A Black Friday Shopify checklist for the week before

Speed and apps: stop changing, start checking

Freeze the theme and the app list now. Every app installed or theme edit published in the last week is a change nobody has watched under sale traffic. Keep the week for checking what is already live, and keep a duplicate of the current live theme so you can switch back quickly if something breaks. A new theme or a redesign belongs after the season; Shopify store setup, redesigns and builds covers how that work is planned.

Check speed on a phone, on the pages the sale will send people to: the home page, the sale collection and the products you expect to sell most. Shopify's web performance reports (opens in a new tab) show how real visitors experienced the store, but Shopify notes the data can be delayed by up to 36 hours and only covers the last 90 days. A fix made a day or two before the sale will not show there in time, so use a lab test such as PageSpeed Insights for last-minute checks and the report for the trend.

Then look at what the sale itself adds: a countdown timer, a pop-up, a new banner image, a bundle or upsell app. Each one is more code on the pages where speed matters most. If an app was installed only for the sale, make sure it loads only where it is used, and plan to remove it, and any code it leaves in the theme, once the sale is over. The Shopify speed and conversion sprint is the longer version of this work, done well before a busy season rather than in the week of it.

Discounts and checkout: how will your codes combine?

Write down every discount the sale will run, then check how Shopify will combine them. Under Shopify's rules for combining discounts (opens in a new tab), two discounts apply together only when each one is set to combine with that class of discount: product, order or shipping. When two discounts cannot combine, Shopify applies the one that is better for the customer.

Two rules on the same Shopify page (opens in a new tab) catch stores out. Percentage order discounts that are allowed to combine are each worked out on the original subtotal, so Shopify's own example of a 10% offer plus a 20% code takes 30% off the order. And there are hard limits: at most 25 active automatic discounts, app-based ones included, and at most 5 product or order codes plus 1 shipping code on one order.

Discount combinations work only on orders through the online store, the Storefront API and Shopify POS. They are not available on checkouts run by Facebook, Instagram, Google or other external platforms, so if the sale is promoted somewhere with its own checkout, test the offer there separately.

Give every discount a start and an end date. Do not bring back last year's code by reactivating it: Shopify's discount help (opens in a new tab) notes that a reactivated discount becomes active with no end date, so it keeps working after the sale unless someone remembers to switch it off.

Finally, go through checkout on a phone with each code applied, and with two codes together. Check the prices, the discount lines, the shipping options and the taxes, and check that anything a checkout app adds still shows and still works.

Shipping cut-offs: what can still arrive by December 25?

A gift bought on Black Friday raises one question before anything else: will it arrive in time? Answer it from your carrier's published dates, not from a guess.

Canada Post's holiday sending page (opens in a new tab), dated October 2026, lists send-by dates for packages within Canada by service and zone. The dates are between major urban centres and depend on origin and destination. The table copies the domestic package dates as published.

Your own last order date for each service is the carrier's send-by date minus the business days you need to pick, pack and hand over an order. Publish one plain date per shipping option, in the announcement bar and on the shipping policy page, and turn off any faster option you cannot honour.

Packages to the United States have earlier dates on the same Canada Post page (opens in a new tab): December 17 for Xpresspost USA, December 14 for Expedited Parcel USA and December 11 for Tracked Packet or Small Packet. If you ship with another carrier, use that carrier's own holiday page. Check the carrier's service alerts before you promise any date.

Stock and oversell: what happens when a sale item hits zero?

For every product in the sale, open each variant and check two settings. The quantity must be tracked, with the real available number entered. And Continue selling when out of stock must be off, unless you really mean to take orders you cannot fill from stock. Both settings are explained in Shopify's inventory tracking guide (opens in a new tab). A variant whose quantity is not tracked never shows as sold out.

The settings sit on each variant, so a product can be right in one size and wrong in another. Check the variants you expect to sell out first. The same guide notes that the oversell setting does not apply to Shopify POS: staff can keep selling in person when available stock reaches zero and below, with a warning. A business selling online and in person during the sale should hold stock back for one channel or watch both.

If stock is managed by an inventory app or another system, Shopify's guide adds that quantities tracked by that app are allocated only to the app's own location. Find out how often it syncs with Shopify; a slow sync is enough to oversell a fast-moving item.

If you do decide to keep selling past zero, say so on the product page with an honest ship date, so the customer knows before paying.

A test order after the last change

Place the test order after the final change, not before it. Shopify's test order guide (opens in a new tab) says to place one whenever payment settings change, through its test gateway or Shopify Payments test mode, and test orders placed that way are not charged.

The trap is test mode itself: the same guide warns that customers cannot place live orders while your payment provider is in test mode. Switch it off as soon as the test is done, then confirm the store takes a real payment.

The only test that runs the real payment path end to end is a real order on a real card, cancelled and refunded straight away, which the same guide allows. The payment processor's fee may apply, and Shopify does not return card fees (opens in a new tab) when you refund. It is worth paying once.

Use that order to check the whole chain: the discount applied as you expected, the shipping options and your last order date, the taxes, the order confirmation email, the stock count dropping by one, and the order reaching whoever picks and packs.

For a second pair of eyes before the week starts, the free Shopify store review looks at the live storefront and lists what is getting in the way, with nothing to install.

Black Friday on Shopify: the short version