Order sync
The two sales reports, the Sales summary and the Sold basis all answer the same question: what did the shop sell? To answer it, the app keeps its own copy of your Shopify orders. Settings → Tools → Reporting is where that copy is looked after.
On this page
Section titled “On this page”- What the copy holds
- The card
- Syncing now
- When syncing pauses
- Two things worth knowing about the numbers
- Your data and privacy
What the copy holds
Section titled “What the copy holds”The copy holds what the reports need and nothing else: the order number, its dates, its financial and fulfillment status, its currency and totals, and per line the product, variant, SKU, ordered and refunded quantities, price, and which location shipped how many.
No customer name, address, email address or payment detail is ever copied.
The first load reaches back a year, or to the day you installed the app if that is later. After that a sync runs once a night and picks up everything that changed: new orders, fulfillments, refunds, edits and cancellations.
The card
Section titled “The card”| Line | What it says |
|---|---|
| Orders loaded | How many orders the copy holds |
| Oldest order | The earliest order in it |
| Last sync | Which kind of run it was (First load, Update or History rebuild), when it finished, and how it ended — for example “38 written, 2 unchanged” |
| Next sync | When the next nightly run is due, or Due now |
Under those, a line says whether a sync is running. While one is, a badge and a progress bar appear with a running count of orders written so far. The bar deliberately shows no percentage: the app knows how many orders it has written, not how many are left, and an invented percentage is one you could watch go backwards.
If the last run could not read some orders in full, the Last sync line says so and names the first few order numbers it refused, so you can open them in the admin and see what is wrong.
A third line, Demand history from, appears once the app has rebuilt your older execution history, and names the earliest day the five bill of materials reports have a record for.
Syncing now
Section titled “Syncing now”Sync now runs one immediately. It works in the background, so you can leave the page.
The first load is the long one. While it runs, every Reporting page shows a banner saying order history is loading with a running count, because sales figures are incomplete until it finishes.
On Finished goods demand, Sub-assembly demand and Raw material demand, the same action sits in the title bar as Sync orders now while you are reading the Sold basis. It is absent on every other basis, where it would refresh something the report is not reading. A caption under the controls there says how long ago orders were last synced.
When syncing pauses
Section titled “When syncing pauses”If several syncs fail in a row, syncing pauses rather than retrying against something that is not going to work on its own. The card then shows one banner with the cause: how many runs failed in a row, and what the last one reported.
Two things clear a pause:
- Opening any Reporting page. Opening Reporting says you want the numbers, so the pause lifts on its own and the nightly schedule resumes.
- Retry sync on this card, which lifts the pause and is the way to get a run straight away rather than waiting for the next night.
The usual cause is that the app no longer has a valid connection to your store, which reinstalling it restores.
Two things worth knowing about the numbers
Section titled “Two things worth knowing about the numbers”- Sales are dated by when the order was placed. Shopify’s own analytics date an order by when it was processed, so a figure read here and the same figure read in the Shopify admin can differ for an order placed and processed on different days.
- Revenue is net and approximate. A line whose units were partly refunded reports the share of its discounted total that the surviving units represent. Where a discount applied to some units and not others, that share is an average, so the figure is close rather than exact. It is always closer than a gross figure beside a net unit count.
Your data and privacy
Section titled “Your data and privacy”When Shopify sends a customer redaction request, the app deletes its copy of the orders named in it, including their lines and shipment records, and keeps a marker so a later sync cannot pull the same order back in.
What stays is your own manufacturing record, with the order number removed from it. How much of each bill and material an execution demanded is your production history, and losing it would take your audit trail with the customer’s data.
When your shop is redacted after uninstalling the app, everything the app holds for it is deleted.
Where to next
Section titled “Where to next”- Overview — the catalogue and the fourteen reports.
- Reading a report — the Sold basis, charts, saved views and export.