Getting Started with Timesact V2

A concise walkthrough of the new interface, what changed from V1, and how to set up your first experience.

What changed: Templates became Customer Experiences

In V1 you juggled separate templates for Pre-order, Back in Stock, Coming Soon and In Stock. In V2 everything lives in a single unit called a Customer Experience. One experience can carry any combination of features at once, so you configure once and reuse across many products.

Pre-built templates to start from. On the Experiences page you'll see recommended templates: Pre-order Launch, Pre-order & Back In Stock, Back-order & Notify me, Coming soon, Low stock & Pre-order. Click Use on any of them, or hit + Create customer experience to start from scratch.

The new sidebar

• Experiences: create and manage Customer Experiences
• Products: see which products have experiences attached, add more
• Notifications: email setup and customer emails (pre-order confirmation, shipping delay, restock)
• Analytics: pre-order and back-in-stock performance
• Billing & Account: plan, usage, integrations

Anatomy of an experience

Open any experience and you'll see a left-side menu with two groups.

Storefront settings

• Features: turn features on/off
• Product page: how this experience looks on the PDP
• Collection page: badges and buttons on collection tiles
• Cart page: line-item label and mixed-cart alert

Admin settings

• Feature settings: per-feature advanced options (stock management, shipping, billing, pricing, inventory)
• Markets & locations: country and inventory scoping
• Notifications: channel setup per feature
• Translations: pointer to Translate & Adapt

Features available in V2

V2 expanded from V1's 4 features to 8 features, grouped into 4 categories. When you click + Add feature inside an experience, you'll see this menu:

Multiple features can coexist. You can enable, for example, Pre-Order + Waitlist + Coming Soon + Low Stock on the same experience. Each shows up at the right moment based on the variant's stock and schedule.

Tutorial: create your first experience and attach a product

1. Open Experiences. Click + Create customer experience (top right). Fill in a Title and optional Description. Click Create.
2. Land on the Features tab. You'll see "No features enabled." Click + Add feature and pick from the 4 categories. Start with Pre-Order for a typical pre-order setup.
3. Fine-tune the feature. Open Feature settings in the left menu to configure stock behaviour, shipping date, billing, pricing and inventory policy (see next section).
4. Design the storefront look. Use Product page, Collection page and Cart page to set button label, message, badge and cart label.
5. (Optional) Set market scope. In Markets & locations, pick Global, Specific countries (ISO codes), or Shopify markets. You can also restrict inventory to Specific locations.
6. Attach products. Go to Products in the main sidebar and click Add Products. Choose Specific products, Collection, Upload by CSV, or API integration (coming soon).
7. Verify on the storefront. Open the product's public URL in an incognito window. The Products page Features Statuses column shows the current state per feature (e.g. "Pre-order, Active", "Back in stock, Pending").

Feature settings (advanced per-feature config)

The Feature settings tab inside an experience is where you fine-tune how a feature behaves. For Pre-Order, the sections are:

Stock Management

• Pre-order only when Out of Stock. "Pre-Order" replaces "Sold Out" when Shopify stock reaches 0. When stock goes above 0 again, "Pre-Order" is replaced by "Add to Cart".
• Pre-order regardless of levels. "Add to Cart" / "Sold Out" are immediately replaced by "Pre-Order". You can offer unlimited pre-orders or set a quantity limit. When the limit is reached, "Pre-Order" reverts to "Add to Cart" / "Sold Out".
• Pre-order only when Shopify inventory is available. "Pre-Order" replaces "Add to Cart" when stock is above 0. When stock hits "Sold Out", the customer can't order anymore until inventory goes above 0.

Shipping

• As soon as possible: ship as soon as possible.
• Exact Date: set a specific shipping date.
• Period: set a shipping period.
• Interval: set a shipping interval.

Billing

• Full Amount: charge the full amount at checkout.
• Partial Payment: charge a partial amount at checkout.

Pricing

• No Discount: no discount applied.
• Amount: apply a fixed amount discount.
• Percentage: apply a percentage discount.

Inventory Policy

• On Sale: reserve inventory when the order is placed.
• On Fulfillment: reserve inventory when the order is fulfilled.

Continue Selling

A toggle labeled Auto-enable continue selling. Automatically switches the variant's Shopify inventory policy to "Continue selling when out of stock" when pre-order activates, and reverts it when pre-order deactivates. Saves you from toggling that setting in Shopify manually.

Markets & locations

Inside any experience, open Markets & locations. Two independent settings:

Market Configuration (where the experience applies)

Inventory Location Configuration (which stock counts)

Separate US and EU pre-orders recipe. Create two experiences. Pre-order US: Markets = Specific countries (US), Inventory = Specific locations (US warehouse). Pre-order EU: Markets = EU countries, Inventory = EU warehouse. Attach both to the same product. Each runs independently.

Translations

Inside an experience, Translations points you to Shopify's Translate & Adapt app (free, official). Your experience copy (button labels, messages, badges, cart labels, emails) is stored as Shopify metaobjects, which Translate & Adapt localises alongside the rest of your store.

Quick flow:

1. Install Translate & Adapt from the Shopify App Store.
2. Pick the target language.
3. Find the Timesact Customer Experiences metaobjects in the left menu.
4. Translate each field and save.
5. Storefront shoppers in that language see the translation automatically.

Notifications

Two places to know:

• Inside an experience, Notifications: enables per-feature channels for that specific experience. Requires at least one feature (Pre-Order, Back In Stock, or Low Stock) to be on.
• Main sidebar, Notifications: store-wide. Here you set up the Custom Email Domain (so emails come from your domain, not a generic one), the Sender Email Address, and you manage templates: Shipping delay email, Confirmation email, restock emails, etc. Emails tagged Live are already active.

Products page

The Products page shows every product that has at least one experience attached. Top-right controls:

• Add Products: open the Select Products page (Specific products / Collection / Upload by CSV / API integration).
• Refresh: re-sync statuses from Shopify.
• Edit columns: customise which columns appear. Options include Customer Experience, Start / End date, Features Statuses, Inventory quantity, Price, Pre-order quantity, Pre-order sold, BIS Threshold, Low Stock Threshold, and more.

Each row shows the product/SKU, the attached Customer Experience (dropdown, so you can swap), the Start and End date, and Features Statuses like Pre-order Active, Back in stock Pending, Coming soon Active, Low Stock Pending.

Analytics & Billing quick tour

Analytics splits into two pillars:

• Pre-order: Sales, Top pre-ordered products, Traffic source insights, Notifications & Email performance, Partial Payment insights.
• Notify me (Back in Stock): Trends over time, Purchase conversion, Traffic insights, Top notify-me products.

Billing & Account has four tabs:

• Billing: current plan, orders usage (visual bar), app version (CORE / PRO), refresh date.
• Store settings: shop-level defaults.
• Integrations (coming soon).
• Developer settings: advanced.

FAQ

Can a product have multiple experiences?

Yes. Each attached experience shows as its own row on the Products page with its own status. V2 picks the right one based on market, inventory scope and feature priority.

Do I still need to create a Shopify selling plan?

No. Enabling Pre-Order on an experience creates and manages the selling plan automatically.

I had a per-country custom script from V1 support, can I remove it?

Almost always yes. The Markets & locations panel replaces those patches. Confirm with support before removing anything custom.

What does "MANUAL" next to a product mean?

The product was attached individually, either by you in the admin or via a tag automation rule. Products attached through a Collection rule, CSV upload or API integration show a different label so you can tell them apart at a glance.

Where do I see which orders were tagged as pre-order?

Analytics → Pre-order → Sales for totals, or use the standard Shopify Orders list filtered by the Pre-order tag.

UI still iterating. Some labels may shift slightly over the coming weeks. The concepts and menu structure in this guide are stable.

Questions? Inside the app, use Chat with Us or Call me back at the top right of any screen.

Updated on: 04/24/2026