Your accountant needs last month’s Shopify orders in Excel. You download the orders, remove columns, convert the file, then check why one sale appears on three rows. If you do this every month, the time spent preparing the file soon adds up.
LedgerLeaf lets you choose the columns and save them before exporting. You can send an Excel file directly from Shopify and use the same saved selection next month. We’ll use a monthly accountant export to show how that works.
Why one order can take up three rows
An order containing a mug, a gift box, and tea is one sale. Shopify’s standard order CSV can display it like this.
| Order | Item | Quantity | Order total |
|---|---|---|---|
| #1048 | Ceramic mug | 1 | €54.00 |
| Gift box | 1 | ||
| Tea | 1 |
Shopify puts additional items on separate lines and leaves many order-level cells blank. The empty cells do not mean the order is incomplete. If you copy €54 into all three rows and add them, you get €162 for a sale worth €54.
The native export leaves you to work out which values belong to the order and which belong to individual products. It also includes columns your accountant may not need. That makes it awkward for a file you have to prepare regularly.
Create your accountant’s file in LedgerLeaf
For this example, your accountant has asked for order references, dates, currency, gross sales, and tax amounts. You’ll choose those fields once and save them for future exports.
1. Select the month
Open Sales and use Edit filters to choose the month requested. Check the dates in the sales overview before continuing.
The overview displays Total orders and Rows in preview separately. Use the order count when checking how many orders you are sending. As the example above shows, counting spreadsheet rows can give you a different answer.
2. Select and save the columns
Keep the fields your accountant requested.
| Fields | Why they are needed |
|---|---|
| Order name and order ID | Find the original order in Shopify |
| Year, month, and day | Identify the sale date |
| Currency | Identify the currency of each amount |
| Total gross and total tax | Review sales and tax amounts together |
Leave out customer names, regions, and other fields unless they are needed. If your accountant also asks for the country, add Country.
Save the selection under Column presets with a name such as “Monthly accounts.” You now have the requested columns stored in LedgerLeaf, ready to use again.
3. Export to Excel or CSV
Choose Export XLSX to download the Excel file. Shopify’s native order export only provides CSV. Downloading XLSX here saves you from converting the file yourself.
Use Export CSV if the accountant needs to import the data into another system. CSV works for plain tables, but it does not retain Excel formatting, formulas, or multiple worksheets. Ask which format they need before sending the first file.
Once your accountant has checked it, use the saved preset for the next month. Change the period and export again. If they request another column later, save the revised selection so it is included next time. You no longer have to remember which columns to remove from each fresh download.
What does this cost?
Custom sales exports and saved column profiles are included in LedgerLeaf’s free plan. Setup is simple because you work in Shopify admin without creating a separate account.
Matrixify’s free Demo is limited to 10 orders per file, and its Basic plan costs US$20 a month. That is poor value if you only need the monthly sales export described here. With LedgerLeaf, you can prepare and reuse it without paying for a larger set of import and migration tools.
Install LedgerLeaf free and create a saved profile for the next file your accountant needs.
