Ecommerce Handover Checklist: Products, Orders, Stock, Access and Staff Training

Your online shop is built and the developer says it is ready. Before you sign off and clear the final payment, a proper ecommerce handover means you can log in, add a product, process a real order, update stock, and see who has paid, all without calling anyone. If your team cannot do those things on their own, the shop has been built but not handed over.

This is for a Zimbabwean retailer about to launch an online store and worried about being left with a shop nobody on the team can actually run. Below is a grouped checklist covering products, orders, stock, admin access, payment and delivery settings, and the staff training that keeps orders moving after launch.

TL;DR

• The test: if you cannot add a product, process an order, update stock and check payment without the developer, the shop is not handed over yet.
• Group the handover into six things: products, orders, stock, admin access, payment and delivery settings, and staff training.
• Access matters most: every login should sit in your business's name, and at least two people should be able to run a full order end to end.
• Do a live test before you sign off: place a real order, take the payment, mark it shipped.
• This is post-build. Preparing product data and choosing the build size are earlier steps; see the siblings linked below.

What a proper ecommerce handover covers

An ecommerce handover is the point where control of a live shop moves to you. That means the admin logins in your name, the ability to add and edit products, a working way to see and process orders, stock you can update, the payment and delivery settings, and staff who can run the daily routine without the developer. Payment settles the build. The handover is what lets you trade the next morning on your own.

The grouped ecommerce handover checklist

Run through these before you sign off. Do not tick a box because you were told it works. Tick it because you did it yourself and saw it happen.

Products

• You can add a new product (title, price, photo, description, variant) and see it go live on the shop
• You can edit the price, photo and description on an existing product
• You can hide or unpublish a product that sells out or gets discontinued
• Categories or collections are set up and you can move a product between them
• You have been shown where product variants, such as size or colour, and their separate prices and stock, are managed

Orders

• A new order is visible to you the moment it comes in, with the customer's contact and delivery details
• You know how you are notified of an order (email, the dashboard, a WhatsApp message, or whatever was set up)
• You can mark an order as paid, packed, shipped or cancelled, and the customer sees a sensible status
• You know how to cancel or refund an order, and who on the team is allowed to
• You can find and re-open a past order to check what was sold and to whom

Stock

• You can update the stock count for a product, including for a single variant
• You know what the shop does when stock hits zero (hides the product, shows "out of stock", or still allows the order)
• One named person owns the routine of adjusting stock after each sale, return and new delivery

Admin access and roles

• Every admin login is in your business's name, not only in the developer's personal account
• You hold the top-level owner account and can create and remove staff logins
• Staff have the right level of access (someone who only packs orders does not need billing or settings rights)
• You have a written list of every login and where it lives
• You can reset a staff password yourself, without the developer

Payment and delivery settings

• You know which payment method the shop is connected to and whose account the money lands in
• You can tell whether a specific order has actually been paid before you ship it
• Delivery zones and charges are set up, and you can edit a rate or add an area
• You know the steps to change a price, a delivery fee or a payment detail, even if the developer handles the technical configuration behind the scenes

Staff training

• At least two people, not only the owner, can log in and process an order from start to finish
• Someone has completed a live test: a real order placed, payment confirmed, order marked shipped
• There is a short written note on how you run the shop, for whoever is on duty
• Everyone knows who to call for a problem the team cannot fix, and what counts as one

Do a live test before you sign off

The fastest way to prove the shop is genuinely handed over is to use it like a customer, then run the order like your own staff.

1. From a phone, on mobile data, place a real order for a real product.
2. Complete the payment the way a customer would, and confirm the money shows as received.
3. Watch how you get notified, then open the order in the admin.
4. Reduce the stock, mark the order paid and shipped, and check the customer-facing status makes sense.
5. Cancel or refund a second test order so you have seen that path too.

If any step needs a phone call to the developer, that step is your handover gap. Fix it before the final payment, not after your first busy weekend.

Common gaps that bite later

A few patterns cause most of the pain, and they are all avoidable at handover.

Everything sits in the developer's personal account. The shop works, but the admin login, the payment connection and the domain are all under someone else's name. The same ownership rules that apply to any website apply to a shop: get the accounts in your business's name and the logins in your hands before you pay the last instalment.

Only the owner knows how to run it. If one person is the entire order process, a single sick day or a trip means orders pile up unprocessed. Training a second person is not a nice-to-have, it is how the shop survives a normal week.

Stock drifts out of date. Nobody owns the routine, counts stay high after sales, and the shop takes orders for items you no longer have. Decide who updates stock and when before launch, so the answer is a habit rather than a scramble.

The payment and delivery settings are a black box. You can take orders but cannot tell what a customer was charged for delivery, or whether an order is truly paid. You do not need to configure the gateway yourself. You do need to see what it is doing and know how to get a change made.

This checklist assumes two earlier steps are already done: the product information was prepared before the build (see the sibling guide on the product data to get ready for an online shop), and the build size was already decided (see choosing between a small shop and a custom ecommerce build). Handover is the step after both of those.

How this works with a TechTribe shop

TechTribe builds online shops in two shapes. The Standard website at $550 includes an optional small online shop, scoped to what you sell. A larger or more custom store is a Premium build, from $800 with a quote after scope. Both are once-off, not a monthly subscription. Year 1 includes hosting, a .co.zw domain and up to five business email accounts, and renewal after that is $75 per year.

Because the shop is yours to run, the handover in this article is the part to raise at quote stage. Ask us to confirm who holds the admin login, how orders reach you, and what your team will be shown before launch. If you are still weighing up the move from WhatsApp and social selling to a real shop, our guide on how to start selling online in Zimbabwe sets the wider scene, and this checklist is the launch-day detail that keeps it running.

Your next step

A shop is handed over when your team can add a product, take an order, update stock, check a payment and log in, without waiting on the developer. Before you approve launch, run the grouped checklist above, do one live test order, and make sure a second person can do the same.

If you want an online store that is scoped to what you actually sell and handed over so your team can trade from day one, get an ecommerce quote and tell us what you are selling.

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Author: Simon Updated: June 2026