Learn how to enhance your Shopify reports by utilizing metafields for orders, products, and customers. Unlock a new level of insights and data analysis with Mipler reporting tool.
One of the commonly used features of Shopify is its ability to add custom information to various entities of the store using a special feature called metafields. Metafields allow store owners to put additional data that is specific to the store to products, product variants, orders, and customers.
Additionally, third-party apps can add data to metafields that are specific to the app.
Furthermore, Shopify provides an amazing API to manage metafields, with API you can manage fields for each entity and set values of fields.
For example:
Metafields also widely increase opportunities for creating reports that are specific to e-commerce or business needs.
There are three main types of Shopify reports that can be built using metafields:
Metafields can be used to view orders pending delivery with a delivery time stored in the metafields and so on.
All kinds of sales reports are grouped or filtered by metafield. Metafields add a finished or completed look to reports. It's much easier to operate information if all values are in one sheet.
A large variety of reports extends with metafields. Like product performance by the supplier or products to re-stock with supplier and supplier code.
To export customer lists for email campaigns filtered by metafields or calculate affiliate commission, where affiliate code is the customer's metafield.
Since metafields are unique for each store, you just need to add a new column to your reports with the required ACE expression.
As Mipler is a bi reporting software, it provides multiple implementation options.
In most cases, the ACE expression syntax for metafields is:
json_path(products.meta_fields, "custom.supplier_code") json_path(orders.meta_fields, "custom.delivery_date")
Additionally, you can apply any data transformation expression to the field value.
For example, convert a string to date to use calendar filter by delivery date:
date_value(json_path(orders.metafields, "custom.delivery_date"))
Omit unwanted characters to transform values to the identical representation form:
substitute(lower(json_path(products.meta_fields, "general.sku")), "-", "")
You can find more details on how to use json_path in the manual. Once the new column is added, it can be used across all built-in reports or with new reports.
Shopify metafields allow adding useful information to your reports or creating new reports with those fields.
A product performance report with supplier information shows the performance of each product (or product variants) in terms of sales, along with information about the suppliers (metafield).
This type of report can be used to identify the best or worst-performing products in relation to the supplier.
The report can also be extended with additional columns, like the cost of goods sold (COGS), gross profit or margin, last purchase date, or percent from total sales. The report can help you optimize pricing policy and supplier relationships.
Live example of Shopify Product Performance Report
In that report, we add 2 additional metafields:
Also, a variation of built-in Inventory On Hand reports with supplier information:
Inventory On Hand
A sales report with a breakdown by the supplier shows the total sales for each supplier, total cost, and profit/margin per supplier. This type of report can be useful for identifying which suppliers are the most profitable to a store, and for identifying changes in sales for each supplier over time.
Additionally, this report can be used as a step to optimizing the supplier chain: identify suppliers, identify best-selling/worst-selling products by supplier, and make decisions.
Breakdown by the supplier
One of the lesser-known use cases of Mipler Reports is its ability to generate reports just for export. This means that you can export data from your Shopify store that includes specific metafields that you have assigned to your orders, products, or customers. The app allows you to choose from hundreds of different fields to export, including those related to metafields.
The app provides flexibility to export just the specific metafields you need or export a complete array of metafields for each entity. This feature enables you to export data for further processing with other apps.
An alternative to using metafields for assigning information to entities in Shopify, such as orders, customers, products, and variants, is to use tags. Shopify provides the ability to assign tags to these entities, making it a universal solution for categorizing information.
In some cases, tags may be preferred over metafields for assigning information.
For example, if the number of possible tag values is limited (such as the supplier name having only a few dozen variations, but the supplier code/SKU not being suitable for tags)
Additionally, if you need to import/export information using built-in Shopify features, tags may be a better option as they can be easily exported and imported.
Another scenario where tags may be preferred is when the number of different types of information is small.
In terms of creating reports, there is not a significant difference in using metafields or tags as the value. Both can be used to build reports, and the choice depends on the specific requirements and use cases.
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