1. What a shop policy usually covers
Broadly, the building if you own it, the fixtures and fittings, and the stock — against fire, flood and similar perils, usually with burglary as an add-on. Money in transit and in the till, plate glass, electronic equipment and public liability are typically separate covers or extensions. What is included varies considerably between insurers and policies, so read the schedule rather than the brochure and ask specifically about what you are worried about.
2. The sum insured decides everything
Stock levels change and most shops never revise the figure. Insure for too little and a claim is settled proportionately — a shop insured for half its actual stock recovers half of a partial loss, not the full amount. Review the sum insured at least annually, and specifically before a season when your stock peaks, because that is exactly when a loss would be largest.
3. Your stock valuation is the claim
At claim time you have to prove what was there and what it was worth. A shop that can produce a stock valuation at landed cost, purchase records supporting it and a sales history showing normal movement is in a completely different position from one relying on memory and a pile of invoices. Insurers are not unreasonable, but they settle on evidence, and the evidence has to have existed before the loss.
4. Goods in transit
Material on a truck is often not covered by a shop policy, and in the material trade a great deal of your stock is on a truck at any moment. If you deliver, ask specifically about transit cover and about who bears the risk between your godown and the customer's site — because that is a question you want answered before a load is lost rather than after.
5. Keep the records somewhere else
A fire that destroys the shop destroys the paperwork in it, including the invoices you would need to prove what you had. Records held in the cloud survive the event that created the claim, which is a point most shops only appreciate afterwards. At minimum, keep the policy itself, your purchase records and your stock valuation somewhere physically separate from the shop.
6. Ask an actual broker
Policy wordings, exclusions and add-ons vary in ways that matter and this is not something to decide from a general article. Talk to a broker or an insurer directly, describe your trade honestly including what you store and how much moves by road, and ask what a claim for your commonest realistic loss would actually look like. The answer to that question is the only test worth applying.