A Day in the Life of an Ecommerce Manager in Singapore

7 min read · Updated 23 October 2026 · Ecommerce Jobs List

Job ads for ecommerce managers list responsibilities like "drive online sales growth" and "manage marketplace relationships". That tells you nothing about what the day actually contains. This guide walks through a composite week for an ecommerce manager at a Singapore brand or retailer selling on Shopee, Lazada, TikTok Shop and its own webstore, with a small team of executives and a 3PL or in-house warehouse.

The person is a composite, not anyone specific. The pattern will be familiar to anyone who has done the job. If you are deciding whether to aim for it, read it alongside the ecommerce career path guide.

A normal week

Monday

8.30am. Before the office fills up, the manager opens the dashboards. The order and inventory system shows the weekend's orders across all channels, anything unshipped, and any SKU that dropped below its reorder point. Each seller centre shows shop health: response rate, late shipment rate, cancellation rate, any penalty points. The ad dashboards show weekend spend and return on ad spend. Fifteen minutes, done in the same order every day so nothing gets missed.

9.15am. Team stand-up. Each executive runs through their platform: what is live, what is due, what broke. Monday's list is usually longest because of weekend orders and chats. Two things get assigned immediately: a listing that got flagged over the weekend and a batch of orders waiting on a stock transfer.

10am. Weekly numbers. The manager builds or reviews the weekly report: sales by channel against target, traffic, conversion, average order value, ad spend and margin. The point is not the numbers themselves. It is the two or three sentences of explanation that go to the director: why Shopee was up, why the webstore was flat, what is being done about it.

11.30am. A supplier call. The brand's distributor wants to know whether to bring in more of a product that is selling well on TikTok Shop. The manager pulls the sell-through for the last six weeks, checks the campaign calendar and gives a number.

2pm. The weekly call with the Shopee key account manager. Agenda: upcoming campaign slots, a request to join a platform programme, a dispute over a penalty the team thinks was wrongly applied, and a reminder that the voucher submission deadline for the next campaign is Thursday.

3.30pm. Email and approvals. Campaign price lists from the executives need sign-off. A refund above the executive's limit needs approval. A new product's listing copy needs a final read.

5pm. A second dashboard pass. Any order placed before the cut-off that has not been handed to the courier is chased.

Tuesday to Thursday

The shape repeats, with different meetings filling the middle of the day.

• Marketing sync. Aligning the webstore's email and social calendar with the marketplace campaign calendar so the brand does not undercut itself.
• Finance review. Walking through platform fees, ad spend and returns against the budget. The manager is expected to know margin per channel, not just sales.
• Warehouse or 3PL check-in. Pick accuracy, packing speed, courier issues, and whether the warehouse can cope with the next campaign's forecast.
• Agency call. If an agency runs paid media or content, a weekly review of results and the next fortnight's plan.
• One-to-ones. Short, regular check-ins with each executive. These are where development conversations happen, and where the manager hears about problems before they become fires.

Thursday is the common internal deadline for the following week's campaign submissions, so Thursday afternoons are spent checking price lists against the margin floor and approving nominations.

Friday

Friday morning is planning: the next month's campaign calendar, stock forecasts for the hero SKUs, and any new product launches. Friday afternoon is usually quieter, which is when the manager does the work that needs concentration: a pricing review, a listing audit, a proposal for a new tool or an extra headcount.

The fires

Every week has at least one. The common ones, and what the manager actually does:

Stockout mid-promotion. A hero SKU sells out on Shopee while a voucher is still live. The manager checks whether stock exists on another channel or in another location, decides whether to pull it across, and if not, has the listing set to out of stock before customers order and the shop takes cancellations. Then a note to the buyer about why the forecast was wrong.

Late shipment warning. The seller centre flags a batch of orders approaching the shipping deadline. The manager finds out whether the problem is the warehouse, the courier pickup or an order stuck in the system, and pushes the right party. Repeated late shipments cost the shop visibility, so this gets priority over almost everything else.

Pricing error. An executive uploaded a campaign price list with a decimal in the wrong place and a product is selling at a fraction of cost. The manager pulls the listing immediately, assesses how many orders went through, decides with the director whether to honour or cancel them, and then writes the control that stops it happening again.

Review spike. A product starts collecting one-star reviews about damaged packaging. The manager reads every review, checks whether it is one courier, one batch or one warehouse, has customer service reply to each one, and raises it with whoever owns the root cause.

Platform policy change. A marketplace announces a new fee or a change to how campaigns work. The manager reads the notice properly, works out the margin impact, and briefs the team and the director before anyone asks.

The job is not to prevent all fires. It is to notice them within an hour, not a week.

A campaign week: 9.9, 11.11 and friends

The mega campaigns compress a month of volume into a few days. The week looks different.

The week before

• Final stock check on every campaign SKU, with buffer stock moved to the right location.
• Campaign prices, vouchers, bundles and shop decoration confirmed on every platform and screenshotted as proof.
• Ad budgets loaded and scheduled.
• Warehouse briefed on forecast volume, extra packers arranged if needed, courier pickups confirmed.
• Customer service scripts updated for delivery timelines.
• Leave frozen for the team.

Campaign eve

The manager is online late. Most platforms start the sale at midnight, and the first hour tells you whether the pricing and vouchers are stacking as intended. The team checks every hero listing in the first thirty minutes. Anything wrong gets fixed before the morning traffic.

Campaign day

7am. Dashboards. Overnight sales by channel, stock remaining on each hero SKU, ad spend pacing, chat backlog.

8am. Stand-up, short. Reassign people to where the volume is. Someone takes chats full time. Someone sits with the warehouse.

Through the day. Hourly checks on stock and shipping status. Bids adjusted on ads that are over or under pacing. The platform account manager messaged about any placement that did not go live. Executives rotate on chat so response rate holds.

Late afternoon. First unshipped-order review. Anything from the midnight rush that has not left the warehouse gets chased now, because the platform's shipping clock is running.

Evening. A second surge in traffic is common. The manager stays reachable until the day's orders are handed to the courier.

The days after

Shipping backlog, returns, delayed-delivery chats and a first read of the numbers. The campaign post-mortem happens within the week: what sold, what did not, what broke, what the team will change before the next one. It goes in writing so it is still there at the next campaign.

For what the executives on the team are doing during all this, see the ecommerce executive job description.

End of month

The last few days of each month and the first few of the next are reporting days.

• Sales and margin by channel against budget, with explanations for every variance the director will ask about.
• Platform fee reconciliation. Matching what the platforms paid out against what the system says was sold. Discrepancies get raised with the platform.
• Ad spend and return by platform and campaign.
• Inventory position. Stock cover for each major SKU, slow movers to clear, out-of-stock days and the sales they cost.
• Operational health. Response rate, late shipment rate, cancellation rate, review scores, any penalties.
• Next month's plan. Campaign calendar, launches, budget asks.

A good month-end pack is short and the director can read it in ten minutes. Most of the work is in having clean data all month so the pack does not become an archaeology project.

What the role needs from you

Reading through the week, a few things stand out:

• A fixed routine. The dashboard pass at the same time every day is what catches problems early.
• Comfort with numbers. Margin, fees, stock cover, return on ad spend. Not advanced analytics, but fluency.
• Calm under pressure. Campaign days are noisy. The team takes its cue from the manager.
• Relationships. With the platform account managers, the warehouse, suppliers, finance and the agencies. Most fires are solved by a phone call to the right person.
• Willingness to be hands-on. The manager still pulls listings, fixes prices and answers chats when it matters.

For how the role differs between brands and the marketplaces themselves, see marketplace vs brand ecommerce jobs. Pay for the role varies with company size and scope, so check the ecommerce manager salary page for current figures.

Next step

If this week sounds like one you would enjoy, browse current openings on the ecommerce manager jobs page. If you are not there yet, the senior ecommerce jobs listing shows the senior executive and assistant manager roles that lead to it.