Shopify Product Orders by Year and Month Template

The Product Orders by Year and Month template tracks how many distinct Shopify orders included each product. It creates one annual worksheet and one monthly worksheet, giving you both long-term direction and recent detail.

Orders Count is different from quantity sold. One order can include several units of the same product.

Why order frequency is worth its own report

Sales value tells you what a product earned. Order count tells you how often customers reached for it, and those can point in opposite directions.

A product appearing in many orders is doing work beyond its own revenue: it pulls people into baskets, it is likely a repeat purchase, and going out of stock on it costs you more than the item’s sales suggest. A product with high revenue across very few orders is the reverse, valuable but fragile.

Use this template to see:

• Which products appear most often in customer baskets
• Whether revenue rests on many customers or a handful of large orders
• Which products have a recurring seasonal rhythm
• Which are appearing in fewer orders over time, even if revenue looks stable

What the template creates

Annual Orders Count

• Product Title
• Handle
• Orders Count All Time
• One Orders Count column for each available calendar year from the current year back through 2018

Monthly Orders Count

• Product Title
• Handle
• Orders Count All Time
• One Orders Count column for each of the latest 24 calendar months

Create the Product Orders spreadsheet

1. Install Mixtable Analytics Spreadsheet
2. Click Create Spreadsheet
3. Search for or select Product Orders by Year and Month
4. Create the spreadsheet

What Orders Count tells you

Orders Count helps answer:

• How often a product appears in customer baskets
• Whether demand is spread across many orders or concentrated in a few
• Which products have recurring seasonal order patterns
• Which products are becoming more or less common in orders

It does not tell you how many units were sold. Add Gross Quantity Sold and Net Quantity Sold when customers may buy several units per order.

Use the annual worksheet

The annual worksheet is best for:

• Long-term product adoption
• Products with slow but durable demand
• Year-over-year assortment reviews
• Finding products whose order frequency has steadily declined

The current year is year to date. Compare completed years or use matching fixed dates for a fair in-year comparison.

Use the monthly worksheet

The monthly worksheet is best for:

• Seasonality
• Recent launches
• Promotion effects
• Reorder cadence
• Finding abrupt drops caused by inventory or publication changes

Compare the same month across years to separate seasonal patterns from true growth or decline.

Pair orders with value and quantity

Add:

• Net Sales to understand retained merchandise value
• Average Order Value to understand basket value where supported
• Gross Quantity Sold to understand original unit demand
• Net Quantity Sold to understand units after reductions
• Refunded Quantity or refund metrics to understand after-sale activity

A product with high Orders Count and low quantity is frequently purchased one unit at a time. A product with lower Orders Count and high quantity may be bought in bulk.

Add spreadsheet calculations

Useful formulas include:

• Year-over-year Orders Count growth
• Month-over-month change
• Units per order using quantity divided by Orders Count
• Net Sales per order

Keep the raw counts beside the formulas so ratios remain connected to their sample size.

For storewide order and sales trends, see the Monthly Store Performance template.