# Scheduling and launch day

What the Go step checks before it lets a launch publish, what the command center shows on the day, and the difference between unscheduling, cancelling and deleting.

Source: https://launchgenius.app/help/scheduling-and-launch-day
Last updated: 2026-08-25

## The Go step

Go ends the build path the way a checkout ends a purchase. It lists everything
that will not go as expected, each with a link that fixes it, and then the
button.

**It refuses if:**

- there is no launch announcement
- the launch moment (T-0) is less than two minutes away
- you are at your plan's limit for launches scheduled at once
- your subscription is not usable

**It warns without blocking** when the announcement has no connected account.
That is a change of route rather than an error: you will be emailed at T-0 to
publish it yourself.

Two things happen quietly that are worth knowing:

- **Times already in the past are left approved rather than published.**
  Publishing "3 days to go" after the moment has passed is worse than skipping
  it.
- **Two posts aimed at the same moment are left approved and logged** rather
  than both going out.

## The command center

A scheduled launch opens on the command center: a countdown, counts of what has
published, what is waiting and what failed, a live list of every post, and a
triage rail. A draft opens on its build path instead.

**If a post fails** you get three options: retry it, mark it as published by
hand with an optional link, or skip it.

**The one failure worth understanding in advance** is the announcement's id.
Everything that attaches to the announcement needs its real id on the platform.
If the announcement was published by hand, or on a platform that will not
report the id back, the posts attached to it wait thirty minutes and then fail.

The command center shows this as a banner *before* anything fails. Paste the
announcement's URL into it and everything waiting goes out. Do that as soon as
you see it.

**Share the live view** if you want everyone on the launch watching the same
timeline. Only your workspace's members and the people who joined this launch
can open it: they sign in first, so a forwarded link does not work for anyone
else. It deliberately hides failures and anything skipped.

If you want a view for someone with no account, send the launch report instead.
The two are separate links with separate switches, and turning one on never
turns on the other.

## Reading the numbers afterwards

Views, likes, comments and shares are read from each network on a schedule
rather than live: every hour for a post's first day, then once a day for a
week. Each reading replaces the last, and the page says when the newest one was
taken and when the next is due.

X updates far less often than the rest, on purpose. It
charges for reading a post's numbers as well as for publishing, so an
X post gets one reading, about a day after it goes out. A
figure there that has not moved since yesterday is the schedule working, not a
missing post.

If a network's own page shows more than the report does, that is a reading you
have not had yet rather than a post that went missing.

Only posts published through a connected account are read. A post someone
published by hand counts as published but is not measured, which is the usual
reason the page says to read the totals as a floor rather than a total.

Networks count differently, so the reports show one figure called **views**:
displays where the network counts displays, plays where it counts plays. TikTok
reports no impressions at all and YouTube reports plays, so those posts would
otherwise read as unmeasured. Where a network reports both, the displays are
used and the plays are never added on top — a play there had a display before
it, and counting both would count the same person twice. Every total that
includes plays says how many. LinkedIn does not let anyone read a member's post
numbers, so LinkedIn posts are never measured.

**"Never sent" is not the same as "failed".** A post left in draft when the
launch was scheduled never went out at all, and it has its own count beside the
failures. It is the one non-delivery with no error message, because nothing was
ever attempted.

For the full picture of what is measured and what is not, see
[numbers and reports](/features/measurement-and-reporting).

## Unschedule, cancel, delete

Three different things, and support tickets confuse them constantly.

| | What happens | Reversible |
|---|---|---|
| **Unschedule** | Every post that hasn't gone out comes off the schedule with its approval kept, and the launch date is yours to move. Schedule it again and every post moves with it, keeping its distance from the launch time. Posts already live stay live. | Yes |
| **Cancel** | Everything scheduled is dropped and participants stop being prompted. | No |
| **Delete** | Erases the launch and its content. Refused while the launch is scheduled. | No |

If you only need to move the date, unschedule it. Deleting does not take down
posts that already published: those live on the platforms, where only their
authors can remove them.