New Supplier Price List? Update Shopify Costs in One Import

1. Make sure you can match the supplier’s rows to your products

Every line in the price list has to point at exactly one variant in Shopify. The easiest match is the SKU. If you use the supplier’s own product codes as your SKUs, you already have it. If you use your own SKUs, keep a simple two-column sheet that maps the supplier’s code to yours. You build it once and add to it when you take on new products.

Before you go further, check two things in the price list:

• Price per unit or per pack. If the supplier quotes per case of 12, divide by 12. Cost per item is the cost of one unit.
• Currency. Cost per item is in your store’s currency. Convert supplier prices first if they’re in another one.

2. A few changes: edit them in the admin

If only a few products changed, open each one in Products and update Cost per item on the variant. For a dozen or so, select the products, open the bulk editor (opens in a new tab), click Columns and add the cost field so you can edit the costs in one table. Shopify recommends a CSV file for larger changes, which is the next step.

3. Many changes: bulk update cost per item with a CSV

The idea is to export your products, put the new costs into the Cost per item column, and import the file back with overwrite turned on. Shopify’s product CSV guide (opens in a new tab) explains every column. These are the steps:

1. In Products, click Export, choose All products and the CSV file for Excel, Numbers, or another spreadsheet program. Keep this first file untouched as your backup.
2. Open a copy. Keep the URL handle, Title and option columns (Option1 name, Option1 value, and so on), the SKU and Cost per item. Delete every other column. Columns you leave out of the file keep their current values, so this protects your descriptions, prices and images.
3. Paste the supplier’s price list into a second sheet, with their code in column A and the unit cost in column B.
4. Next to Cost per item, add a column that looks up the new cost by SKU and falls back to the current cost when the supplier didn’t list that product. The example below shows the formula.
5. Copy the new column, paste it over Cost per item as values only, then delete the helper column.
6. In Products, click Import, add the file, select Overwrite products with matching handles, then Upload and continue. Review the preview and click Import products.

An import can’t be cancelled once it starts, and the file can be at most 15 MB. Split bigger catalogues into several files. The full steps are in Shopify’s import guide (opens in a new tab).

4. Check the result

Open three or four products from different parts of the list and compare the cost with the price list. Include one the supplier didn’t list, to confirm its cost didn’t change. Shopify doesn’t keep an import history, so if something looks wrong, the store’s activity log and your backup file are how you put it right.

New costs change your margins. It’s a good moment to check your selling prices, and to update the costs in your reorder sheet so your next order is costed correctly.

Keep the price list in one place

The CSV route works, but you redo the column work every time a supplier sends a new file, and pack sizes and minimums still live in another spreadsheet.

Efficiencia’s Suppliers tool starts from the vendor on your Shopify products, then imports each supplier’s price list as it arrives. You map its columns once (supplier SKU, unit cost, pack size, minimum order) and Efficiencia remembers them for that supplier’s next file. Rows are matched to your Shopify products by SKU or variant, and you review the matches before anything is saved. Reorder then uses those costs, pack sizes and minimums to work out what to order.

Efficiencia keeps these supplier costs itself. It doesn’t write to Shopify’s Cost per item, so use the CSV steps above if you want your Shopify reports to use the new costs.

Efficiencia is still in development. If you’d like to try it on your store, join early access.