Trading Online Voucher 2026: full step-by-step guide
Up to €2,500 toward a website that trades online, 50% match-funded by your Local Enterprise Office. Here's exactly how to qualify and apply in 2026.
By Harvey Kubath, Agentic Builds · 15 May 2026 · Updated 23 September 2026
If your Irish business has 10 employees or fewer and limited online presence, the Trading Online Voucher (TOV) can cover half the cost of a new website that sells or takes bookings online — up to €2,500. It's one of the best-value grants going for small businesses in Ireland, and plenty never apply, usually because the LEO website makes it sound more complicated than it is. Here's the plain-English version.
What you actually get
- Up to €2,500 toward eligible online costs.
- 50% match-funding — you spend €5,000, the grant covers €2,500.
- Paid as a reimbursement after the work is done and invoiced.
Eligibility in one paragraph
You must be trading for at least 6 months (some LEOs ask for 12), have 10 or fewer employees, turnover under €2 million, and limited or no online sales presence. You apply through your local LEO (there are 31, one for each local authority area). Sole traders, partnerships and limited companies all qualify.
What's claimable
- New ecommerce website design and build (brochure-only sites aren't eligible).
- Adding online payments or booking to an existing site.
- App development for online ordering.
- SEO setup, schema, analytics.
- Subscriptions for the first year of digital tools (hosting, email marketing).
- Training to run the new site.
What's not claimable
- Ongoing hosting and maintenance after year one.
- Paid online ads beyond 30% of the approved costs (up to 30% is claimable).
- Hardware — laptops, tills, card readers.
- Routine content updates after the build.
The application, step by step
- Attend the free LEO information webinar (mandatory — they list dates monthly on your LEO's site).
- Get three written quotes from suppliers. They must itemise what's included.
- Fill in the TOV application form on your LEO's portal. Upload the quotes and a short business plan (1 page is fine).
- Wait for the LEO evaluation committee to approve — ask your LEO for current turnaround times.
- Once approved, you have a set window to complete the work — six months in the published terms, but confirm it with your LEO.
- Pay your supplier in full, then submit invoices and proof of payment to claim the 50% back.
Four common reasons applications get knocked back
- Quotes that aren't itemised — "website €4,000" doesn't fly. List pages, features, SEO, hosting separately.
- Skipping the info webinar — attendance is checked.
- Already-built sites — the grant is for new work, not retrospective claims.
- Wrong supplier — they must be VAT-registered if charging VAT, and willing to invoice properly.
Realistic timeline
From first webinar to grant payment in your account can take several months — ask your LEO for current processing times. Plan around that — don't apply for the grant if you need the site live next month.
How we help
We can take you through a TOV application end-to-end. We provide itemised quotes built for LEO evaluation, packages that include online payments or booking fit inside the €5,000 spend window, and we'll talk you through what to write in the application.