Time Away
eBay vacation mode, called Time Away: which setting to pick
eBay vacation mode is called Time Away, and you turn it on in your Time Away settings by picking dates and one of two options: Allow item sales (up to 15 days) or Pause item sales (up to 30 days). Pick Allow if you can ship soon after you're back, Pause if you can't ship at all, and read what it doesn't stop before you rely on it.
Picture a week of long shifts. Orders keep arriving while you're at work, and the post office closes before you leave. Time Away is eBay's tool for a gap like that, but its two settings behave very differently.
How it behaves, below, comes from eBay's own Time Away help page, as read on 6 October 2026. eBay can change it, so check the live page before you lean on a limit.
What is eBay vacation mode, and where do you find it?
eBay vacation mode is now called Time Away: a setting that either hides your fixed-price listings or leaves them up with a notice and updated delivery dates while you can't ship. eBay's 16 October 2020 announcement describes it as an update of the original Vacation Settings.
You find Time Away in your account, not inside a listing. eBay's help page gives a link, not a menu path: ebay.com/vac/timeaway. A member of eBay's community forum says Time Away also sits in the left-hand menu of Seller Hub. That's one member's advice, not eBay's word.
Allow item sales or pause item sales: which should you pick?
Pick Allow item sales if you can ship soon after you're back and want to keep selling. Pick Pause item sales if you can't ship at all. eBay caps Allow at 15 days and Pause at 30.
| Allow item sales | Pause item sales | |
|---|---|---|
| Longest stretch | Up to 15 days | Up to 30 days |
| Fixed-price listings | Stay visible. Buyers see a message at the top, and estimated delivery dates update. | Hidden from search. A buyer who had one in a cart or Watchlist can't complete the purchase. |
| Auction-style listings | Not covered separately on eBay's page. | Stay visible. Buyers can still see and buy them, with a message at the top of the listing. |
| What you still owe | Orders keep coming in, with later delivery dates. Each one still has to ship. | Fulfilling orders sold before your start date. The delivery-date exceptions below apply here too. |
| Lag | A few hours for delivery dates to update. | A few hours to hide, a couple of hours to reappear. |
For a seller with a day job, what decides it is whether you can reach a carrier, not how long you'll be gone. Allow keeps taking orders, so it only works if they get shipped. If a week of long shifts means no post office at all, Pause is the honest setting. If you can reach one on some days, the crunch-week section below has a better answer.
How do you turn on eBay Time Away?
To turn on eBay Time Away, open your Time Away settings, choose Schedule time away, pick Allow item sales or Pause item sales, set the dates, and apply. Five steps:
- Open your Time Away settings and choose Schedule time awaySign in and use ebay.com/vac/timeaway. Menu labels move, so the link is safer than hunting through Seller Hub.
- Pick Allow item sales or Pause item salesAllow runs up to 15 days. Pause runs up to 30.
- Set the start and end datesA future start begins at 12:01 am on the start date and ends at 11:59 pm on the end date.
- Write your automatic responseeBay lets you set a message for buyers who contact you, with the dates it's active.
- Apply it, then check a few hours laterHiding and delivery-date updates take hours, so look at your listings as a buyer would.
Timing matters more than the clicks. eBay's own advice is to start Time Away a day before your time off and end it a day after you're back, so pending orders get processed. The lag is why: hiding fixed-price listings can take a few hours after your start time. Starting today only speeds up the notice. eBay says the message at the top of your listings shows within minutes, but the hiding and the delivery-date updates still take their hours.
The other end lags too. Time Away ends at 11:59 pm on your end date, and eBay says listings can take a couple of hours to reappear in search results.
What does Time Away not stop?
Time Away doesn't stop your fees, your duty to ship what already sold, or your auctions. Under either option, it also leaves some delivery dates alone. eBay's Time Away page is specific about each.
- Fees. eBay says its fees, including listing-related fees and any subscription fees you pay, keep applying during Time Away. For current amounts, see eBay's selling fees page, which doesn't mention Time Away.
- Orders you already sold. eBay says you still need to "uphold commitments to your buyers", such as shipping orders sold before your start date.
- Auctions. Under Pause item sales, auction-style listings stay visible and buyers can still see and buy them. An auction that ends while you're away still has a winner.
- Some delivery dates. Whether you pick Allow or Pause, eBay says delivery dates won't be updated for offer-related orders, local pickup, digital items and one shoe category. The full list is on eBay's page.
Before you leave, run through this:
- Turn off automatic offer acceptance on the listings you'll leave up.
- Answer or decline pending counter-offers.
- Check which auctions end inside your dates, and end or keep them on purpose.
- Write the automatic response and set its dates.
Is Time Away the right tool for a crunch week at your day job?
Sometimes it isn't. If a crunch week still leaves you a carrier visit or two, you may not need Time Away at all: if no order waits longer than your handling time, nothing ships late. The table lays out five ways through the week.
| Option | What it does | What it costs you | Fits when |
|---|---|---|---|
| Time Away, Allow item sales | Keeps listings up with a notice and updated delivery dates. | Orders keep coming and you still have to ship them. | You'll be back to ship within 15 days. |
| Time Away, Pause item sales | Hides fixed-price listings. Auctions stay up. | The sales you'd have made, and a couple of hours to reappear. | You can't ship at all, for up to 30 days. |
| Longer handling time | Gives the carrier scan more business days. | eBay advises the quickest handling time you can consistently meet, so it's a trade. You also edit it back. | You can reach a carrier on a few days of the week. |
| End the listings you can't ship | Takes the risky ones off the table. eBay restricts ending an auction that already has bids. | The work of listing them again. | A few listings or auctions are the problem, not all of them. |
| Do nothing, keep the ten-minute routine | The routine: ten minutes each weekday to pack and ship what sold. | Ten minutes a weekday. | The week is busy, not absent. |
Handling time is the number of days between payment and the carrier's scan, per eBay's Seller Center page. With 1-day handling, the package should be scanned by 11:59:59 pm the following day. It's business days unless you ship on Saturdays or Sundays and include them. How eBay counts handling time, on a sister site from the same publisher, covers what counts as late.
The decision rule: find the longest gap between two days you can reach a carrier, counted in business days. If your handling time is at least that long, skip Time Away.
An example, not a benchmark. You can reach a carrier on Tuesday and Thursday, and an order is paid Thursday night, after your run. Here's how it plays out under each handling time:
| 2-day handling | 3-day handling | |
|---|---|---|
| Business days counted | Friday is day 1, Monday is day 2 | Friday is day 1, Monday is day 2, Tuesday is day 3 |
| Due by | 11:59 pm Monday | 11:59 pm Tuesday |
| Your next carrier day | Tuesday | Tuesday |
| Result | Late by a day | On time |
The longest gap in that week is three business days (Thursday to Tuesday), so three days of handling covers every order. If you count Saturdays or Sundays, your gaps change.
If the problem is the week itself rather than one shipment, cut sourcing, keep the listing evening, and keep the ten-minute shipping routine going. For a run of crunch weeks, see keeping a side hustle from eating your life.
What does a week of paused sales cost you?
A week of paused sales costs you roughly your average weekly net profit. That's an estimate: it assumes none of the sales you'd have made come back once your listings reappear, and nothing we read from eBay says how many do.
Rough cost of a pause = your average weekly net profit × weeks paused
Take the weekly figure from your own books: a month's net profit divided by 4.33. The four-input income formula shows what feeds it.
| Line | Example | How it's worked out |
|---|---|---|
| Average weekly net profit | $150 | Typed in; use your own |
| Weekly hours | 7 | Typed in; use your own |
| Rate for those hours | $21.43 an hour | $150 ÷ 7 |
| Rough cost of a 2-week pause | $300 | 2 × $150 |
| Ten minutes each weekday to ship, 2 weeks | 100 minutes (about 1.67 hours) | 10 weekdays × 10 minutes (typed in; use your own) |
| Net profit protected per shipping hour | About $180 | $300 ÷ 1.67 |
On those example numbers, shipping beats pausing, if the 100 minutes exist. If they don't, Pause is the price of not shipping late. Put your own figures into the hourly rate calculator.
Does eBay vacation mode hurt your search ranking or seller rating?
eBay's help pages don't say. The Time Away help page says nothing about search ranking or seller metrics, and eBay's seller levels and performance standards page, which lists measures such as late shipment rate and transaction defect rate, doesn't mention Time Away.
Nothing on either page says Time Away pauses a performance measure, so don't count on it. If you're worried, the safe move is to ship what sold and avoid late shipments, because late shipment rate is one of the measures eBay lists.
Seller guides make bigger claims: that eBay's algorithm penalises inactive sellers, so time away hurts your visibility, and that eBay officially states Time Away protects your metrics. We couldn't confirm either in eBay's own pages, so treat both as unverified.
What should you do the day you're back?
The day Time Away ends, ship, answer and re-check, in that order. Listings can take a couple of hours to reappear, so don't judge the first morning.
- Ship what sold while you were out, then answer your messages.
- Check your cases and returns. A forum member warns they still come in while you're away.
- Turn automatic offer acceptance back on only if you still want it.
And open the Time Away page once in a calm week, so you know where it is.
How do you find vacation mode on eBay?
How long can eBay vacation mode last?
Why is my eBay Time Away not working?
Does eBay Time Away affect your seller ratings?
Can you temporarily take down an eBay listing?
Disclosure Evening Inventory comes from the people who build FlowLister, so read it knowing that. FlowLister is aimed at the part of the evening this site keeps telling you to protect: from your item photos it fills in the title, category and item specifics, sets a price from sold listings and adds shipping, then you publish to eBay. It's AI and it gets things wrong. Everything here works without it.
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