I’m getting a little bit frustrated with how seemingly impossible it is to export raw data from my store so that I can analyze it myself.
My staff and I enter the SKUs, the inventory quantities, costs, every product property. We create the POs in the system, enter all relevant info.
A few months later and I want to pull that data we entered in order to analyze our inventory position, I can’t? Why??
I can pull everything, it seems, except for PO/incoming inventory quantities.
I don’t need a separate app that I have to pay a monthly service for. I don’t need anyone else analyzing my data to tell me what I need to do. I just need my raw data.
Why is my data input being held back or being sold back to me via an unnecessary app?
That’s where my frustration lies: the data is easily accepted but if I want to extract it, now I can’t? I’m not asking Shopify to run any analysis. I’m asking it to give me back my input in the rawest form.
I’m trying to do inventory replenishment analysis. It’s super easy to do once you have the parameters set and a template set. I’ve been in purchasing for over a decade. This business needs the basics, nothing complex. Withholding my data or hiding it behind third party apps is terrible.
(For what it’s worth, I tried three separate top-rated inventory analyzing apps in a previous iteration of my store. Each time, when I reviewed the output from the apps, I caught mistakes in the data pull/analysis that I then discussed with developers who then said “oops sorry we’ll get that fixed”. Why am I paying $50+ a month for an app where I’m having to be its beta tester??)
Trying to monetize everything and doing the Yelp thing of “pay us and you can have your ratings back” is a pretty terrible from a customer experience standpoint.
Hi @wparty,
A practical workaround is to export the data separately and combine it using SKU as the common field.
Usually merchants do this:
- Export Products CSV
- Export Inventory CSV
- Export Purchase Orders separately
- Merge them in Google Sheets or Excel
The reason you’re not seeing incoming inventory quantities in standard exports is because Shopify’s default exports don’t expose all PO/incoming inventory fields directly.
If you want full raw PO and incoming inventory data without paying for analytics apps, the best option is using the Shopify Admin API. That gives direct access to:
- Purchase orders
- Incoming inventory
- Inventory levels
- Product costs
- SKU-level inventory movement
You can then export everything into your own spreadsheet or BI dashboard exactly the way you want.
Hello @wparty
You can also check out Syncora: Backup & Restore. Besides backups and restore, it also supports scheduled CSV exports and store data management, which may help if you need easier access to your store data.
Thank you
you have to make certain API calls using GraphQL Admin API. using this api of shopify you can extract any kind of data from your store as per need.
This drives me crazy too. Your staff spends hours manually typing in PO numbers and incoming inventory quantities into Shopify, but when it’s time to actually reorder stock, you can’t even get a clean CSV export of the data you just entered. It’s ridiculous that we have to either pay for a third-party app or spend half a day manually copy-pasting numbers into Google Sheets just to see our own replenishment timeline. Shopify really needs a simple native export button for the purchase orders page instead of forcing us into the app store for basic operational data.
Hello @wparty
Shopify does permit export of data, however purchase orders and incoming inventory are not fully available in standard exports due to the way inventory is managed between apps and the admin system. A workaround is to use the Admin API or a scheduled CSV export through a lightweight bespoke script or middleware solution such as Google Sheets + API Connector. You can also reconstruct PO level tracking by using inventory adjustments and stock movement reports to restate incoming quantities. It requires some setup, but once mapped, you are in full control of raw data without having to depend on third party analytics apps.