How to run scheduled jobs in Wix with Velo

Some work should happen on its own: delete old form submissions every night, send a weekly summary, or sync prices from another system every morning. Velo has a built-in scheduler for this, configured in a file called jobs.config.

This guide sets up a nightly job that removes form submissions older than 90 days.

1. Write the function#

In the Velo sidebar, open the backend folder and create cleanup.js:

import wixData from "wix-data";

export async function deleteOldSubmissions() {
  const cutoff = new Date();
  cutoff.setDate(cutoff.getDate() - 90);

  const result = await wixData
    .query("Submissions")
    .lt("_createdDate", cutoff)
    .limit(1000)
    .find({ suppressAuth: true });

  if (result.items.length === 0) {
    console.log("Cleanup: nothing to delete");
    return;
  }

  const ids = result.items.map((item) => item._id);
  await wixData.bulkRemove("Submissions", ids, { suppressAuth: true });
  console.log(`Cleanup: deleted ${ids.length} old submissions`);
}

Notes on this code:

• suppressAuth: true is needed because a scheduled job doesn’t run as a logged-in member.
• limit(1000) keeps each run to a manageable size. If you expect more than that per day, the next night’s run picks up the rest.
• The console.log lines show up in your site logs, so you can see what each run did.

2. Schedule it#

In the backend folder, create a file named exactly jobs.config:

{
  "jobs": [
    {
      "functionLocation": "/cleanup.js",
      "functionName": "deleteOldSubmissions",
      "description": "Delete submissions older than 90 days",
      "executionConfig": {
        "cronExpression": "0 3 * * *"
      }
    }
  ]
}

"0 3 * * *" means every day at 03:00. A few other examples:

• "0 * * * *": every hour, on the hour
• "0 9 * * 1": every Monday at 09:00
• "30 6 1 * *": on the 1st of every month at 06:30

Times are in UTC, so adjust for your time zone. For example, 03:00 UTC is 09:00 in Bangladesh.

3. Publish and check#

Scheduled jobs only run on the published site, so publish after adding the file. After the first scheduled time has passed, open Developer Tools → Logs in your dashboard and look for the “Cleanup” messages.

To test without waiting, temporarily call deleteOldSubmissions() from a backend test function, or point it at a test collection first. Deleting data is permanent, so try it on test data before your real collection.

Things to keep in mind#

• Jobs can’t run more often than once an hour, and a site has a limit on how many jobs it can schedule.
• Keep each job short. Long-running jobs can be stopped, so split big tasks into smaller batches that run more often.
• Make jobs safe to run twice. If a run fails halfway, the next one should be able to continue without doing damage.

When to go further#

The same setup powers daily reports by email, reminders before a booking, syncing data from an external API, or archiving instead of deleting.

If you need automated tasks on your Wix site, I do Wix Velo development and custom API integrations.