Reports by Order Line Item Properties in Shopify

Shopify is a popular e-commerce platform that allows sellers to create online stores and sell products to customers around the world.

By default, Shopify can generate reports that provide information about sales, inventory, customers, and more. However, sometimes the built-in reports that Shopify provides may not be enough for your needs. In such cases, you can use third-party tools like Mipler.

Mipler is a modern data analytics and business intelligence online platform that helps you create custom reports based on your business requirements, including Shopify reports with order line properties.

What information is stored in line item properties

Order line item properties store information that can be added to a product (product variant) when it is added to the shopping cart.

These properties may include general information that customers select, such as size, color, gift card text, engraving details, or any other special information that the customer may provide during checkout: delivery date, preferred pickup time, etc.

In addition, third-party applications can also use position properties to add their information.

For example, Recharge Subscriptions uses line item properties to store subscriptions related information (subscription_id, charge_interval_frequency, shipping_interval_frequency etc)

Using line item properties to build reports

Line item properties allow you to store special information about your products or customer preferences. These properties are stored as an array of key-value pairs in each order line:

[{key: value}, {key: value}...]

However, when it comes to generating reports or exporting data from your Shopify store, you may find that accessing certain property values can be a bit tricky. This is because the properties are stored as an array and you need to use special functions to get a specific value.

To generate a report using a specific property value, you need to create a column for each required property.

For example, if you want to create a report that contains the "Student Name" and "Teacher Name" properties, you need to create two separate columns before using those columns in the report.

Let's say you have three properties: color, size, and delivery time. These properties are stored as an array.

For example, the color, size, and delivery time properties for an item can be stored as:

[
    {"name": "color", "value": "Blue"},
    {"name": "size", "value": "XS"},
    {"name": "delivery-time", "value": "2023-03-12"}
]

If you want to get the value of the "Color" property, you can use the JSONPATH function.

Specifically, the syntax to get the Color value would be:

JSONPATH(order_items.properties, "#(name=""color"").value")

Size:

JSONPATH(order_items.properties, "#(name=""size"").value")

Delivery Time:

DATEVALUE(JSONPATH(order_items.properties, "#(name=""delivery-time"").value"))

As you can see, we used the DATEVALUE function to convert the string value returned by the JSONPATH function to a date value. This conversion is especially useful when filtering data by time using a calendar.

After creating all the necessary columns for your report using line item properties, you can create your own custom reports or extend existing built-in reports with new columns. This gives you the ability to analyze and manipulate your data in a way that suits your specific needs.

With custom reports, you can tailor the visualization and organization of data to your business goals. This enables you to present and interpret data in a way that you and your team can understand, providing valuable insights into your customers' behavior and buying habits.

On the other hand, extending built-in reports allows you to add additional columns or data points to existing reports without having to create an entirely new report. This is especially useful if you want to analyze data that is already being collected by your store but is not included in the standard reports. By adding these new columns to your existing reports, you can quickly gain new insights into your store's performance and optimize your business accordingly.

Overall, the ability to create custom reports and extend built-in reports with new columns is a powerful Mipler feature that can help you better understand your customers and improve your business results.