Max IT solutionsShopify App Store

Shopify Store Maintenance Checklist: Weekly to Yearly

Updated , first published · 4 min read

A Shopify store maintenance checklist splits into four rhythms. Weekly: orders, stock, reports and a look at the storefront. Monthly: apps, theme, speed, broken links and a test order. Quarterly: staff access, policies and a data export. Yearly: plan, taxes and a full review before your busiest season. Each item below names the Shopify setting or report where it is done.

The settings and reports referred to are described in the Shopify Help Center (account security, URL redirects, web performance, customer and product exports, apps), read on October 23, 2026. The weekly status, layout and Core Web Vitals checks follow what we run on our own sites with a scheduled job; the order, stock and test-order checks come from Shopify’s pages.

Weekly (20 minutes)

  • Unfulfilled and old orders. Anything older than your shipping promise gets a message to the customer today.
  • Order risk. Medium- and high-risk orders show a warning on the Orders page; review them before fulfillment.
  • Stock of best sellers. Reorder before they run out; a Flow workflow such as Get notified when product inventory is low can do the watching.
  • The numbers. Net sales, orders, sessions and the Conversion rate breakdown compared with last week.
  • Support inbox and chat. Nothing unanswered over the weekend, and the chat’s availability hours still right.
  • Storefront on a phone. Open the homepage, a product and the cart. It takes two minutes and catches a broken page before a customer does.

Monthly (1–2 hours)

  • Apps. Remove apps you no longer use. Shopify warns that some apps add theme code that is not removed automatically when uninstalled, so check the theme afterwards. Look at your bill for app charges you did not expect.
  • Theme. Check for an update to your theme. Before updating or making bigger changes, keep a copy of the published theme in Draft themes, so you can switch back.
  • Speed. Look at the Web Performance report (Core Web Vitals from real visitors) and run PageSpeed Insights on your homepage and top product page. If a number jumps, look first at app or theme changes since the last check.
  • Broken links. Check Google Search Console’s “Not found (404)” list. Create URL redirects under Content > Menus > View URL Redirects for removed products and pages that still get visits. Redirects work only from addresses that no longer load a page.
  • A test order. Place a real order through the full checkout and refund it, especially after any change to payments, shipping or checkout apps.
  • Notification emails. Read the order confirmation and shipping emails once: logo, address, return link, correct details.
  • Discounts. Expire or delete codes from finished campaigns so they do not keep circulating.

Quarterly

  • Staff and collaborator access. Remove people who no longer work with you. Collaborator access expires on its own after 90 days without a login, but do not rely on that.
  • Two-step authentication on every account; Shopify requires it on the owner account to use Shopify Payments.
  • Policies. Refund, shipping, privacy and terms pages still match what you actually do, and the privacy policy lists every app and tracker that collects data.
  • A data export. Export your products and customers as CSV files and keep them somewhere safe. The customer export is emailed if you have more than 50 customers. These exports are a useful safety copy, though they do not capture everything in a store; our guide to Shopify data backup covers what they miss.
  • Product data. Products without a category, cost per item, images or SEO fields; fix the ones that sell.

Yearly

  • Your plan. Compare the plan with your sales and staff needs; Shopify publishes break-even estimates for moving up to Grow or Advanced.
  • Taxes. Shopify calculates taxes, but filing them stays your responsibility unless you use Shopify Tax’s automated filing. Check registrations in the places you now sell to.
  • Domain and email. Domain renewal date, and email sender authentication (SPF and DKIM) still in place.
  • Theme review. Is the theme still the right one, or has the store outgrown it?

Before big sales

Four to six weeks before Black Friday or your own peak:

  1. Freeze big theme and app changes two weeks before.
  2. Run the monthly list in full, including a test order with your sale discount.
  3. Check stock and inventory alerts for the products you will promote.
  4. Prepare saved replies for the questions a sale brings (delivery dates, returns, codes that do not work).
  5. Subscribe to Shopify Status, so platform incidents reach you without checking.

Outages and broken checkouts are covered in Shopify uptime monitoring, and theme updates in Shopify theme updates. The running a store hub has the other routines.

Frequently asked questions

How often should I update my Shopify theme? Check for updates monthly and apply them when they fix something you need or add a feature you want. Make a copy of your published theme first and test the update on the copy, especially if your theme has code edits.

Does Shopify back up my store? Shopify runs and protects the platform, but the admin has no restore point for changes you make to your own products, theme or settings. Regular product and customer CSV exports and theme copies are a partial safety net; backup apps cover more.