i’ve been at this for like 4 months now and i’m literally losing my mind over the manual stuff. i thought i’d be spending my time on marketing and cool creative stuff, but instead i’m stuck in the shopify admin for 5 hours a day doing the most boring crap ever.
is it just me or is the bulk editor actually useless??
tried to update some tags and prices yesterday and it took forever. then i realized half my images look weirdly cropped on mobile and i had to go back and manually fix them one by one. i feel like a data entry clerk not an “entrepreneur” lol.
what’s the one task that makes you guys want to close your laptop and scream? like the thing that’s so mind-numbing you just keep putting it off?
for me it’s definitely:
trying to organize collections without it being a mess
fixing product descriptions that got messed up during a csv import
chasing down customers for missing address info
idk i just feel like i’m doing it wrong or shopify is way more manual than people say. what’s the “boring” stuff that eats up all your time? need to know i’m not alone here haha.
Man I feel this. The native bulk editor is basically a toy once you pass like 50 products.
Stop using it and install Matrixify. It’ll change your life for tags, prices, and fixing broken CSV descriptions. For the missing address info, don’t chase them manually. Set up a Shopify Flow workflow (it’s free) that checks for missing fields and auto-emails the customer.
Why are you using the default baseline tools.
It’s a bare miniumum offering to appeal to the least common denominator.
Invest in your processes, setup automations, build custom dashboards, use dedicated apps or services that specialize in the areas you have problems with.
Your describing working in the business like your staff instead of working on a business you own.
You’re definitely not alone. The image cropping thing especially hits hard because you don’t even notice it until you check on a different device, and then suddenly half your catalog looks off.
The trick I’ve found is to batch the boring stuff. I used to try to fix things as they came up and it made me feel like I was constantly putting out fires. Now I block off one morning a week just for admin. Product updates, descriptions, tags, whatever needs fixing. The rest of the week I don’t touch the admin panel unless there’s an actual order to fulfill.
For the collections mess, one thing that helped was starting with just 3-4 broad collections instead of trying to organize everything into perfect subcategories from day one. You can always get more specific later when you have more products.
The CSV import issues are brutal though. I’ve learned to always do a test import with like 5 products first before uploading the whole thing. Saves hours of cleanup.
What kind of products are you selling? Some niches have way more admin overhead than others, and there might be specific tools that could cut your 5 hours down to 1-2.
i’m stuck in the shopify admin for 5 hours a day doing the most boring crap ever.
This is part of being an “entrepreneur”. If it was aways easy and fun then anyone can be an entrepreneur. Use apps and other means to main stream your process, if you still don’t want to do it then hire someone.
You’re not alone at all. A lot of people get into Shopify for the creative side, then realize most of the time goes into ops stuff like product setup, inventory, fixing data, etc.
What usually helps is cutting down the manual work. If you can manage products in bulk and keep a clean spreadsheet as your source of truth, it makes updates way less painful vs editing things one by one.
For imports specifically, Shopify’s default flow can be pretty clunky. Using something that lets you bulk edit and catch errors before uploading helps a lot. If that’s been a pain point, Altera’s worth a look for that piece, especially since it’s free up to 100 rows.
Hi @uncleiroh. I think that’s something everyone encounters when it comes to running an online store. However, there are many ways to overcome these time-consuming manual processes by organizing things more efficiently and logically, and then finding automation tools or using bulk editing to save time.
Also, if it’s not strictly necessary, don’t allocate resources to doing everything yourself. You can cut back on manual tasks that aren’t crucial to sales, and accept minor mistakes instead of nitpicking.
You’re absolutely right - that’s exactly why I recently made my Setary bulk edit app available to Shopify stores. Previously it was only available to WooCommerce and I discovered that Shopify merchants need it just as much
Instead of having to spend ages going into each product page or messing with the bulk editor, it displays all your products in a spreadsheet. You use the filters to find the products you want to update and then either make the changes directly in the spreadsheet, or select multiple products and use the Bulk Actions (e.g. to change all the stock levels, increase prices by a certain amount, etc.). Hopefully it will free you up to do the store management tasks that actually matter such as marketing!
Use AI more - it’s night and day. Besides Sidekick, you can connect your Claude and Chat GPT to shopify with the built in MCP and have them do anything you want - orginizing a collection would be a perfect example
Running a shop often means dealing with inventory updates customer support and daily admin which can be more stressful than expected. Many TeaTV users feel the same about routine tasks because they would rather spend time enjoying movies and shows than handling endless chores. Taking a short break with TeaTV can help you relax before getting back to work with a fresh mindset.
AI can remove a lot of this work, but “anything you want” is the part I would be careful with. A capable assistant can still apply a perfectly structured change to the wrong products or the wrong store.
For the jobs in the original post, I would use a short preflight before letting any tool make changes:
Collections: generate the proposed additions and removals first, with counts, then review that list before applying it.
Tags, prices, and descriptions: keep an export of the current values, test 5–10 products, and re-export the pilot to confirm what actually changed.
Variants: compare the number of variants and option combinations before and after. Blank or duplicated options are where a “simple” bulk update becomes expensive.
Theme image crops: work on a duplicate theme and check the affected product and collection templates on both desktop and mobile before publishing.
If you manage more than one store, verify the shop domain at the start of every session and keep separate change files per store. Reusing one approved batch across stores is risky even when the products look identical.
The useful distinction is not manual versus AI. It is unreviewed changes versus a reviewed batch with a baseline and a rollback path. Ten minutes of preflight is usually cheaper than a day reconstructing the catalog.
