Shopify sale season checklist for Australia: Click Frenzy, Black Friday and Boxing Day

Australian shoppers now spread their spending over several events. Click Frenzy's own pages list the Main Event for 27 to 30 October 2026, which means it is running or just finished as we publish. Its sales calendar then lists Singles Day on 9 to 11 November, Black Friday early access from Friday 20 November, Black Friday on Friday 27 November, Cyber Monday on Monday 30 November, and Boxing Day sales from 24 to 31 December.

You do not have to join every event. A small brand with thin margins may do better running one clear sale and protecting its stock than discounting across five. Pick the events that suit your range, and tell your customers what is coming through email before the day.

• Decide which events you will join and what you will offer in each. A single clear offer converts better than six overlapping ones.
• Work out margin per product after the discount, shipping and fees, including your payment provider and Afterpay or Zip fees. Our pricing guide and Afterpay and Zip guide list the fees to include.
• Order stock early. Supplier and freight lead times lengthen in late year, so plan for the sale volume, not a normal week.
• Set a price floor. Make sure your compare-at prices are genuine previous prices. The ACCC publishes guidance on price displays.
• Plan your email and SMS calendar: teaser, early access, launch day, last chance and a post-sale thank you.
• Book any design or development work now. Developers are busy in October and November. If you need help, our Partner plan includes sale-season planning and launch support.

Shopify's discount rules decide what stacks with what. Get them wrong and shoppers combine offers you never meant to allow. Shopify's help centre says a store can have a maximum of 25 active automatic discounts, including app-based ones, and that each discount is a class (order, product or shipping) which you choose to combine or not.

1. Step 1

   List every offer you plan to run

   Write down each offer, its start and end time, which products it covers, and whether it can stack. Use Australian Eastern time and schedule in the Shopify discount start and end fields.

2. Step 2

   Choose automatic discounts or codes

   Automatic discounts apply without a code and suit sitewide sales. Codes suit email subscribers, influencers and VIP early access. Check that you are under the 25 automatic discount limit.

3. Step 3

   Set combination rules

   Open each discount and decide which classes it combines with. Test combinations in a private window, because shoppers will try to stack a welcome code on a sale.

4. Step 4

   Test the full path

   Add products to cart, apply a code, change quantity, switch shipping option and pay with each method, including Afterpay or Zip. Check the totals at each step.

5. Step 5

   Set end times and check after

   Schedule an end time for every offer, then confirm on the first morning after that it really ended. Forgotten offers are the most expensive mistake of the season.

If you sell wholesale, keep trade pricing separate from the consumer sale. Our B2B guide covers price lists so a sale does not discount your trade accounts or the reverse.

Shopify Flow is the free automation app from Shopify. Its help centre describes a workflow as a trigger, a condition and one or more actions, and offers pre-made templates you edit before turning on. Sale season is when small automations pay for themselves, because nobody has time to check things by hand.

• Tag orders that include a sale item or use a particular code, so the warehouse can batch them and you can report on them afterwards.
• Tag orders from high value customers or large baskets, and notify a person so they get a personal look.
• Hold or flag risky orders for review. Shopify's own guidance is to use the Order risk analyzed trigger, not Order created, when a workflow depends on risk level.
• Alert your team by email or chat when a product's inventory drops below a set number.
• Tag customers who buy during the sale, so you can segment them in email later.
• Test each workflow on a draft or low-stakes order before the event, and check the run log. Flow handles orders and draft orders separately, so a draft order test will not trigger an order workflow.

Our apps and integrations service builds Flow workflows and connects stock to your warehouse or 3PL.

Overselling a hero product is a quick way to earn refunds and bad reviews. Shopify's help centre explains that continue selling when out of stock only works when quantity tracking is on, and that a product is out of stock when inventory is at zero or below.

• Count stock before the sale and reconcile the counts in Shopify. Tracking only helps if the numbers are right.
• Turn off continue selling when out of stock for sale items unless you really are taking pre-orders and have told customers.
• Check that apps are not changing the inventory policy on your products behind your back. Pre-order apps can toggle the setting while a campaign runs.
• If you sell at a shop too, remember that the continue selling setting does not apply to Shopify POS orders, so staff will be warned rather than blocked. See our POS guide.
• Cap quantities on doorbuster items with a purchase limit app or a discount usage limit.
• Plan what you will do when a product sells out: a notify-me form, a similar product link and an email list for the next drop.

Sale orders arrive at the same time as Christmas parcels, so carriers slow down. Australia Post publishes its Christmas sending dates on its Christmas page, and other carriers publish their own. Look up the dates for the services and routes you use, and print them for the team.

• Work back from the last posting date for each service to set your last order date, and add buffer for regional and remote addresses.
• Put the last order date for Christmas delivery on product pages, the cart and your announcement bar. Our product page checklist covers delivery messaging.
• Update your delivery estimates and dispatch promises for the busy period, and change them back afterwards.
• Confirm your warehouse or 3PL staffing around Saturday 26 December and Monday 28 December, which the Fair Work list shows as public holidays in most states.
• Tell customers early if you shut for a break, and what happens to orders placed during it.
• Review your carrier setup. Our shipping guide covers rates, labels and carriers, and the New Zealand guide covers cross-Tasman cut-offs.

Shopify's flash sale guidance suggests considering turning off carrier-calculated shipping apps during a high-volume sale and using flat rates set in the admin instead. Flat rates are one less moving part, though you should compare the cost against actual carrier charges first.

A sale sends more people to the store at once, and they arrive on phones. Shopify's flash sale article says sales can need preparation if you expect a big rise in checkouts, advises creating separate preview products rather than publishing sale products early, and notes that multiple active inventory locations can slow the store during a sale.

1. Step 1

   Run a speed check three weeks out

   Test your home, a collection and your top product page on mobile. Shopify's targets are an LCP within 2.5 seconds, INP under 200 milliseconds and CLS under 0.1. Our speed guide has the fixes.

2. Step 2

   Remove apps and scripts you do not need

   Delete unused apps and their leftover code. Every banner, popup and tracking script slows the page.

3. Step 3

   Choose the theme and app freeze date

   Pick a date at least a week before your first sale day. After it, no theme edits, no new apps and no app updates without a test. This is the single best protection against a surprise break.

4. Step 4

   Back up the theme and duplicate it

   Duplicate your live theme so you can roll back. Keep a copy of your discount and shipping settings in a document.

5. Step 5

   Prepare sale pages in advance

   Build banners, collection pages and email landing pages in preview, with products unpublished until go-live.

6. Step 6

   Do a full rehearsal

   Place a test order on a phone through each payment method, receive the confirmation, and check it reached the warehouse.

Sale season is when stores add the most subscribers and send the most messages. Australia's Spam Act 2003 applies to marketing emails and SMS. The ACMA says commercial messages need the recipient's consent, must say who sent them, and must include an unsubscribe option that is actioned within 5 working days and does not charge a fee.

• Use a clear opt-in at checkout and on signup forms, and keep a record of when and how each person agreed.
• Do not import a purchased or scraped list. It has no consent.
• Include a working unsubscribe link in every email and an opt-out instruction in every SMS, and process requests quickly.
• Keep your sender details visible and accurate.
• Check your Klaviyo or Shopify Email flows are live: welcome, abandoned cart and post-purchase. See our Klaviyo flows guide.
• Segment sensibly. Send teasers to your engaged list first, then widen. Sending everything to everyone raises unsubscribes and spam complaints.

• Put your delivery, returns and discount rules in an FAQ and link it from the announcement bar. Questions arrive in bursts.
• Check your returns policy covers sale items clearly. Australian Consumer Law guarantees still apply to discounted goods, as covered in our returns guide.
• Set an auto-reply stating expected response times for the busy period.
• After the sale, export a report of orders by discount, product and channel, and note what worked.
• Thank new subscribers and send a post-purchase flow. Sale buyers are your best list for the next launch.
• Switch off expired offers, remove sale banners and reset delivery messaging.