When you start your journey as an Etsy Shop owner, you dive into deep sea of information about how to run your handmade business, how to open Etsy Shop, how to set everything up, what is Etsy SEO, how algorithms work…

But you also have to keep in mind other things that are very important. One of them is what to do in case you are no longer able to run your Etsy Shop. Hopefully just temporarily. Today we’ll discuss how to prepare for accidents that may stop you from being able to manage your Etsy Shop.

Find a Trusted Person

First thing you have to think about is who you can trust to help you when accident happens and you are not able to manage your business.

If you are a one person show, it can be your partner, family member or a close friend. If your small business has some staff members, you may pick one of your employees. This option is even easier if they already have access to your Etsy Shop account, because for example they manage listings for fulfill orders using Etsy dashboard.

Prepare Step by Step Instructions

When you pick your trusted person, you need to prepare step by step instructions on what to do when you are not able to manage your business. You want to do it for all possible circumstances – including temporary absence and worst case scenario – your death.

You will need to give this person access to your account, so login and password. If you use two step authentication, please create a back up code list in your Etsy account. It can come in handy outside of this scenario, for example when you lose access to your device which has two step authentication enabled.

Then you need to make a plan for each scenario.

If You Are Temporarily Unable to Manage Your Shop – Instructions

If you are temporarily unable to manage your Etsy Shop, you want to leave detailed information about:

• how to put your shop in vacation mode,
• how to set auto responder message for vacation mode, so customers get a heads-up when they contact your shop,
• draft auto responder message about the situation to make it less stressful for person helping you,
• how to cancel and refund open orders that you are not able to fulfill,
• how to respond to any issues that may arise while you are away and not able to respond to them yourself, e.g. lost parcels, damaged goods,
• draft a message for customers whose orders were canceled, explaining the situation.

If You Are No Longer Able to Run Your Shop – Instructions

If you are no longer able to run your business, for example due to death, prepare the following:

• how to put your shop in vacation mode,
• how to set auto responder message for vacation mode,
• draft auto responder message about the situation to make it less overwhelming for person helping you,
• how to cancel and refund open orders that you will not able to fulfill,
• draft a message for customers whose orders were canceled, explaining the situation,
• how to respond to any issues that may arise during this time, e.g. lost parcels, damaged goods,
• how to deactivate/remove listings from your Etsy Shop,
• write instructions on how to close your Etsy Shop account after everything was settled (important note: they will need accounting information from your account in the near future, so they should not close the account right away!).

In this worse case scenario person you asked to help you with managing your shop will have to take extra steps. If you have a registered business, it has to be closed down. You want to look up the legal process of closing down the business on behalf of deceased person and include this information in your instructions.

Closing Down Etsy Shop

Make sure that they understand that the last step of managing your Etsy account – closing down the account – should not be done right away. In many jurisdictions tax forms are still required to be filled out, even after your death. Information needed for accounting is in your Etsy account, so it can only be deleted after this matter is resolved.

Prepare Accident Procedures For Your Small Business

If you have any other channel where you sell your products, for example your own website, Facebook/Instagram store, eBay account, etc. You’ll need to write instructions for those channels as well.

The process of writing all of those instructions can be very overwhelming but it will help both you and person helping you get through this situation a bit easier, than if they had to figure it out on their own, or even worse – if they couldn’t help you because they wouldn’t know what needs to be done.

Take the time necessary to prepare for any accidents that may stop you from managing your business. You will not only make the procedure easier but also save you more headache if your absence was temporary and you come back after recovery to discover that your Etsy Shop image is destroyed by unfulfilled orders and unhappy customers. Or even that you were suspended due to cases opened against you.

I hope that you will never have to go through any of these. But, as responsible small business owner, you should try to be prepared for anything you can think of and set procedures in place.

I hope that you find this post helpful. Have you ever thought about preparing for accidents? Do you already have instructions written down? Are you going to do this? Is there anything else you would do? Let me know!