Shopify Black Friday checklist: a week-by-week plan for BFCM

When are Black Friday, Cyber Monday and White Friday?

Black Friday is the Friday after US Thanksgiving, which is the fourth Thursday of November, so it always falls between November 23 and 29. Cyber Monday is the Monday right after it, and the four days from Friday to Monday are often called BFCM. In 2026, Black Friday is on November 27 and Cyber Monday on November 30.

The name and the length change by market. Many retailers in Arabic-speaking markets run the same late-November sale as White Friday (الجمعة البيضاء). Brazil and France use the Black Friday name on the same Friday. Mexico has its own November event, El Buen Fin, held over a long weekend around the Revolution Day holiday, and Singles' Day (11.11) lands about two weeks before Black Friday. Many stores now stretch the offer into a full week, so decide your own start and end before anything else.

What should you decide 8 weeks before Black Friday?

Decide the offer, the products and the margin floor first, because every later task depends on them. Write these down in one place before anyone designs a banner:

• Scope: sitewide, selected collections, or a short list of hero products. Narrow sales are easier to fund and easier to explain.
• Offer type: a lower price with a crossed-out compare-at price, an automatic discount, or a discount code. The comparison below helps you choose.
• Depth: one discount for everything, or tiers by margin, for example 15% on low-margin items and 30% on high-margin ones.
• Timing: the start and end in your customers' time zone, and whether Cyber Monday is a separate offer or part of one long sale.
• Stock: which products have enough inventory to promote, and which to exclude because they will sell anyway or cannot be restocked in time.

How do you set a margin floor for Black Friday?

A margin floor is the lowest price at which an order still makes the profit you need, and it tells you how deep you can go. A simple version: Floor price = unit cost + shipping you pay + payment fees + the minimum profit you accept per order.

Here is a worked example with round, hypothetical numbers. A $60 product with a $22 unit cost, $6 of shipping you cover and about $2 of payment fees makes $30 per order at full price. At 30% off it sells for $42 and makes $12, so you need 2.5 times your usual units to earn the same profit. At 40% off ($36) it makes $6 and needs 5 times the units. To keep the example simple, fees stay at $2.

That math is why it often makes sense to discount a few hero products deeply and keep the rest of the catalog shallow. Run your own numbers in the discount calculator, and read how much discount to offer for the full break-even method.

How do you set honest compare-at prices for Black Friday?

Use a compare-at price you actually charged before the sale, and never raise prices in the weeks before Black Friday to make the discount look bigger. On Shopify, a product shows as on sale when its compare-at price is higher than its price, and how the crossed-out price and any sale badge look depends on your theme (Shopify Help Center).

Reference prices are regulated in many markets. In the EU, an announced price reduction must show the prior price, defined as the lowest price you applied during at least the 30 days before the reduction (Directive (EU) 2019/2161). In the US, the FTC's guides on deceptive pricing say a former price should be one the item was openly offered at for a reasonably substantial period. In Brazil, inflated discounts earned the event the nickname "Black Fraude". Rules differ by country, so check yours, but the safe habit is the same everywhere: compare against a real, recent price.

If you sell in the EU and ran a promotion in the 30 days before Black Friday, the reference price for your Black Friday discount may have to be that lower promotional price. Plan October promotions with this in mind, or keep them on different products.

Should you use sale prices or discount codes for BFCM?

Use sale prices with a compare-at price when every shopper should see the deal while browsing, and use discount codes when the offer is for a specific audience, such as your email list. Many stores combine them: visible sale prices on hero products, plus a code for subscribers.

What is the week-by-week Black Friday checklist?

Work backward from the Friday. This timeline assumes Black Friday on November 27, 2026; for other years, move every row by the same number of days.

How do you schedule Black Friday prices on Shopify?

Shopify can schedule discounts, but compare-at sale prices have no built-in schedule, so you either change prices by hand at the start and end or use an app that does it for you. With native tools, you update prices with the bulk editor or a product CSV right before the sale, keep a copy of the old prices, and put them back after Cyber Monday. That works for a few products, but it means someone editing prices at midnight and again after the weekend.

Sale Scheduler by SalePilot is built for this job. Its sale scheduler works like this:

1. Create a sale and choose the price change: decrease by percent or amount, or set a new price. Optionally set the compare-at to the original price and pick a price ending such as .99.
2. Choose the products: all products, collections, products, specific variants, or one advanced condition such as a product tag. Add one type of exclusion if needed.
3. Review the preview. Every variant shows its price before and after, with a Ready, Warning or Skipped status. Nothing changes in Shopify until you start or schedule the sale.
4. Choose Schedule start and end. Set the start date and time, then the end as a date and time or as a duration. One-time sales use your browser's local time, so check your computer's time zone first.
5. Turn on the Countdown if you want product pages to show how long the sale has left.
6. At the start time the app applies the prices, and at the end time it restores the previous prices automatically, both within about a minute of the time you set.

What should you check before you schedule a big sale?

Check four details that matter on a big weekend: editing, timing, catalog size and plan limits.

• Editing: a scheduled sale cannot be edited before it starts. To change it, delete it (which changes no prices) and create a new one. It applies the prices calculated when you reviewed it, so finish regular price changes first.
• Timing: large sales take longer because variants are updated one after another. Schedule a big catalog a few minutes before the time you announce.
• Catalog size: for all products, collections or advanced conditions, each preview loads up to 500 products and 2,500 variants and warns you when it is capped. On larger catalogs, split the sale by collection so every item is reviewed.
• Plan limits: each successfully changed variant counts once toward the monthly allowance, and a scheduled sale that would exceed it at its start time fails without changing any prices. Restores never count. The full setup is on the Black Friday solution page.

How do you get your store ready for the traffic?

Prepare inventory, shipping, support and your theme before the sale, because they are much harder to fix once orders arrive. Shopify's guide to managing increased sales covers order limits, fulfillment help, staffing and customer communication.

• Inventory: for limited stock, make sure "Continue selling when out of stock" is turned off on sale items, unless you want backorders (Shopify Help Center).
• Shipping and returns: publish holiday shipping cutoffs and your returns window in an FAQ and in the announcement bar.
• Theme: test the sale badge, the crossed-out price, the cart and checkout on a phone. Remove apps and scripts you no longer use.
• Staff: decide who may change prices during the event, and use staff permissions to limit access.
• Fraud and payments: review how you check risky orders before volume rises, so legitimate orders are not delayed.

What should you do during and after the weekend?

During the sale, confirm it started and then leave prices alone; after it, confirm every price is back and measure profit. Open five to ten product pages from different collections, on mobile and desktop, and check the sale price, the crossed-out compare-at price and the countdown. In SalePilot, each sale shows how many variants succeeded, failed or were skipped.

Avoid editing sale prices by hand while the sale is live. If you change a variant's price in Shopify during a SalePilot sale, stale protection skips that variant at restore time, so your newer price is not overwritten, but you will need to fix it yourself. To end a sale early, use Restore prices on the sale instead.

After Cyber Monday, check the restore results (Restored, Failed, or Skipped because the price changed) and review any skipped variants by hand. Compare gross profit, units and new customers with a normal week, note what sold out early and what did not move, and put next year's dates into your ecommerce sales calendar.