Export Shopify sales by variant, by month — the columns Runway reads
Updated August 2026
Runway projects when each component runs out from three pasted inputs — one of them is a sales-by-variant-by-month export. This page is the exact Shopify admin path to get that export, the real column names Runway's parser accepts, and a fallback that needs nothing beyond exporting a report, for whichever plan you're on.
How to read this page
Two labels appear throughout:
Shopify-documented — read directly from Shopify's own help pages, fetched August 25, 2026.
plan unclear — Shopify's own pages don't agree with each other, or don't say, so we're not asserting one answer. Every instance below says exactly what's uncertain and gives you a path that avoids the uncertainty entirely.
What you'll end up with
Runway reads a CSV with three required columns — a SKU, a month, and units sold — plus an optional title. It doesn't care about column order, capitalization, or how the header is punctuated: each header cell is lowercased and stripped of spaces/punctuation, then matched against the list below. This is read directly out of the parser's own source, not guessed.
| Field | Required | Any of these header names are accepted |
|---|---|---|
| SKU | Yes | SKU · Variant SKU · Product variant SKU · Item SKU · Product SKU |
| Month | Yes | Month · Sales month · Period · Reporting month · Report month |
| Units sold | Yes | Units sold · Net items sold · Items sold · Qty sold · Quantity sold · Units · Qty · Net quantity |
| Title | No — falls back to the SKU | Variant title · Product title · Product variant title · Title · Item name · Product name · Variant |
The Month column accepts 2026-07, 2026/07, a full date like 2026-07-15 (the day is ignored), or a named form like July 2026. Two rows with the same SKU and month are summed together, not overwritten — so it's fine to paste multiple months' files one after another.
The ~2-minute path
What's confirmed everywhere, and what isn't
Confirmed on every plan, quoting Shopify's own analytics overview page: "Shopify Analytics' main features are available to merchants on any Shopify subscription plan." Viewing the default report and exporting it to CSV are both part of that. What we could not pin down is whether adding the Month dimension without saving the report is gated the same way saving a custom report is — Shopify's own plan pages don't agree, so this page doesn't guess. Use the fallback below if you'd rather skip the question entirely.
The fallback — works on every plan, no Dimensions menu needed
Both options below use only report controls and export mechanics that Shopify's own docs confirm are available store-wide — no saved custom report, no Dimensions edit.
Option A — one month at a time
Option B — the order export
Check your export before you paste it
Open the CSV. The first couple of lines from the default report, after adding Month, should look roughly like this:
If Runway tells you it couldn't find a SKU, month, or units-sold column, the header row is the first thing to check against the accepted-header table above — a renamed or unusual column name is the most common cause. If every row gets rejected for a bad month, check that the Month column doesn't still carry a full timestamp (time and time zone included) instead of just a date.
Paste it into Runway
Runway turns components + counts, this sales export, and your lead times into a reorder-runway projection — no other setup. The page is still being finished; if it isn't fully live yet when you click through, the guide above already tells you everything the export needs.
/plugin install production-planner@cpg-skills
Free to use for your business, including commercially, under the PolyForm Shield 1.0.0 license.
Want the wider picture beyond this one export? See our honest AI tools for CPG operations round-up — organized by the job, including where ShelfKit is not the pick.
Questions people ask
What columns does Runway actually need?
Three required columns — a SKU, a month, and units sold — plus an optional title. Header names and column order don't matter: Runway matches on a normalized form (lowercased, punctuation and spaces stripped), so "Variant SKU", "Product variant SKU", and "Item SKU" all read as the SKU column. See the accepted-header table above for the full list, read directly from the parser's own code.
Which Shopify plan do I need for this?
None beyond whatever plan you're already on. Viewing and exporting the default sales reports works on every Shopify plan — Shopify's own docs state "Shopify Analytics' main features are available to merchants on any Shopify subscription plan." Shopify's Advanced-plan page separately states that saving a customized report as a reusable custom report is an Advanced-plan feature; its Grow-plan page describes "the ability to create custom reports with data explorations" as included on Grow. Those two pages don't fully agree with each other, so we're not asserting which plan first lets you add an unsaved Month column — if the option isn't there for you, use the fallback path instead, which needs nothing beyond exporting a report.
What if my Shopify admin doesn't show a Month option?
Use the fallback path: run the same default report with the date range narrowed to one calendar month, export it, and add a Month column yourself before pasting into Runway. That only uses the date-range picker and Export, both confirmed to work on every plan — no Dimensions menu required.
Does column order matter?
No. Runway scans the header row for a match against each field's accepted names and doesn't care what position it's in. One wrinkle worth knowing: Shopify's own report lists "Product title" before "Variant title", and both are accepted names for the (optional) title column, so Runway keeps the product-level title, not the more specific variant title. That's cosmetic — the SKU is still the exact variant, and title is never used for the math.
What if I don't use Shopify?
Runway doesn't care which platform the export came from — it reads whatever CSV you paste, as long as the header row has a recognizable SKU, month, and units-sold column. Any sales-by-SKU-by-month export with those three facts in it will work; rename the headers first if your platform's own names aren't in the accepted list above.
This guide reflects publicly available Shopify help-center pages as of August 25, 2026, cited inline. It is not affiliated with or endorsed by Shopify. Menu labels and plan features change — verify anything workflow-critical against your own admin.