How to prepare your eCommerce business for sale: a 12-month plan

Short answer. Preparing an eCommerce business for sale means making its profit easy to verify and easy to take over. Start about 12 months out: separate your money and build a clean monthly P&L, move every account into the company's name, write down how the business runs, reduce what depends on you, and keep the numbers moving until closing.

Key takeaways

• Buyers pay for profit they can verify and a business they can run without you. Preparation is about both.
• The money comes first: one business account, one card for ads, a monthly P&L that reconciles with the bank.
• What sits on your personal profile can't be transferred cleanly. Move it into the company's name.
• If the business only runs in your head, the buyer is buying you. Write it down.
• The last months matter most: a store that slips during the sale gives the buyer a reason to renegotiate.

Why prepare at all? Can't I just list the store?

You can. Many founders do, and many of those deals stall or close for less than they should.

A buyer reads your store the way an inspector reads a house. Every unclear number, every account in your personal name, every process that lives only in your head becomes a question. Every question that doesn't get a clean answer becomes a discount, a bigger share of the price paid later, or a reason to walk away.

Preparation turns those questions into answers before anyone asks them. It's the step most founders skip, and it's where price is won.

Month 12 to month 9: get the money right

Separate your money

One business bank account. One card for ads. No personal expenses on either. A buyer should read your P&L without asking what each line is.

If you've been mixing for years, you don't need to rewrite history. Start clean now, and build a list of the personal items in past months so you can show them as add-backs.

Build a monthly P&L that reconciles

Buyers think in months, not years. You need a P&L for each of the last 12 to 24 months, with:

• revenue based on cash collected, net of refunds, chargebacks and returns;
• cost of goods with freight and duties included;
• shipping and fulfilment;
• payment fees;
• ad spend by channel;
• software, people and overheads.

Then check that it ties to the bank and to your payment processor payouts. Our guide to cleaning up your P&L goes line by line.

Get a first valuation

Not to sell, but to know where you stand and what to fix first. It turns a vague to-do list into priorities.

Month 9 to month 6: make the business transferable

Put everything in the company's name

Make a list of every asset a buyer would need on day one and check who owns it:

• domain and email;
• Shopify store (or WooCommerce hosting, or the marketplace seller account);
• ad accounts and the business portfolio they sit in;
• email and SMS platform, with the subscriber list;
• social profiles;
• supplier and 3PL agreements;
• trademarks and product designs.

Anything on a personal profile is a problem. Some platforms make moving assets between owners hard or impossible. Meta, for example, says an ad account created inside a business portfolio stays part of that portfolio and can't be transferred to another one (Meta Business Help Center). Sorting this out now, while nobody is waiting, is much easier than during a deal.

Get written terms from suppliers

At least your main supplier: prices, minimum order quantities, lead times, who owns moulds and designs. If there's no written agreement, a buyer is relying on a relationship with you. We cover what buyers check in suppliers and inventory in a sale.

Register what you can

If your brand name isn't a registered trademark in your main markets, start the process. It takes time, and a buyer will ask.

Month 6 to month 3: reduce what depends on you

Write down how the business runs

Ordering and restocking, customer service, ad testing and scaling, returns, the monthly close. A short document for each, with the tools and logins involved. It doesn't need to be beautiful. It needs to let someone else do the job.

Hand over one function at a time

If you still do customer service, creatives or supplier calls yourself, pick one and give it to a freelancer or a team member. Keep the process document updated as you go. A useful test: take two weeks off and log what breaks. Our article on owner dependence explains why this weighs on price.

Reduce concentration

If most sales come from one product or one channel, start a second one now, with real spend, so the results show in the numbers by the time buyers look. A second channel or a growing share of repeat customers changes the conversation.

Month 3 to closing: prepare the file, keep running

Build the data room before you go to market

A folder with everything a buyer will ask for in due diligence: P&L, bank statements, payouts, ad invoices, supplier invoices, contracts, add-backs with evidence, process documents. When the first serious buyer asks, you share it the same day. Our due diligence checklist lists what goes in.

Write down the risks yourself

Every business has weak points. Listing them, with what you've done about them, is far better than letting a buyer find them in week six of due diligence.

Keep the numbers moving

This is the one founders underestimate. A sale takes months, and the business keeps being measured the whole time. A store that holds or grows during the sale keeps its price. One that slips while you negotiate gives the buyer a reason to renegotiate.

Keep testing creatives, keep restocking on time, keep answering customers. If running the sale and the store at the same time is too much, that's a good reason to get help with the sale.

What not to do before selling

• Don't cut ads to inflate profit. Profit up and revenue down in the last months is a pattern every buyer knows.
• Don't build a mountain of stock. Inventory ties up cash and gets counted and argued over at closing.
• Don't tell the whole team yet. Confidentiality matters until the deal is far along.
• Don't wait until you're tired. If sales have been sliding for months, the data shows it.

A one-page checklist

Where to start

If you're not sure which of these matters most for your store, start with a number. Request a free valuation: we read 12 to 24 months of data and send you a realistic range and a list of what to fix before going to market, within 24 hours. There's no fee and no commitment to sell.