REMOVING PROCESSING TIMES FROM SHIPPING PROFILES - NIGHTMARE - MISSING SOMETHING???

[#1]

Etsy has removed the processing time from the shipping profiles and to be blunt - this is HORRIFIC. I cannot express how bad of an idea this is... I have over 700 AD's - that all fit into specific shipping profiles with specific processing times within those profiles. I often have to change my processing times due to volume of orders - especially during prom.

So with this new "feature" I will be required to go into EACH INDIVIDUAL AD to edit the processing time??????

So this can not longer be done in bulk???

Or am I missing something???

This will be an absolute NIGHTMARE.

Jenny

[WitticismsRus]

I'm not that far along in my editing and trying to fix the mess that this created yet. But just wanted to say that it's not uncommon at all for new etsy things to not work properly and/or lag etc. Like nearly every update/upgrade or fix etsy has implemented in the 10 or so years I have been here has had bugs upon release.  Maybe (hopefully) it's just a slight lag in updating in real time?

[WoolyLily]

These changes won't show on our listings apparently until may 27th! Pointless for those of us extending shipping time while away 

[Chrysalism]

@TynesideOriginals Any edits we make in the new processing profile tool will not go live until May 27th. In the meantime there is no way to change processing times- our listings are frozen with whatever they were set to before this tool went live. Sorry this is happening to you!

[GraceNotesbyCindy]

I just created and bulk-applied a processing time for over 1,100 listings. Kind of weird that it included every single listing - past (expired/sold out/deactivated), present (currently active), and future (drafts) - with no way to exempt the past ones. I guess it was easier in my case because the same processing time and type of order applies to all my listings. 

I also didn’t know about this change until I saw the OP’s post.

[OurBoudoir]

The processing times have not been implemented on orders in reality/yet, but the field in the delivery profiles regarding length of time cannot be accessed to amend it.  For now one has to update the dispatch date after the sale.

was there an announcement that Etsy was changing the processing and delivery profiles?   

I expect some buyers will be angry that the shipment date is misleading.  If the automatic message to buyers is still accessible we can add a line there pointing out that the shipping date will be the same as the processing date.  That there is a glitch which has been reported to Etsy.

[ChillwolfArt]

@OurBoudoir "Was there an announcement that Etsy was changing the processing and delivery profiles?"

No, I only knew about it from this Thread. Which is ridiculous. For something like this, there should have been an Announcement. Think of all the Sellers who will not know, and get a big surprise.   

[DaysLongGone]

Etsy…… K I S S !!  

[AmoreTreasure]

What the Hell???? I found out about this change purely by accident!  (Someone should lose their job based on this alone.)  I have been here since 2010 and currently have 508 items in my shop.  They have applied their new processing times to 6441 listings so ALL listings including active, draft, sold out and expired!  I can see no way to filter this madness to active listings or, even worse/more remarkable, tell from their edit page of individual listings if it is an active, draft, sold out or expired listing. 

So, I think, don't panic, go to Listing Manager as surely they will give us an easy way to change processing profiles.  I expected there would be a drop down on the right similar to "Shipping Profiles" only for "Processing Profile" but, nope, not available.  

As a former software developer, I can't get my head around the level of incompetence here.  From the complete lack of requirements gathering, to the awful design, to the equally poor coding, to the absence of testing, to the unclear documentation, to the unannounced implementation - it is a cluster of epic proportion!

[MattBrewerJewellery]

I had exactly the same issue, albeit on a smaller scale with around 800ish listings, both current and old, inactive etc.

In the end, I have decided to ignore all of the old (dead) listings and put all of my current listings into "correct" processing profiles. I was daunted at doing this one at a time as I'm sick of having to do that due to Etsy making random changes which aren't easy to bulk edit.

I did manage to do this in bulk by clicking on the listings affected by scrolling down to my shipping profiles and bulk selecting the listings within each shipping profile. As my shipping profiles were essentially set up as processing profiles, I was able to bulk select all the listings attributed to one shipping profile and then bulk edit them into the correct processing profiles. I'm not sure if that is clearly worded but hopefully it may help? 

Admittedly I now have 20 processing profiles (15 of which are obsolete and cannot be deleted yet for some weird reason) and numerous dead listings appearing in active processing profiles but as Etsy seem unable to do things in a tidy manner, this is the best I can do for now.

Hope that helps? If not, happy to try and explain better  

[AmoreTreasure]

@MattBrewerJewellery thank you!  I did the same for ACTIVE listings. That is using the "Shipping Profile" filter on the Listing Manager as a way to filter the Processing Profiles.  This works because, like you, many of my multiple shipping profiles were created solely because of differences in processing times.   I also was able to now point the listings that were using multiple shipping profiles originally setup only for differences in processing times to only one shipping profile for ACTIVE listings. 

The reason, I believe, we can't delete the now obsolete shipping profiles is because they are still tied to drafts, expired, sold out and inactive listings.  This means that every time we use one of these types of listings as a template (which I do on a daily basis) we will need to review the shipping profile that Etsy assigned and, if obsolete, change it.  The alternative is to assume Etsy did a good job setting the processing times on all of the non-active listings and go through the VERY time consuming job of bulk editing ALL non-active listings to replace the now obsolete shipping profiles so that we can then delete them.  For some reason we are only able to select a page worth of listings at a time, rather than all listings, to bulk edit the processing time so this would take hours if not days.  Either way, it sure sounds like a recipe for problems trying to get rid of now obsolete shipping profiles.

[WitticismsRus]

So I went to my sold out and deactivated listing's and bulk edited them to go into a processing profile I set for 10 weeks processing time. That emptied many of the random excess processing profiles.  Once those random ones etsy generated are empty you can delete them. So move the non active listings to the same processing profile them delete the empty profiles. 

Oh and the bulk edit to change processing profiles only works one page at a time. It won't work if you select all on all pages. So one page at a time to bulk edit this mess. 

[AmoreTreasure]

@WitticismsRus the 40 listings at a time is a pretty big problem for me to try to clean now obsolete shipping profiles on non-active listings.  I have about 11,000 of all non-active categories.  At 40/page that's  275 40 per page updates.

[MattBrewerJewellery]

@WitticismsRus That's very strange - I have "empty" profiles which I have deleted the old sold out listings from and a delete button appears, however whenever I try and delete, I get an error message saying my changes cannot be saved.

[ClassicMemories]

Hi I can't remember exactly... I think I found a page where it said bulk edit and then went thru all my listings.

Sorry I can't be of more help. 

[ClassicMemories]

Not sure if this will help but here is something for bulk editing

https://help.etsy.com/hc/en-us/articles/360000337307-Can-I-Create-or-Edit-Multiple-Listings-at-Once?...

[GlassyFields]

I edited the processing time profiles that Etsy created. Most of profiles were for listings in Sold Out, Expired and Draft. Since I sometimes use these as templates I made them all 1-3 weeks. I'll have to remember to change the processing time profile when I use these as templates. But I didn't want dozens and dozens based on historical information going back to 2013.

I then created a set of processing time profiles that I am likely to use for my custom orders and while on vacation: 1-2 weeks, 8-10 days, 6-8 days, etc. When I'm on vacation I set the processing time in my shipping profiles to reflect the date I'll ship when I return and keep reducing this throughout my vacation. And I see in the bulk editing options that I can bulk apply a processing time profile. So should work the same way that editing my shipping profiles worked before this change.

And as for this interim period of time (I'm leaving on vacation May 25th ... and the new processing time profiles go into effect May 27th) I'll edit the processing time profile applied to my active listings to reflect 1-2 weeks instead of 1-2 days. 

I think this will work.

Took a bit to wrap my head around this change. If Etsy had announced prior to partially implementing and not made a mess by creating dozens and dozens of processing time profiles based on historical information going back to 2013 it would have been more palatable.

It really looks like it works the same way shipping profiles worked but now processing time profiles are their own thing instead of being contained in the shipping profiles.

For those of you preparing for a holiday weekend, just edit the processing time profiles used for your active listings to include extra days prior to the holiday and that's what should be used when Etsy makes the switch on May 27.

[AmoreTreasure]

OMGosh, you bring up another potential problem for me: Vacation.  I, like you, would set the processing time in shipping profiles to reflect the date I'll ship when I return and keep reducing this throughout the vacation.  I currently use 2 different processing profiles, one is "ready to ship (1 day)" and "ready to ship (1 -2 days)".  Yes, you can setup new processing profiles and bulk edit to assign listings to them but it won't work the same as the way it worked with changing the processing time in shipping profiles.  Stay with me here....Before, when I was at the final day of vacation, I could change shipping profile "A" (that was originally, pre-vacation, set to processing time of 1 day) to be a processing time of 1 to 2 days.  At the same time, I would also change shipping profile "B" (that was originally, pre-vacation, set to processing time of 1 to 2 days but had been ratcheted up during vacation) back to where it originally was at 1 to 2 days.  Then when vacation was over, I would simply change shipping profile "A" to 1 day.  Everything would be cool; profile "A" now would be at 1 day and profile "B" now at 1-2 days just like they were pre-vacation.  Here's the problem you need to be aware of with the new method.  When we bulk edit to set the processing profile it is changing it IN THE LISTING ITSELF (and in the variations if you set processing profiles there).  So what happens when I get home from vacation now and want to set profile "A" back to processing in 1 day rather than in 1 to 2 days?  Well, I'm screwed because, since it updated the processing profile directly in the listings and variations when I modified them on that last day of vacation, I have no way to now distinguish between the listings - they are all set at a processing profile of 1 - 2 days in the listing.  In this scenario, I will have to go through each stinking listing individually and set the processing profile on the ones I really want to have a processing profile of 1 day.  You see, it's not really a "profile" because the processing time is now stored at the listing/variation level.  So, if we are going to rachet down processing profiles while on vacation, be sure to NEVER assign listings that outside of vacation would have differing processing profiles to the same processing profile because you have now lost your ability to segregate them again.  I hope this makes sense.

To add, a work around to this problem is to leave your SHIPPING profiles segregated based on processing time.  At least that way you have a chance of being able to filter on that when using the bulk editor in listing manager.  So in my above example, had I kept a shipping profile A and a shipping profile B (despite the fact that the only thing that differed between them was the processing time), when I got back from vacation, I could filter on shipping profile, select only those for shipping profile - "A" and bulk edit those back to 1 day.  And here I thought that the ONE benefit of this whole mess is that I could consolidate shipping profiles which would save some time when postage rates change.  Unfortunately, I think I am going to now go back and break out the shipping profile by processing time for this reason.  My head is starting to hurt. 

[BeaconwoodDettman]

@PrairiePrimitives I agree, it's all or none - I'm on offsite ads for all of my listings because I'm above the threshold. It sounds like it's the same case for the OP, my confusion was that she said she had "700 ADs" - she meant 700 listings and all of them have offsite ads. I am used to sellers referring to their listings as just listings. 

[ChillwolfArt]

I see there is now an Announcement ("Shop Advisor") about this in our Shop Dashboard.

[bradgoodell]

So well timed too!  

It is Thursday, and this weekend is Memorial Day Weekend.  Lots of people won't see that announcement until later this afternoon or evening, or even tomorrow.  So that leaves a lovely holiday weekend trying to figure things out and fixing listings.

Grateful I saw the thread in the forum.  Grateful people here are willing to help and explain what they did or offer suggestions on fixes.

I feel sorry for everyone else.

[CanningCrafts]

There will be sellers posting here a month from now who never noticed this update. People should be fired over this poor rollout. 

[GlitteramaCrafts]

Just checked my Shop Advisor and there's nothing in there about it at all.

[ChillwolfArt]

@GlitteramaCrafts  Mine was there when I Signed In earlier. It had a tab, "Learn More". I X'd it out because I read everything about it yesterday, after seeing this Thread. I thought we all got the Announcements in our Dashboards the same time. I bet you get it later.

[AmoreTreasure]

So do we know which listings are included in the "applied to listings" under "Your Processing Profiles" in Shipping Settings?  When I add up the counts of the listings they updated it doesn't match ANY combination of Active, Draft, Sold Out, Expired, and inactive on listing manager!

[ChillwolfArt]

@AmoreTreasure  I went through it yesterday after seeing this Thread, so I hope the following helps you:

(To see how many listings are applied to Processing Profiles); I'll use mine as an example:
-Shop Manager > Settings > Shipping Settings
   -Your Processing Profiles
   -Ready to Ship (1-3 days)
   -(Applied to 23 listings)
*Yesterday, it said, "Applied to 4 listings". I had to go in and apply the others. For some reason (my error), mine wasn't set for all of my listings, only the Sold Out ones. 

I went into Listings, selected "Inactive", and did the following (of course, you will check "Active", "Inactive" and "Sold Out"):
   -Editing Options
   -Processing Profile, and applied it.

Hope this helps. It took me a while to figure out what the devil I was doing:)