Etsy Shops Can Now List Saturday and Sunday as Processing Times

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UPDATE (July 16): As usual, Etsy cannot be trusted, and they opted some shops in without telling the seller. Go to your shipping settings page to check that your settings are still ok.

On July 5, many Etsy sellers discovered a message like the one above on their dashboards, creating some hilarity and a lot of confusion.

1. No, I don’t ship on weekends, and definitely do not deal with 96% of my orders over Saturday and Sunday, and
2. Does anyone at Etsy really think I would expend even a tiny bit of energy on my Etsy shop for the chance at $22 more each year? LOL

So, what does this mean?

First, they did make a real change to processing times, allowing shops to skip the sometimes confusing “business days” option and simply use a count of days that include weekends. But do not worry - you must opt in to make use of the new weekend times. On my shipping settings page in the Shop Manager, I see this:

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Note that you can choose to add either Saturday or Sunday, or both, as processing days, and that you have to click “Update” for this to take effect.

Second - because Etsy will never make anything logical and easy to understand - while this may mean some of your orders will now be due to ship on Saturdays, “[i]f a ship-by date falls on a Sunday, we’ll bump it to the next business day.” So, in reality, they have only added Saturday as an optional processing day, but not Sunday. Etsy Support confirmed this to sellers, as well as mentioning it on the Shipping Settings page.

Note, however, that the Help page only states that “If a ship-by date falls on a Sunday, it will usually be bumped to the next business day.” [my emphasis]. That means that even those of us who don’t opt into extended processing days should watch the due dates of our orders, and extend the processing time per order where necessary.

Remember, shipping late makes shops ineligible for Seller Protection and Star Seller, and puts the shop at risk of a payment reserve. Don’t mess with this setting unless you plan on carefully watching your order “ship by” dates, and do plan doing some work on weekends.

Why Would Etsy Do This?

Etsy claims that there is a higher conversion rate for items that ship more quickly, so adding weekend processing times may increase the orders in your inbox. A whole $22 worth for me, apparently. 😉 Across the site, that could be a nice bonus for Etsy’s bottom line, however, even if only a few percent of sellers opt in.

Why they say they are adding both weekend days to processing times but are still not expecting anyone to ship on Sunday is beyond me - that makes no sense. Yes, it means that 6 out of 7 times, an order will show as processing and shipping 1-2 days earlier than it did before this option existed, which could increase sales. It still means that there will be confusion over the items that should have shipped on Sunday but will show a longer processing time on that order in reality.

For those who worry about Etsy expecting you to work 7 days a week, remember, this is not mandatory. In addition, many sellers do already work on Saturday and/or Sunday, but up until now, could not reflect that in their processing times. Not everyone has the luxury of getting 2 days off each week, and many folks may choose a different 2 days off, especially those in countries where Saturday or Sunday could be a business day. Some shop owners with full time jobs do most of their Etsy creating and packaging on the weekend. Some countries do have shipping couriers open on these days (Canada Post has a few outlets open 7 days a week, and USPS has some locations open Saturdays, for example).

In short, this change is an option that better reflects the diversity of seller experiences than a Monday to Friday work week ever did. If you don’t like it, don’t use it.

The best case scenario would be if this announcement was an early step towards letting each shop choose its own work days, holidays, and down time. As long as they have programmed it correctly, that is.