How to export your orders to Excel for a date range
The orders page can download an Excel workbook of the orders you are looking at, including your search and dates. Here is what is in it and how to use it.
At some point every seller needs their orders outside the admin: for an accountant, for a monthly review, or to check courier remittances. The orders page has an export that downloads exactly what you are looking at, so a few clicks give you a clean file.
What you get
The export is an Excel workbook, not a plain text file. It opens in Excel, Google Sheets or any spreadsheet app. The sheet is named Orders and has one row per order, with these columns: reference, placed time, email, phone, ship to address, total in rupees, advance in rupees, payment method, payment status, order status and number of items.
Amounts are stored as plain numbers in rupees rather than text, so you can add up a column straight away. The advance column shows what was already paid online before delivery, which is useful when you reconcile cash on delivery remittances from a courier: the advance is what you already have, and the rest is what the courier should send.
It follows your filters
The export uses whatever you have set on the orders page. If you typed a search, only matching orders are exported. If you picked a date range, only orders placed in that range are included. That makes it easy to produce a file for a single month: set the dates, check the list on screen, then press the export button.
Orders are listed with the newest first.
Exporting leads instead of orders
The orders page has a separate leads view for checkouts that were started but not completed. If you export while you are on that view, you get a workbook named for leads with the same columns, so you can follow up with people who got as far as checkout. The default file is named for orders. Cash on delivery without the chaos explains how leads differ from orders.
What it does not do
The file is a flat table. It does not contain pivot tables, charts, formulas or colour formatting beyond a basic header and column widths. If you want a summary by month or by payment method, create a pivot table yourself in your spreadsheet app. It also does not include the individual products on each order, only a count of items, so it is not a packing list.
It is protected
The download only works for a signed in admin of your store. If your session has expired, the request is refused instead of exposing your order book. It is also scoped to your own store: you never see another store's orders.
Ideas for using it
- Send your accountant a monthly file with the dates set to that month.
- Filter the payment status column to see which orders are still pending.
- Compare the advance column with courier remittances to find short payments.
- Count orders by payment method to see whether cash on delivery is growing.
Customers too
Orders are only half of your records. Your customer list has its own export, covered in exporting customers and orders. Together they give you a full picture of who is buying and what they are paying.
Remember that the export is a snapshot of the moment you press the button. If orders change afterwards, download a fresh copy rather than editing an old one. For keeping that information safe, keeping your customer data yours is worth a read.