What Is a Selling Plan?

A Selling Plan controls how pre-order products behave in your store — including payment timing, shipping dates, discounts, and inventory handling. Understanding how Selling Plans work ensures that your pre-order experience matches what customers see at checkout. This article explains how Selling Plans work in Timesact and how to set them up correctly.

Why Is It Needed for Pre-Orders?

For pre-orders, a Selling Plan is essential because:

• It configures how and when customers pay: you can charge the full payment, or set a fixed or percentage-based upfront amount.

• It lets you define shipping timing: you can set a fixed date, a variable period (e.g., “14 days after order”), or an interval between dates.

• It provides discounts specifically for pre-order purchases, to encourage early buyers.

• It controls inventory handling: you decide whether inventory is decremented at the time of sale (“On Sale”) or only when the item is fulfilled (“On Fulfillment”).

Where to Manage the Selling Plan

You can manage the Selling Plan by heading to Settings > Selling Plans inside the Timesact app.

Setting Up the Selling Plan

The Selling Plan defines how your pre-order products handle payment, shipping, discounts, and inventory.

How to Create a Selling Plan

You can create a Selling Plan by going to Settings > Selling Plans > **New Selling Plan **in the Timesact app. For step-by-step instructions, please see this article.

Select an Existing Selling Plan

When adding products for pre-orders, you’ll be asked for a Selling Plan. If you’ve already created one, click Select Existing and choose a plan from the dropdown.

Where and How to Change One Selling Plan to Another

To assign a new Selling Plan to pre-order product(s) you’ve already added:

1. Go to Products > Pre-orders
2. Go to the Template & Selling Plan column
3. Click the second dropdown menu
4. Select the Selling Plan you want to assign

Selling Plan Options

Each Selling Plan includes options that control how the pre-order behaves in your store and for your customers.

Selling Plan Name

The text is displayed in multiple areas of the online store, such as cart line items, checkout, and past order details.

Selling Plan Description

The text is displayed on the product page.

Shipping Date and Fulfillment Status Per Shipping Date

Pre-order items in orders are marked based on the shipping date:

• Not set → Marked as Unfulfilled
• Specific date → Marked as Scheduled
• Interval or period → Marked as On Hold

Billing Policy

Choose whether to collect Full Payment or Partial Payment. For partial payment, you can specify the upfront payment as a fixed amount or a percentage of the full price.

• Edit the Selling Plan Option – This ensures the upfront payment displayed on the product page matches the amount collected at checkout.

• Set the Final Payment Date – Set the date when the remaining balance will be collected. You can choose: Date – A specific calendar date or Time after checkout – Dynamic, based on the customer’s checkout date

Discount

You can offer a fixed amount or percentage discount on pre-orders to encourage early purchases.

Inventory Policy

Controls how Shopify handles product inventory. You can set it to:

• On Sale → Inventory is reduced when pre-orders are placed
• On Fulfillment → Inventory is reduced when the order is fulfilled

Selling Plan Prompts / Errors and How to Fix Them

Issue #1

“There are errors in the configs. Please check the features that you enabled.”

This error occurs when adding pre-order product(s) to the app. When assigning a Selling Plan:

• If you select Create New, make sure the Plan Name is different from any existing plan.

• Alternatively, select Select Existing to assign a Selling Plan you’ve used or created before.

Issue #2

Shipping Date Message Not Updating

When you use the dynamic variable {{shippingDate}} for the pre-order message, changes to the Selling Plan’s Shipping Date may not reflect in some instances. To sync the updates, switch the Selling Plan to another one, then back to the correct plan.

Example: Temporarily switch the Selling Plan to “Pre-order July 12”, then revert it back to the correct plan “Pre-order August 12.”

**Alternatively, **to display different Shipping Dates for your pre-order products, create multiple Selling Plans with the respective shipping dates added in their Selling Plan Description. This message will appear on the product page, just like the pre-order message.

Issue #3

Partial Payment Message Differs from Selling Plan

When using the Partial Payment option, the message displayed on the product page comes from the Selling Plan Option, which is set by default to “Partial payment: 10% deposit.” You will need to update it so that it matches the upfront payment amount set in the Selling Plan.

A well-configured Selling Plan keeps your pre-orders accurate and transparent, helping customers trust the experience from product page to fulfillment. Review your settings as your catalog changes to keep everything running smoothly.

Have questions or need assistance? Reach out to Timesact Support anytime.

Updated on: 11/28/2025