The Grow Digital Voucher and Shopify: What Actually Qualifies
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The Grow Digital Voucher and Shopify: What Actually Qualifies
I get a version of this question every few weeks from Irish retailers, usually right after someone at a networking event has told them there is grant money available for going online.
There is. The Local Enterprise Offices run the Grow Digital Voucher, and it can cover part of the cost of moving a business onto Shopify. But most of the people who ask me about it are already in trouble on at least one of three published rules, and none of those rules has anything to do with Shopify. They are about sequencing, prerequisites, and what kind of spending the scheme is designed to fund.
This post walks through what the published terms actually say, and what that means if the project you have in mind is an online shop.
Everything here is taken from the Local Enterprise Office's own page for the scheme. I have linked it throughout, so do check as things may change. Granted, I am a Shopify consultant, not a grants adviser, and I have no role in the decision. I highly recommend reading this in full before acting on any of it.
Book a free intro call here if you are considering a switch to Shopify!
First, what the voucher is
Per the Local Enterprise Office, the Grow Digital Voucher offers funding of up to €5,000 towards software and training or IT configuration. The grant covers 50% of eligible costs, with a minimum grant of €500 and a maximum of €5,000 per application.
A business can be approved for a maximum of two Grow Digital Voucher projects, up to a cumulative grant value of €5,000. A second voucher depends on the business demonstrating progression against its Digital for Business report.
So the practical ceiling is €10,000 of eligible spend attracting €5,000 of grant aid. That is a meaningful contribution to a small retailer's first proper ecommerce build. It may not fully fund a large or complex project on its own, and you should not plan as though it will.
Rule one: there is a prerequisite before you can even apply
This is the one that catches most people, and it is stated plainly at the top of the scheme page.
The Grow Digital Voucher is open to small enterprises who have completed a Digital for Business project within the previous two years.
Digital for Business is a separate LEO support. It produces a report on where your business is digitally and what it should do next. The Grow Digital Voucher then funds steps identified in that report.
If you have not done one, you are not eligible yet. Not "it will help your case." Not eligible. And a Digital for Business project takes time of its own, so a retailer who wants to be trading online before Christmas needs to be starting this conversation with their office in the spring, not in October.
There is also a free five-minute digital readiness self-assessment that produces a scorecard. That is a useful first step, but it is not the same thing as a Digital for Business project.
What to do: contact your Local Enterprise Office about Digital for Business first. Everything else follows from it.
Rule two: the sequencing rule that quietly disqualifies people
This is the most expensive mistake I see, and it is the one I would most like Irish retailers to take away from this post.
The scheme page states that an application must be submitted before any project expenditure is incurred or any project activity commences. It goes further: applicants must not commit to, order, purchase, contract for, or commence any element of the project before the application is submitted. The stated reason is that doing so may indicate the project would have gone ahead without grant assistance, which the LEO refers to as deadweight, and it could result in the project being deemed ineligible.
Read that list again, because it is broader than most people assume. It is not only about paying money. Committing, ordering and contracting are all on it.
In practice, for a retailer planning a Shopify project, that means the sequence matters more than almost anything else:
- Signing a supplier's contract before you apply is a problem.
- Paying a deposit before you apply is a problem.
- Buying an annual software subscription before you apply is a problem.
- Asking a supplier to make a start "while the paperwork goes through" is a problem.
Getting quotes is a normal part of preparing an application. Starting the work is not. If you take one thing from this post, take this: talk to your office, get the application in, and only then commit to anything.
I have had to tell people they had already spent themselves out of eligibility. It is not a nice conversation.
Rule three: what kind of spending the scheme funds
This is where it gets specific to ecommerce projects, and where the published wording rewards careful reading.
The scheme lists two categories of eligible expenditure.
Software subscription fees. These must be for eligible business software that is new to the business, for a maximum of one year's subscription, and the software must be off the shelf. The business must incur the annual subscription cost before the grant is paid. Expanding the number of licences on software you already use does not qualify.
Ecommerce software appears explicitly in the LEO's list of eligible software examples. So does order management and stock control software, customer relationship management, online booking and payments, analytics, and cloud accounting.
Website development also appears in that list, but with an important qualification attached directly to it: it is subject to the same criteria about being a software subscription that is new to the business, and the LEO states that the Grow Digital Voucher does not support bespoke website development.
Training and IT configuration. This covers expert assistance in setting up or integrating new software systems or ICT processes, and training so the team can actually use the new system. There is a cap on this category that is easy to miss: training and configuration combined can be no more than 50% of the overall project cost.
Ineligible expenditure is short and blunt. Custom or bespoke software is not eligible for grant support. Systems for regulatory compliance do not qualify.
What that means for a Shopify project
Put those rules together and a pattern emerges.
The scheme is built to fund businesses adopting established, off-the-shelf software and getting proper help to implement it. It is not built to fund the commissioning of something bespoke.
That is genuinely good news for most small Irish retailers, because a well-built Shopify store for a shop with a few hundred products usually is exactly the former. A standard plan, a supported theme, established apps for the specific jobs the business needs doing, a clean product catalogue, and someone competent configuring it and training the staff.
It is less good news if what you actually want is a heavily custom build. A project that is mostly bespoke development sits on the wrong side of the ineligible list, and the 50% cap on configuration and training means a project consisting almost entirely of consultancy time does not fit the shape of the scheme either.
That is not a loophole to work around. It is the scheme telling you honestly what it is for. If your project genuinely needs bespoke work, it may still be the right project. It just may not be the right funding route, and you should plan your budget accordingly rather than discovering this at assessment.
Whether any particular project qualifies is a decision for your Local Enterprise Office, made against the full terms and conditions and your own circumstances. I cannot tell you your project qualifies, and neither can any other supplier. Anyone who promises you a voucher is telling you something they are not in a position to know.
The rest of the eligibility criteria
The published criteria for applicants are, in summary:
- Between 1 and 50 paid employees.
- A completed Digital for Business project within the previous two years.
- Not currently a client of Enterprise Ireland or IDA.
- Established and trading for at least six months, registered, and operating within the area of the Local Enterprise Office.
- Solvent, as demonstrated in the financial statements supplied.
- Current tax clearance from Revenue, with a Tax Reference Number and Tax Clearance Access Number supplied for verification.
The small enterprise definition follows the EU SME definition, with an annual turnover or balance sheet total of €10 million or less. If your business is part of a group, the linked and partner enterprise rules mean you have to count the group's employees and figures, not just your own.
There is also a list of ineligible applicants and activities, covering things like not-for-profits that do not meet the criteria, primary agriculture, fisheries and aquaculture, coal and steel, gambling and gaming, adult entertainment, tobacco, and non-medicinal cannabis products. The LEO notes this list is not exhaustive.
One example
A school uniform retailer came to us wanting to move off an ageing OpenCart store onto Shopify. Several hundred products, a catalogue organised around individual schools, and a business that had outgrown what its existing platform could reasonably do.
They went through their Local Enterprise Office, and their Grow Digital Voucher application was approved.
Two things made that straightforward. They started the conversation with their office before they committed to anything with us, and the project was a standard platform migration onto established software rather than a bespoke build. The sequencing and the shape of the project were right from the beginning, which is the whole point of this post.
The order to do things in
- Talk to your Local Enterprise Office. Find yours here.
- Complete a Digital for Business project if you have not done one in the last two years.
- Get quotes so you know what you are applying for.
- Submit the application, before committing to, ordering, contracting for or starting anything.
- Wait for the decision.
- Then start the project.
Steps four and six are in that order for a reason.
Please check this yourself
Grant schemes change. Figures, criteria and eligible expenditure are all subject to revision, there are 31 Local Enterprise Offices and your own office is the only body that can tell you where you stand.
Everything in this post is drawn from the LEO's published scheme page as at the date above, and I have linked it so you can verify it directly. Treat this as a starting point for a conversation with your office, not as advice, and read the full terms and conditions before you apply.
If you are planning the Shopify side
We build Shopify stores for Irish retailers, including migrations from older platforms, and we are used to working alongside the LEO process and the timelines it involves. If you want to talk through what your project would actually involve before you approach your office, get in touch.
Daniel Perera is the founder of ShopiCraft, a Shopify Select Partner consultancy based in Dublin. He spent nearly six years at Shopify as a Product Launch Specialist before founding the agency.
