
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