Black Friday gets all the attention. Cyber Monday is where stores fumble.

The reason is simple. Black Friday is one launch. You flip the store on, and you're live. Cyber Monday is a handoff. Your Friday deal has to come down, and a different Monday deal has to go up, cleanly, in the same window. That switch is the part people do by hand at midnight. It's also the part that breaks.

This checklist is about the switch. If you haven't set up the Friday side yet, start with the Black Friday product scheduling guide and come back. This one assumes Friday is handled and you're planning what happens when the weekend ends.

First, decide what actually changes on Monday

Most stores treat Cyber Monday as "same sale, new name." That's a missed setup. Decide the specific change before you touch anything.

  1. Extend the Friday deal. Same discount, later end time. Easiest option. Nothing new goes live, you just push the expiry.
  2. Swap the discount. Friday's 25% off ends, a Monday-only code or automatic discount starts. Different value, different name, different products.
  3. Narrow or widen the scope. Friday was site-wide. Monday is one collection, or one category, or your highest-margin line.
  4. Layer a second offer. Keep the base sale, add a Monday-only stack on top for a few hours.

Write down which one you're doing. The rest of the checklist depends on that answer.

The weekend-to-Monday handoff, in order

Here's the sequence for the swap itself. The goal is that Friday's version ends and Monday's version starts without a gap and without you being awake for it.

  1. Set Friday's end time first. Native Shopify discounts have a start and an end. Set the end. Do not leave it open, and do not plan to "just turn it off Monday." That's the manual step that gets forgotten.
  2. Create Monday's discount as its own thing. New code or new automatic discount, with its own start time that begins when Friday's ends. Two discounts, not one edited in place. This gives you a clean record of both.
  3. Line up the timestamps. If Friday ends Monday at 12:00 AM and Monday starts at 12:00 AM, you get a clean flip with no gap. If you want a short dark window (sale visibly "resets"), leave a five minute gap. Your call, but decide it on purpose.
  4. Confirm the timezone. Native scheduling runs on your store's timezone, set under Settings > General, not the customer's local time. Shopify does not localize a launch per market. If your store timezone is Pacific and your customers are Eastern, "midnight" is 3:00 AM for them. Know which clock you're on.
  5. Handle anything that isn't a discount by hand, or automate it. A raw price edit does not expire on its own. If you dropped a product's actual price for Friday, Shopify will not put it back. Same with inventory, collections, and your announcement bar. Those are the gaps below.
Note

Shopify schedules discounts natively, both code and automatic, with real start and end times. If your whole Cyber Monday plan is one discount swap, you may not need an app at all. The app value shows up when the swap involves more than the discount: a price revert, a collection going live, a banner changing, all at the same minute.

The parts Shopify won't do on its own

This is where Monday mornings go sideways. The discount flips fine. The other five things you changed for Friday just sit there until you fix them.

  • Prices. Shopify has no native scheduled price change. A price you edited by hand for Friday stays edited. There's no built-in "revert Monday at 8 AM." You either change it back yourself or schedule the revert.
  • Collections. No native "publish this collection Monday at midnight" in the standard admin. Products have a scheduled availability date. Collections don't. If Monday needs a fresh "Cyber Monday Only" collection live, you publish it manually or automate it.
  • Announcement bar. No native scheduling. Your Friday banner still says "Black Friday" on Monday unless you edit the theme. If you want it to swap copy on its own, that needs automation via the app embed block, no theme code.
  • Inventory. No native scheduled quantity or restock. If Monday is a restock moment, that's a manual set unless it's scheduled.
  • Products coming down. Shopify schedules a product going live. It does not schedule one coming down, not in bulk, and not tied to a price or banner change.

How Schedule It runs the whole handoff

Schedule It exists for exactly this switch. You build the Monday changes as automations, set the time, and they fire server-side whether you're awake or not.

  • Chain the swap into one automation. End the Friday price, start the Monday discount, publish the Monday collection, and flip the announcement bar copy. One event, one timestamp, fires together.
  • Auto-revert the temporary stuff. Set an end time on Monday's changes and they roll back to the previous state on their own. No "turn the sale off Tuesday" note on your desk.
  • Reusable templates. Save this year's BFCM handoff as a template. Next year it's a date change, not a rebuild.
  • Logs and alerts. Full execution logs with timestamp and Shopify request id, plus email alerts to up to 10 people on success or failure. You find out it ran before a customer does.

It works on every Shopify plan, Basic included. No Plus, no Launchpad. See Features for the full action list, or the pricing page. The free plan covers up to 5 active automations, which is often enough for one clean handoff.

Set it Friday. Walk away. Let Monday flip itself.