Update Shopify prices from a supplier file, without touching anything else

Why importing the supplier file directly goes wrong

Shopify’s product import matches products by URL handle, not by SKU. A supplier file has SKUs, its own product names and its own column layout, so Shopify cannot tell which of your products a row belongs to. If you rename the supplier columns and import anyway, the supplier’s titles and descriptions overwrite the ones you wrote, and rows that do not match a handle become new duplicate products.

The fix is to start from your own export, so every row already has the right handle, and to keep only the columns you want to change. Shopify only overwrites the columns that are in the file.

The safe way, step by step

1. 1In Shopify, open Products, click Export, choose All products and CSV. This gives you every product with its URL handle and SKU.
2. 2Put the supplier sheet next to it and pull the new values across by SKU, for example with XLOOKUP in Excel or Google Sheets. If SKUs differ, use the barcode.
3. 3Delete every column except URL handle, Title, the option name and value columns, SKU and the fields you are changing: Price, Cost per item, Inventory quantity.
4. 4Sort by the difference between old and new price. Look at the biggest jumps first. A price that halves overnight is usually a supplier mistake.
5. 5Save as CSV UTF-8, open Products, Import, tick “Overwrite products with matching handles” and check Shopify’s preview before importing.

Things that trip people up

European decimals. A supplier price of 1.120,00 means one thousand one hundred twenty. Shopify needs 1120.00. Excel sometimes turns it into 1.12 without warning.

Stock written as words. “In stock”, “5+”, “auf Lager” or “sold out” must become plain numbers, or the import fails with “Inventory quantity is not a number”.

Several locations. The stock column in the product CSV only works for stores with one location. With more, update stock from Products, Inventory, Export and Import instead.

Supplier currency. Shopify imports plain numbers in your store’s currency. Convert supplier prices before importing, and do it before your markup.

Doing it in one minute instead

Supplier Price Sync does the steps above in your browser. Drop the supplier file, it finds the SKU, price, cost and stock columns in any layout or language, then drop your Shopify export. You get a list of every product that changes, old and new side by side, with big jumps held back until you check them. The download only contains price, cost and stock plus the columns Shopify needs to match, so titles, descriptions and images cannot change. It is free, needs no signup and stores nothing.