Changing store ownership from Sole Proprietorship to Limited Company

[BucketHatsNZ]

Hi there,

I started my Shopify store as a Sole Proprietorship, but I now own several businesses and would like to bring them all under one limited company.

When I asked Shopify chat support about this, I was told I would have to create a whole new Shopify account, export my data from my existing store to the new one, set up all my taxes and payment settings again, and redesign my entire store/theme from scratch. I was also told none of my existing app data or theme changes would be imported.

Yet when I look in the Shopify community articles, people are saying that you only need to change a few settings within Shopify.

So, which is it?  Do I have to create a new Shopify account and build my store all over again? Or can I just update a few settings within Shopify?

I imagine this is a similar situation to when people sell their store and have to change ownership to the new owners, so if anyone has experience in that, I'd appreciate hearing it.

[Kimi]

Hey, @BucketHatsNZ.

Thanks for posting in our Community Forums.

Just to make sure I'm understanding your query correctly here, are you looking to update your store information from a sole trader to a company? You'd still be the owner of the store, but instead of operating under your individual name you'd be operating under your company name — is that correct? 

If this is the case, there's definitely no need to completely start a new Shopify store from scratch, and I apologize if the wrong information was communicated to you by our live support team. If you're using Shopify Payments on your store, your store's details (for tax purposes) are stored within your Shopify Payments account. This information isn't directly accessible by merchants via the Shopify admin, due to security reasons. So to update it, we'll need the help of our Shopify Payments team, which currently only operates via email.

While I understand that you may not have had the greatest experience with our live support team previously, I do need you to get in touch with them again so that they can help us escalate your situation to the most appropriate Shopify Payments team from their end. From there, they'll be able to review your company information and proceed to make the proper changes to your account.

As an escalation to the Shopify Payments team should be your next step here, when you're speaking with the next Support Advisor you can give them the following summary of your request to help them effectively proceed with the most appropriate next steps:

TL;DR: Would like to request an escalation to the Shopify Payments team for them to update my Shopify Payments business information. Have spoken with a Shopify Community Staff member in regards to the situation via this link: https://bit.ly/3oDVVXH.

Just a note too that changes to Shopify Payments information must be requested from the Store Owner. You can start the authentication process to contact our team via our Help Center here.