Google Sheets Automation for Ecommerce: 22 Free Templates

Google Sheets is one of the most widely used online tools, and an essential piece in countless ecommerce businesses.

Organizing store data in rows and columns is a great way to bring order in chaos, perform calculations, and organize data.

The problem with tasks involving Google Sheets is, as usual, time - or the lack of. The more data an ecommerce generates, the more pressing this issue becomes.

Now, wouldn't it be cool if you could let data organize itself? 

If so, then you are at the right place.

The goal of this article is to introduce you to the realm of Google Sheets automation. Here, you will find 22 Make templates to get inspired and automate ecommerce tasks involving Google Sheets.

Ready? Let’s take a look.

Shopify and WooCommerce

Since Shopify and WooCommerce are the most popular ecommerce apps, the first section of our article will be focused entirely on them.

Here, we will show you how to automate Google Sheets tasks with data from these two platforms.

Please note that most of the automation templates below can also be applied to other ecommerce platforms as well, such as PrestaShop, or Magento.

1. Save new paid Shopify orders to a Google Sheets spreadsheet

Organizing order data in a spreadsheet can be a tedious task.

The template below allows you to automate this process by:

• Monitoring your Shopify store for new orders

• Passing new order data to the Google Sheets columns you specify

If you are tired of dealing with CSV files, this automation will be right down your alley.

2. Add products to Shopify from new Google Sheets rows

Shopify makes it very easy to create new products by means of its user-friendly interface.

However, easy doesn’t equal fast, as uploading products in bulk (or migrating from one platform to Shopify) can take a very long time.

This situation can be avoided by letting Make do the heavy lifting.

The template below will automatically create products on Shopify from data you store on Google Sheets. Simple as that!

For those who are tired of dealing with those pesky CSV files to upload Shopify products, this can be a game-changer.

3. Google Sheets rows to Shopify articles

Wait, what? Can you use Google Sheets as a CMS?

That is correct, and most importantly: You can use Google Sheets as a CMS for your Shopify store.

Simply give Google Sheets access to your content creation team and let them manage all your website articles from there.

Make will monitor Google Sheets for new rows, and create a new Shopify article every time you add content to a row.

A simple solution to accelerate the creation of snippets, product descriptions, reviews, and whatnot.

4. Send abandoned cart information to Google Sheets

Abandoned carts are a nightmare for any ecommerce business.

The only way around the lingering problem of abandoned carts is to:

• Keep track of them

• Find out the reasons why customers are leaving the checkout page before completing a purchase

It’s easy to fall prey to desperation at this point, as this problem looks more technical than it actually is.

However, you won’t need to hire a dev to solve it. The following Make template will monitor your Shopify store for newly abandoned carts. Whenever it finds one, it will automatically add all the data for each one to a new row in Google Sheets.

This will provide you with a clear picture of the situation, and let you identify the potential reasons for cart abandonment.

5. Get Shopify discount codes from Google Sheets

Discount codes can bring your store a lot of new sales. But what happens when you need to provide each customer with a unique code?

This is where the initial excitement fades out, as it’s tedious to create the codes one by one.

At this point, you can choose to go into zen-mode and take the task in stride or automate it.

With the template below, all you need to do is add all your discount codes on a Google Sheet. After you do that, Make will retrieve every new row on the Google Sheet and create a discount code for it on Shopify.

Seriously: Until Shopify deploys an AI-powered discount code generator, it will not get easier than this.

6. Add order tracking codes to Google Sheets and update the orders on Shopify

Customers love order tracking codes. Actually, everyone does, except for those who have to create them and update Shopify with status changes, and so forth.

Tracking numbers are essential for two reasons.

First, they bring an irreplaceable sense of security to customers.

Second, they help ecommerce companies avoid email/chat exchanges with customers eager to know where their order is.

Usually, tracking codes are generated by the courier once the product is shipped. However, adding them to Shopify is a long and boring process.

The template below will maximize the efficiency of this workflow.

Simply create a Google Sheets spreadsheet that contains all your customer orders (you can do this automatically with the first template in this section), and include a column to add the tracking numbers of each order.

Make will then detect the rows with the updated tracking numbers, and update the corresponding order on Shopify to reflect this data.

Your customers will then be able to track their orders with no issues and give your email inbox a much-needed break.

7. Add new WooCommerce customers to Google Sheets and subscribe them to AWeber

Email marketing is essential for ecommerce for more reasons than we can lay out here.

For online stores, the biggest source of email addresses is - you guessed right - people who purchase. All customers provide their contact data when purchasing, and many agree to receive promotional emails along the way.

Passing customer data from WooCommerce to AWeber (or your favorite email marketing app) is not that easy to do at scale, but that’s where automation kicks in.

This template will help you accelerate the entire process from start to finish in a no-frills manner.

Make will monitor your WooCommerce store for new customers, add their data to Google Sheets, and then add them as subscribers to your AWeber email list.

8. Update WooCommerce order status with data from Google Sheets

Tired of having to log in to your WooCommerce store and search for an order to update its status from “Paid” to “Shipped”?

Or worse: What if you need to update the status of 20 orders at once? Traditionally, you would have to open each order individually and change its status. Not the most efficient process, if you ask us.

By having all your order data in a Google Sheets spreadsheet, you can simply use the Google Sheets quick search option to find an order and type its status in the ”Status” column. You can also copy-paste the same status across different orders.

After that, the template below will automatically detect these changes and reflect them across your WooCommerce store.

The result: Less time spent on a repetitive task, and fewer errors, thanks to automation.

9. Save new ShipStation orders to Google Sheets

ShipStation is a useful tool to streamline your ecommerce shipping and fulfillment processes.

However, for logistic purposes, it is always important to be able to share this information with other members of your team. This way, everyone will be able to check the status of any given order whenever it’s needed.

An easy way to achieve this is by storing the data from new ShipStation orders in a shared Google Sheets spreadsheet.

And the best part is that you won’t have to worry about configuration or implementation - the template below takes care of that for you.

10. Retrieve new WooCommerce coupons and send them to a list of customers

Coupons are helpful to bring new or existing customers to your store. However, creating a coupon code and setting up an email to send it out takes too many steps.

The automation below cuts the clutter in the process.

First, it automates the creation of coupons. Then, it stores the newly generated coupon in a Google Sheets spreadsheet (for tracking purposes) and sends out an email with a predefined template that includes the coupon code.

Who’d know coupon automation would be this easy?

11. Create a Mailchimp campaign for a new ecommerce product

Launching new products in your store is definitely exciting unless nobody knows about it.

One way to get your customers aware of new products is through dedicated email campaigns. Then again, it takes time to create an email campaign and add all the product information.

The template below puts this process on autopilot.

How? Make can retrieve new product information that is added to a Google Sheet.

The product information will then be passed on to Mailchimp, where an email will be created based on a pre-configured template.

Pretty cool, huh?

12. Update inventory numbers on Google Sheets based on Shopify orders

Inventory tracking is the stuff of nightmares.

Manually updating your inventory quantities after every purchase is lengthy and inefficient, but also a cornerstone task for those who sell physical products online.

Now, check this out: This automation gives you the opportunity to:

• Create a Google Sheets spreadsheet with all the items you are selling (and the available quantities)

• Automatically update them whenever your Shopify store receives a new order

Take this task off your shoulders, and let inventory data sync automatically!

13. Add new Square refunds to a Google Sheets spreadsheet

If there’s one thing ecommerce platforms lack, that is a refund-tracking feature.

This happens because the process is usually executed directly on the payment gateway that collected the payment.

Nonetheless, it’s important to have a way to track these refunds and find out if a particular product is triggering a large return rate, for example.

This automation will take care of the process by monitoring your payment gateway refunds and adding all the information to a Google Sheets spreadsheet.

Please note that you can replace Square with any payment gateway you choose, such as PayPal or Stripe!

14. Update Squarespace products with data from Google Sheets

Like their Shopify and WooCommerce counterparts, Squarespace users often have to deal with CSV files to update products on their store.

But why do that when you can simply update products with data from Google Sheets?

Customer support automation for ecommerce

15. Add emails from Shopify customers to Google Sheets

An email database can save you from unexpected situations and takes no time to set up.

Your customers can contact you asking where their order is, or requesting returns and refunds.

If your email inbox is cluttered, it is easy to forget to reply, which might end up hurting your brand.

This solution filters emails based on the conditions you set (i.e. a keyword) and stores them in a Google Sheets spreadsheet. This way, you and your team can keep track of relevant emails and respond as quickly as possible.

16. Save new Typeform entries to Google Sheets

Is the contact form in your ecommerce store getting abused by spammers who are trying to sell you something?

This happens because classic HTML contact forms are the target of spam bots, which crawl the internet for forms to meet their spammy purpose.

This can be solved by embedding a Typeform on your e-commerce store. These forms can be customized to capture any information you want. Moreover, Make can funnel form answers automatically to a Google Sheet spreadsheet for bulk analysis.

Since Typeform forms are embedded on the website, spam bots will not be able to detect them. Therefore only your real customers will be sending you messages from now on.

Say goodbye to form spammers once and for all!

Marketing automation for ecommerce

17. Post new Shopify products on social media

This automation creates new social media posts for every product you add to your Shopify store.

Make will watch for new products on Shopify, create a row on Google Sheets with all the data, and send the data to the social media management platform Buffer for publication.

These posts can contain the product image, the description of the product, and other details as well.

An interesting twist for Buffer users who wish to automate their social media efforts even further.

18. Save new Facebook Lead Ads leads to Google Sheets

Facebook Lead Ads are a great way to collect leads. However, moving the data around after a form has been submitted is pretty boring and time-consuming.

Make helps you put this task behind you. All it takes is a simple template to funnel all the data to a spreadsheet. Take a look!

19. Send records from Google Sheets to Facebook Custom Audiences

Social media advertising automation is a beautiful thing.

The template below is a good example of it: It tracks all your new Shopify customers in a Google Sheets spreadsheet and adds them to a Facebook custom audience.

Furthermore, it can be further improved by having the data added to a specific custom audience based on the products that the customer has purchased. Talk about retargeting!

Accounting and sales automation for ecommerce

20. Create new Zoho invoices from Google Sheets rows

How to improve invoicing with Google Sheets?

Here’s a tip: If you have your order data organized in a Google Sheets spreadsheet, this template will retrieve it and create an invoice using the Zoho Invoice app.

Then, the invoice will automatically be sent to the customer, based on the specified email in Google Sheets. To conclude, the customer will be able to pay with a click of a button.

21. Create a sales receipt in QuickBooks from Google Sheets data

Onboarding customers on Google Sheets is routing, as is creating invoices on QuickBooks.

With this in mind, merging both tasks is a no-brainer to save time and speed up operations.

Here’s a template (including a spreadsheet) to help you implement this workflow.

Automated notifications for ecommerce

22. Post your weekly ecommerce revenue on Slack

Sharing revenue data with your team over Slack is a great way to keep everyone motivated.

The scenario below makes this process seamless: Make will summarize sales information from a Google Sheets spreadsheet, and share a message with all the key data points to a Slack channel of your choice.

Conclusion

As you can see, there is no single path toward ecommerce automation. Usually, there are processes and apps, and that’s the baseline to start automating with Make.

Since Google Sheets is a central app for many online stores, automating related processes is the first logical step.

Now that you know how to, we invite you to try out some of the Google Sheets automation templates above.

Happy automating!