How to allow customers a timeframe to order, then close a collection?

Shopify Discussion

Topic summary

A merchant needs to enable customers to order from specific collections during the first week of each month, then make those collections visible but unavailable for purchase for the remainder of the month, with messaging about the next ordering window.

Proposed Solutions:

  • One responder referenced a previous community thread discussing time-limited collection visibility
  • Another suggested using Shopify Flow to automate product availability:
    • Schedule Flow to run on day 1: enable “Do not track quantities” to make products purchasable
    • Schedule Flow to run on day 7: disable quantity tracking and set inventory to 0, making products appear sold out but still visible

Open Questions:

  • Whether other customers should be able to purchase these products when collections are “closed”
  • Whether inventory quantities are being tracked in Shopify

The discussion notes that simply unpublishing products wouldn’t work since they need to remain visible during closed periods.

Summarized with AI on October 28. AI used: claude-sonnet-4-5-20250929.
1

I have customers who create a “collection” (products they would like their clients to order as part of team gear). I want that collection to be “open” during the first week of the month, then visible but “closed” during the rest of the month with an announcement bar that announces when the next open period would be. Is there an app that will cover this?

2

Hello there @Stitchhorse You should check out the reply from “Erin” in this previous community thread here and see if you get enough useful information from there https://community.shopify.com/c/technical-q-a/how-to-make-a-collection-visible-for-a-limited-time-on-an/td-p/2007944

3

Do you want to allow other customers to buy these products when collection is “closed”? Do you track quantity for these products in Shopify?

Unfortunately, un-publishing them from “Online store” would not work because in this case you would not be able to still display them, so the best way is to make them sold-out.

Generally, this can be done with Flow.

Here is the basic idea – say, you’re not tracking quantities:

You schedule a Flow to run on the first day of month to get these products, and set “Do not track quantities” – this will make them buy-able.

Then on the 7th day another Flow runs to get these products and for each of them “uncheck” “do not track” and set quantity to 0 – this will prevent visitors from buying these products.