Adding a Scheduled Active Date to products allows merchants to set a future date and time for a product to automatically become active and visible on the website.
This would work similarly to the existing Promotional Pricing From/To dates, but instead of scheduling a price change, it would control when a product becomes active/visible on the website.
Use Case
When working with multiple brands or suppliers, merchants often receive large amounts of products well in advance of a new range or product launch. These products need to be created and fully configured in the ecommerce platform ahead of time, but they may be subject to strict release dates and cannot be made publicly available until a specific date.
For example:
- A supplier provides 500 new products four weeks before launch.
- The merchant creates and configures all products in advance.
- The products remain inactive/hidden until the agreed launch date.
- The merchant sets the Scheduled Active Date on the products.
- On the scheduled date and time, the products automatically become active and available to customers.
This removes the manual process of having someone remember to return to the products on launch day and manually activate them.
Why this would be valuable
1. Reduces manual administration
Merchants can prepare products weeks or months in advance without needing to maintain a manual task or calendar reminder to activate them.
2. Supports strict product release dates
Particularly useful for brands with controlled product launches, new seasonal ranges, pre-announced product drops or supplier-mandated release dates.
3. Allows bulk preparation
Large product ranges can be imported, configured, categorised, priced and optimised well before launch, while remaining hidden from customers until the scheduled date.
4. Reduces the risk of accidental early release
Products with strict release dates could remain unavailable until the configured date, reducing the risk of a merchant accidentally making them visible too early.
5. Supports launches outside business hours
A product range could automatically go live at midnight, 9am, or another specified time without requiring someone to log into the platform and manually activate the products.
6. Creates a more automated ecommerce workflow
This would allow merchants to move from a manual process: Create products → configure Scheduled Active Date → products automatically go live
Potential additional use cases
There are several other scenarios where this could be useful:
- Seasonal ranges – schedule Christmas, Easter, summer or winter products to become active.
- Product drops – release a new collection or limited-edition range at a specific time.
- Supplier launches – suppliers can provide products in advance with a confirmed release date.
- Marketing campaigns – coordinate product availability with email, social media and advertising campaigns.
- New brand launches – load an entire brand catalogue ahead of launch and automatically make it available on launch day.
- Limited-time products – potentially support a future Active To/Inactive Date, allowing products to automatically become inactive after a specified date.
- Multi-channel launches – potentially allow scheduling by sales channel, so a product could become available on the website, marketplace or other channel at different times.
Competitor / Industry Examples
This functionality is already available in other ecommerce platforms, which suggests there is established demand for scheduled product publishing.
Suggested Functionality
A simple implementation could be:
Scheduled Active Date: [ Date ] [ Time ]
Optional future enhancement:
Scheduled Inactive Date: [ Date ] [ Time ]
Possible product statuses could then be:
- Active
- Inactive
- Scheduled to Activate
- Scheduled to Deactivate
It would also be valuable for this functionality to work with bulk product updates/imports, allowing a merchant to apply the same activation date to an entire product range.
Overall Benefit
This would be a relatively simple feature that could remove a significant amount of repetitive administration for merchants managing large product catalogues. More importantly, it would provide a safer and more controlled way to manage product launches and strict supplier release dates.
