V2 General Guide
New to Timesact, or moving over from V1? This is your quick tour: what changed, where everything lives, and how to set up your first pre-order (or any other feature). No technical know-how needed.
What's new in V2
In V1, every feature had its own separate setup, one for Pre-order, one for Back in Stock, and so on, and you configured them one at a time.
V2 brings it all together into one reusable thing called a customer experience template. Think of it as a single setup that can run one feature or several at once, and that you reuse across as many products as you like. You set it up once instead of repeating yourself for every product.
And you don't have to start from a blank page. On the Experiences page you'll find ready-made customer experience templates you can use straight away:
- Pre-order Launch
- Pre-order & Back In Stock
- Back-order & Notify me
- Coming soon
- Low stock & Pre-order
Click Use on one to start from it, or click + Create customer experience to build your own.
Where everything lives
The menu on the left has five areas:
- Experiences — create and manage your customer experience templates.
- Products — see which products have a customer experience template attached, and add more.
- Notifications — set up the emails your customers receive.
- Analytics — see how your pre-orders and back-in-stock signups are doing.
- Billing & Account — your plan, usage, and integrations.
Inside a customer experience template
When you open one, its menu splits into two parts:
- Storefront — everything your shoppers see: which features are turned on, and how they look on the product page, the collection page, and the cart.
- Admin — everything that works behind the scenes: each feature's detailed settings, where it applies (countries and locations), its emails, and translations.
A simple way to remember it: Storefront is how it looks, Admin is how it works.
The features you can use
V2 has eight features, grouped into four types. Inside a customer experience template, click + Add feature to pick from them:
Type | Feature | What it does |
|---|---|---|
Purchase | Pre-Order | Let customers buy a product before it's available. |
Purchase | Backorder | Let customers order items that are temporarily out of stock. |
Purchase | Made to Order | Let customers order custom-made products. |
Notification | Back in Stock | Let customers sign up to be emailed when an item returns. |
Notification | Notify Me | Let customers sign up to be told when an item is available. |
Notification | Waitlist | Let customers join a waitlist for an out-of-stock item. |
Availability | Coming Soon | Show off an upcoming product before it launches. |
Urgency | Low Stock | Show a low-stock message to nudge customers to buy. |
You can turn on more than one feature in the same customer experience template (for example Pre-Order together with Waitlist and Low Stock). Each one shows up at the right moment, depending on the item's stock and the dates you set.
Set up your first customer experience template
- Go to Experiences and click + Create customer experience. Give it a title (and an optional description), then click Create.
- On the Features tab, click + Add feature and choose one. Pre-Order is a good place to start.
- Open Feature settings to set how it behaves: when it shows based on stock, the shipping date, how the customer pays, and any discount.
- Use Product page, Collection page, and Cart page to set how it looks: the button, the message, the badge, and the cart label.
- If you sell in different countries or ship from different locations, set that under Markets & locations. This step is optional.
- Attach your products from the Products section.
- Check it live. Open the product in a private or incognito browser window to see it the way a shopper would. On the Products page, the Features Statuses column tells you the live state, for example "Pre-order, Active" (showing now) or "Pre-order, Pending" (set up, waiting for the right stock).
Learn more
- Setting up a pre-order in detail, stock, shipping date, payment, and discount: Pre-Order
- Choosing which products a customer experience template applies to: Adding Products
- Showing the right thing in different countries and locations: Markets and Locations
- Translating what shoppers see: Translations
- Setting up your customer emails: Notifications Overview
- Running several features, or several customer experience templates on one product: Customer Experience Templates Workflow
FAQ
Can one product have more than one customer experience template? Yes. Each one shows as its own row on the Products page with its own status, and Timesact automatically shows the right one to each shopper, based on where they are and your stock.
Do I need to set anything up in Shopify myself for pre-orders to work? No. When you turn on Pre-Order, Timesact takes care of the technical setup behind it for you. You just choose your settings in the app.
I had a custom country script added by support in V1, can I remove it? Almost always, yes, the Markets & locations settings replace those older fixes. Check with support before removing anything custom, just to be safe.
What does the small label (like Manual) next to a product mean? It shows how the product was added. Manual means you added it yourself, one at a time. Products added through a collection or a CSV file show their own label, so you can tell them apart.
Where do I see my pre-order orders? In Analytics → Pre-order for the totals, or in your Shopify Orders list filtered by the Pre-order tag.
A quick note
We're still polishing the interface, so a few labels may change over the next while, but the ideas and menus in this guide are stable. Any questions? Use Chat with Us or Call me back at the top right of any screen in the app.
Updated on: 07/01/2026
Thank you!