Lifecycle alerts, automations and permissions
Lifecycle work keeps running in the background: scheduled changes apply, sold-out products are tidied up, clearance steps come due and suggestions appear. This page lists the alerts that tell you about it, when each automatic check runs, the workflow steps you can build on lifecycle, and the permissions each task needs.
Lifecycle alerts
All eight alerts are in the Inventory group of Settings → Alerts & Notifications → Alert Preferences, and their names start with Lifecycle:. There you can turn each one on or off, change its priority, choose who receives it and send it to shared email addresses or Slack. See Choose which alerts your team gets.
By default, each alert goes to administrators and everyone with the Lifecycle permission under Products.
| Alert | When it fires | Priority | On by default? | Default frequency |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lifecycle: Phase-out Ending Soon | A Phasing out product reaches its discontinue date within the next 7 days, so you can still place a final buy. | Normal | Yes | Instant |
| Lifecycle: Discontinued Product Sold Out | A Discontinued product has sold out everywhere (every warehouse, FBA and in transit) and its sell-out action has finished. | Normal | Yes | Daily Digest |
| Lifecycle: Sell-out Action Failed | Ending or archiving a listing failed on a channel after its retries. | High | Yes | Instant |
| Lifecycle: Stock Returned to a Sold-out Product | Stock was received for a product that sell-out had archived. | Normal | Yes | Instant |
| Lifecycle: FBA Aged Surcharge Approaching | Discontinued stock at Amazon FBA is within 30 days of its next aged-inventory surcharge band. | Normal | Yes | Instant |
| Lifecycle: Clearance Behind Plan | A product in an active clearance plan is At risk or Stalled. | Normal | Yes | Daily Digest |
| Lifecycle: Backorder on a Discontinued Product | A channel order brought in a line for a Discontinued product that has no stock. | High | Yes | Instant |
| Lifecycle: New Lifecycle Suggestions | A weekly digest of new lifecycle suggestions. | Normal | No | Weekly Digest |
What each alert tells you
Phase-out Ending Soon. Checked once a day. It covers products in any state whose demand planning is Capped, which is Phasing out by default. It lists each product with its end date, for example "SKU — ends date", and opens the Scheduled tab of PIM → Lifecycle. Each product is alerted once for each end date, not every day of the week before it.
Discontinued Product Sold Out. Fires when the sell-out action finishes, whatever the action is, including Keep its listings live at zero. It says what happened on each channel, for example "Listings ended on Shopify; kept live at zero on Amazon. The product was archived." When the product wasn't archived, it says why. It doesn't fire for a sell-out that was stopped because stock came back, or one that failed. See What happens when a discontinued product sells out.
Sell-out Action Failed. Fires after a channel refuses three times, for example because its connection expired. It names the product, the channel and the error, and says "The product stays unarchived until it succeeds." Fix the channel, then retry from the Sell-through tab of PIM → Lifecycle. You get one alert per listing, not one per retry.
Stock Returned to a Sold-out Product. The product goes back to Discontinued, never Active. Its listings stay ended unless Relist when discontinued stock comes back is on, on the Sell-out tab of Settings → Products → Product Lifecycle.
FBA Aged Surcharge Approaching. Checked once a day. Amazon assesses the surcharge on the 15th, so removal orders must be in by the 14th. Each line shows the product, its band and the date to remove it by, and the alert opens the FBA checklist tab. Each product is alerted once per surcharge band. See Work the FBA checklist.
Clearance Behind Plan. Checked once a day. At risk means the product is projected to sell out after the plan's target date. Stalled means nothing sold in the last 30 days. These are the same statuses the plan's Products tab and the Sell-through tab show. Each product is alerted at most once a week for each status. The alert opens the plan, or PIM → Clearance Plans when several plans are involved. See Review and approve clearance markdowns.
Backorder on a Discontinued Product. Checked once a day, for channel order lines from the last 24 hours. It covers products in any state that blocks new backorders. The alert says the line can't be replenished, so offer a substitute or cancel it. Each order line is alerted once. See Discontinue a product.
New Lifecycle Suggestions. Sent on Mondays. It counts the suggestions created in the last 7 days, by signal, and opens the Suggestions tab. Suggestions are never applied automatically. Turn it on in Alert Preferences if you want it. See Review lifecycle suggestions.
When the automatic checks run
| What runs | How often |
|---|---|
| Scheduled lifecycle changes, including a Phasing out product becoming Discontinued and a custom state's automatic return | Applied within the hour on their date. |
| Sell-out check for a product | About 10 minutes after its stock changes, plus one sweep of every product overnight. A grace period on the Sell-out tab adds to the wait. |
| Daily lifecycle snapshot (the Overview charts and dashboard widgets) and the daily alert checks | Once a day, overnight. |
| Product season statuses | Updated once a day, overnight. A status you set by hand is kept. |
| Never-out-of-stock flags | Updated once a day, overnight, from the last 180 days of stock history. A product qualifies when it was in stock on at least 80% of days. Flags you pinned by hand are left alone. |
| New lifecycle suggestions | Generated once a day, early in the morning. |
| Clearance plan steps | Checked every morning. Due steps go to the Review tab, or apply on their own when the plan is set to Apply steps automatically. |
| Weekly suggestions digest | Mondays. |
Workflow triggers and action
You can build workflows on lifecycle events. See Workflow examples.
Triggers
| Trigger | When it fires | Options | Data it passes on |
|---|---|---|---|
| Product Lifecycle Changed | Products move to another lifecycle state, by hand, in bulk, on a schedule or at sell-out. | To States (leave empty for any; custom states are matched by their key), Sources (leave empty for any) and Include changes made by automations. That last option is off by default, so a workflow that sets a lifecycle can't trigger itself in a loop. | Product ID, SKU, Product Name, From State, To State, Reason, Source, Products Changed |
| Discontinued Product Sold Out | A discontinued product has sold out in every warehouse (including FBA and in transit) and its sell-out action has finished, including when its listings are kept live at zero. | — | Product ID, SKU, Product Name, Archived At Sell-out, State After Sell-out, Products Sold Out |
| Lifecycle Suggestion Created | SKU.io suggests a lifecycle change for a product. | Rules (leave empty for all) | Suggestion ID, Rule, Rule Label, Suggested State, Product ID, SKU, Product Name, Current State |
Action: Set Product Lifecycle
Moves a product to a lifecycle state. A future date schedules the change. The change shows Automation in the Source column of the product's lifecycle history.
| Field | What to enter |
|---|---|
| State | Active, Phasing out or Discontinued. |
| Custom State Key | Optional. The key of one of your custom states. It overrides State. |
| Reason | Required for Phasing out and Discontinued. |
| Note | Shown on the lifecycle history. Can use expressions. |
| Discontinue On | Phasing out only: the date it becomes Discontinued, as YYYY-MM-DD. |
| Effective Date | Optional. Schedules the change for this date. Leave empty to change it now. |
| Product ID | Optional. Defaults to the trigger's product. |
Permissions
Assign these in Settings → Users & permissions. Administrators have them all. When the Lifecycle permission was added, every role that could edit products got it too.
| To… | You need |
|---|---|
| See lifecycle states, the PIM → Lifecycle workspace, a product's lifecycle history and clearance plans | Products → View |
| See lifecycle suggestions | Products → List |
| Change a product's lifecycle, one at a time or in bulk, and undo a change | Products → Lifecycle |
| Schedule, reschedule or cancel a lifecycle change | Products → Lifecycle |
| Add, edit or remove a successor link | Products → Lifecycle |
| Accept, dismiss or snooze a suggestion | Products → Lifecycle |
| Retry a sell-out action, tick the FBA checklist, set an FBA exemption, or create Shopify redirects now | Products → Lifecycle |
| Run the end-of-season wizard | Products → Lifecycle |
| Import lifecycle or successor columns | Products → Import and Products → Lifecycle |
| Cancel open purchase order lines from the Change lifecycle dialog | Products → Lifecycle and Purchase Orders → Edit |
| Cancel open backorders from the Change lifecycle dialog | Products → Lifecycle and Sales Orders → Edit |
| Email customers from the Change lifecycle dialog | Products → Lifecycle and Customers → Send Communications |
| Create, edit or end a clearance plan, add or remove products, and apply or skip steps | Products → Pricing |
| Assign seasons to a product or set its never-out-of-stock flag | Products → Edit |
| Change lifecycle states, the policy matrix, and the Sell-out, Channels, Suggestions, Clearance and Customer notices tabs | Settings → Edit |
| Add, edit or delete product seasons | Settings → Edit |
| Export the Sell-through table, or export closeout stock as a CSV or PDF linesheet | Products → Export |
| Create a closeout catalog in the B2B portal | Products → Lifecycle and permission to manage the B2B portal |
| Move the catalog's customers to another pricing tier | Permission to edit customers |
| Send a closeout offer email | Customers → Send Communications |
A few details:
- Follow-ups are checked again when they run. A scheduled change only cancels lines or emails customers if the person who scheduled it still has those permissions on the day.
- Settings without permission are read-only. You can open every lifecycle settings tab, but without Settings → Edit its controls are disabled. The States, Sell-out and Channels tabs say so at the top, for example "You can view these settings. Ask an admin with Settings access to change them." Hover over a disabled control to see "You need Settings access…".
- Disabled buttons say why. Hover over a disabled button, such as Add state, to see which permission it needs.
- API tokens need the products scope too. An app or script that changes lifecycle needs a token with read and write access to products, on top of the permissions above. See the API scopes reference.
Next steps
- Choose which alerts your team gets: turn alerts on or off and route them.
- Roles and permissions reference: every permission in SKU.io.
- How product lifecycle works: how states, sell-out and clearance fit together.