Collections & schedules
Schedules and real-time sorting
Choose when collections re-sort: daily, every few hours or on demand, plus real-time re-sorting after stock-outs and new products.
Sales, stock and new products change all the time, so SmartSort AI re-sorts your collections automatically. You choose how often in Sorting rules, and any collection can have its own schedule (see Collection settings).
Schedule options
- Daily at a time you choose — for example 3:00 AM, when traffic is low. Times use your store’s time zone, set in Shopify admin → Settings → General.
- Every few hours — for collections that change quickly. How often depends on your plan.
- Manually — the collection only re-sorts when you click Re-sort or Re-sort all now.
| Plan | Fastest automatic re-sort |
|---|---|
| Free | Daily |
| Starter | Daily |
| Growth | Every 12 hours |
| Pro | Every 4 hours |
Plans and limits can change; the plans table always shows the current ones.
Tip: Daily sorting is plenty for most collections, especially with real-time re-sorting on. Use a faster schedule for collections where sales move quickly, such as “Trending” or “New In”.
Real-time re-sorting
With real-time re-sorting on (Growth plan and up), SmartSort AI re-sorts a collection a couple of minutes after something important changes in it:
- a product sells out or comes back in stock,
- a product is added to or removed from the collection,
- a product’s tags, status, price or publish date change,
- a featured product’s end date passes.
Changes are grouped: if 200 inventory updates arrive in a minute, the collection is still sorted once. Real-time sorting complements your schedule — scheduled sorts still run to keep sales-based rankings fresh.
Re-sort now
- Re-sort on a collection sorts it immediately — usually within seconds.
- Re-sort all now on the Dashboard sorts every collection that’s turned on. Large stores are sorted in batches over a few minutes.
When sorting pauses
Automatic sorting pauses, and resumes by itself once the cause is fixed, when:
- Your catalog is larger than your plan allows. Upgrade, or the collections keep their current order. See Plans and billing.
- SmartSort AI can’t reach your store. This can happen after a long time without opening the app. Opening SmartSort AI from your Shopify admin reconnects it.
Failed sorts are listed in each collection’s history, and SmartSort AI can email you about them — set the address in Settings. See Troubleshooting.