Updated September 2026
The start of a year is a good excuse to look at your store with fresh eyes. Whether last year was your best yet or you've only just made your first sale, a couple of hours of housekeeping in January saves you from surprises in March. This is the checklist we use, with where to find each item in your Shopify admin.
1. Look at last year's numbers
Before you plan anything, find out what actually happened. Under Analytics → Reports, look at sales over time, your best-selling products, where your traffic came from and your returning customer rate. Note your three best months and your three worst. Those tell you when to plan campaigns and when to do the slow-season jobs, like a photo shoot or a theme update.
2. Tidy the product catalog
A year of selling leaves clutter behind: discontinued products, sold-out variants nobody will restock, and old seasonal items that still show up in search.
- Archive products you won't sell again rather than deleting them. Archived products are hidden from your storefront and from the main product list, but they're not gone: you can find them by filtering products by status and bring them back later.
- Check low and zero stock, and decide what to reorder, discontinue or sell as a backorder. Our guide to handling backordered items covers the last option.
- Refresh your collections for the new season, and retire the ones that only made sense last year.
3. Update your shipping rates
Carriers often change their prices at the start of the year. If you charge flat or weight-based rates, check them against your carrier's new prices under Settings → Shipping and delivery, so you're not quietly paying the difference on every order. If you ship internationally, check your rates and any duties settings too.
4. Read your store policies again
Go to Settings → Policies and read your return, privacy, shipping and terms of service policies as if you were a customer. Do they still match how you actually work? Shopify links them automatically in the footer of your checkout, so customers will read them at the moment they're deciding.
5. Update your theme and review your apps
If your theme came from the Shopify Theme Store, check Online Store → Themes for a newer version. Shopify applies small bug and security fixes automatically, but bigger version updates bring new features and are worth previewing on a copy first. If you're on a vintage theme that's no longer updated, this is a good year to move.
Then go through your apps. Uninstall anything you no longer use; leftover apps are a common cause of slow pages. Our guide on why apps slow down a Shopify store explains what to look for.
6. Check who has access
Under Settings → Users, review everyone who can log in to your store, including past staff, freelancers and agencies. Remove or suspend access for anyone who no longer needs it, and trim permissions for those who only need part of the admin. It takes five minutes and closes an easy-to-miss security gap.
7. Make sure tracking still works
Place a test order and check that it shows up in your analytics. For Google Analytics 4, Shopify's own route is the Google & YouTube sales channel, where you can connect an existing GA4 property or create a new one. If you want more detail, such as refunds reflected in GA4 revenue or custom events, we build Google Analytics, a GA4 app with a free plan (see it on the Shopify App Store).
Then plan the year's promotions
With the housekeeping done, sketch a promotions calendar: your seasonal peaks, a New Year clearance for last year's stock, and the gifting dates that matter to your customers, like Valentine's Day. Discounts on Shopify can now be combined more flexibly, which makes planning overlapping offers easier; see how stacking discounts works.
If you'd rather have someone else run through this list each month, we look after Shopify stores on monthly care plans. Talk to us.