How do I prepare my Shopify store for sale?

Preparing a Shopify store for sale means making its numbers provable: clean order data, ad accounts that reconcile with claimed spend, documented supplier agreements, the owner's role written down, and twelve months of consistent books. Buyers pay for certainty. A store whose revenue can be verified from order data sells faster and at a better multiple than one backed by screenshots.

The 90-day checklist

Separate personal and business finances completely. Reconcile every ad account against your books. Get supplier agreements in writing, including whether they transfer. Document your weekly hours and every process only you know. Stop any traffic experiments that would look like manipulation in a diligence review, because a buyer will not tell inflation apart from a test.

What buyers will ask for

Read-only access to Shopify and your ad accounts, a monthly profit-and-loss for at least a year, refund and chargeback history, traffic sources, and your supplier terms. Sellers who can hand these over in a day close faster and negotiate from strength. Sellers who stall on access read as hiding something, even when they are not.

What kills deals

Undisclosed paid traffic behind organic-looking growth, mixed personal spending in the business books, revenue concentrated in one product a competitor can clone, and key-person dependence with nothing documented. Every one of these is fixable in the months before listing, and none is fixable in the week after a buyer finds it.