How to set open and close dates for a team store, club shop or MicroStore

You can set open and close cycles to ensure you have as much freedom to customize your store as you would a physical one.

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Setting store cycles

How to set up your open and close cycles

How to link your cycle to your admin portal

How to link your cycle to reporting

How to create a countdown timer

The terms team store, group stores, and MicroStores may be used interchangeably throughout this article but all refer to the same thing. Read more about this here.

Setting store cycles

Creating store cycles allows you to:

  • Manage when your store is online and offline.
  • Makes it easier for you to simply reuse your group store to create a new one.
  • Offers enhanced ease of reporting. 

How to set up your open and close cycles

Imagine being able to set up a store in literal seconds without having to duplicate an existing store. This can now be a daily reality by using the cycle settings accessed from the availability tab in your team store dashboard menu.

Set up your first cycle

  • Select a time zone for your cycle
  • Click on "Add New Cycle"
  • Select the date and time range

Create your first cycle

When you create the first cycle for your MicroStore, it will activate itself for you. If the current date is within the opening and closing time the save cycle button will say “Save and Open”

If the opening and closing times are in the future, the save cycle button will say “Save and Schedule”  

If the opening and closing times are in the past, the save cycle button will say “Save and Close”

You can also decide to inactivate a store.


1) Active store

An active store is considered open. Customers can visit and purchase as normal from your store.  

If you want to extend the end date of your store closing later on, you can simply edit the dates by clicking on the "Edit" button. 

Active cycles cannot be deleted.

 

2) Inactive store

Inactive stores, on the other hand, are considered offline. Customers cannot visit the store and cannot make a purchase.

Inactive stores are considered offline. Customers cannot visit the store and cannot make a purchase.

If you attempt to access an inactive store, the following message will be displayed:

In order to activate a store, which was set to inactive initially, click on the edit icon ("...") on the right-hand side. You can also delete an inactive store.

Q: Would modifications being made to an existing page be viewable publicly, and is there any way to hold a page and set it live once finished instead?

A: Any changes made will be visible in real-time if a store is open. There is no way to hold a page and then set it live once finished.

 

3) Schedule a store

Scheduling an opening date in the future and activating it will open the store on that date. When a store is scheduled, customers will be able to visit but not yet make a purchase. 

10 (This teamstore hasnt been opened yet)-png

Setting the cycle for a future date but not activating it will hold the store offline until it is activated. When a store is scheduled but not active, customers will not be able to visit and cannot make a purchase. 

Schedule multiple cycles

Different cycles can be set based on a specified date and time range. 

When there is already an active cycle in the MicroStore, the status of the next cycle created will be inactive by default. The onboarding text will also advise you that you are required to activate the cycle to make the store live.

As there can be only one active cycle in the MicroStore at any time, there will be a warning that activating another cycle will automatically deactivate the previous cycle.

There can only be one active cycle at a time. When a store is inactive - outside of the dates and times you've set - the store will be offline. During these inactive cycles, the store can't be visited and items can't be purchased.

Close a store

A closed store means the start and end date of a store's open cycle have lapsed. The store can be visited, but items can't be purchased. 

In order to take a closed store offline (and therefore make it invisible and inaccessible to your customers), you must set the status to inactive.

10-PNG-3

How to automate opening and closing times

To simplify managing your store, we’ve created a feature to automatically open and close your MicroStore. Simply set the times, start and end dates in the backend, and your store will automatically open and close accordingly.

You can also easily schedule multiple cycles for your store, ensuring effortless deployment in the future.

You can find these settings in Dashboard > Microstore > Availability tab.

To avoid scheduling conflicts, don’t create overlapping cycles.

Make changes to a MicroStore

In case you want to make changes to the team store products (e.g. pricing or images), those changes will only affect the active cycles (open or closed). It will not affect the inactive cycles.

How to link your cycle to your admin portal

Your designated cycle's date and time range are automatically linked to your group store's admin portal data for ease of management. You can copy the link to the customer admin portal and send it to the team's representative (e.g. coach).

Admin URL links are identical for each cycle.

Alternatively, you can go to the admin portal tab, and select a cycle from the drop-down. Read more on how to use the Customer Admin Portal in this article.

How to link your cycle to reporting

You can set up the parameters of a cycle's time range as a preset for team store reporting. But you can still select specific date ranges to display in your reports.

Q: If I want to run a MicroStore report, can I select a report based on an open cycle or will the full report allow me to filter by order cycle?

A: The full report will have all orders - it cannot filter by cycle.

When a cycle has no closing date (i.e., in case a store is open year-round) and you want to generate a report, do not set a MicroStore cycle and make sure to set the end date to today.

How to create a countdown timer

Setting up a countdown timer in your MicroStore allows your customers to clearly see that your store is open for a limited time. This can drive sales by incentivizing your customers to shop sooner rather than later.

You must set an open and close cycle for your countdown timer to work.

  1. Go to MicroStore > Availability.
  2. In the MicroStore Opening Cycle section, you can turn on the toggle to show your store cycle (open and close cycle) as a countdown timer.
  3. Haven’t set an open and close schedule? You can do that by hitting the ‘Create Cycle’ option in this same section.

☝ There’s a difference between the two toggles on the dashboard.

  • The first toggle (outlined here in blue) displays the availability of your store as text.
  • The new toggle (outlined here in red) displays the availability of your store as a countdown.

When your customers enter your storefront, they’ll now be able to see when your store closes clearly.