How to Back Up Your Shopify Data to Google Sheets and BigQuery
Why Back Up Shopify Data
Shopify lets you export CSVs to back up products, customers, orders, and other data, but it offers no automatic backup or undo for deletions. In practice, accidents or changes happen. A robust backup prevents these mishaps from causing major losses.
It also helps meet legal and audit requirements by preserving transaction records. Backing up your store means protecting your business, you can recover deleted items, revert unwanted changes, or clone your store for testing without starting from scratch.
Common scenarios include:
- Accidental changes or deletions. Human error is a leading cause of data loss. Regular backups mean you can quickly restore accidentally deleted orders, products, or settings.
- Third-party app risks. A faulty inventory or theme app might corrupt data. Backups let you undo or compare changes easily.
- Platform migration or testing. If you redesign your site, run promotions, or migrate platforms, a backup lets you revert if needed.
- Data analysis. Exporting data off Shopify into a spreadsheet or database lets you join it with marketing or financial data for reporting.
Think of Shopify backups as an insurance policy: they minimize downtime and rebuild work if anything goes wrong.
Comparing Google Sheets and BigQuery
When choosing where to store Shopify backups, Google Sheets and BigQuery are popular SyncRange destinations. Each has pros and cons.
Google Sheets is easy and free, ideal for small-to-medium datasets.
BigQuery is a high-powered data warehouse suited to large-scale analytics.
The table below compares key aspects:
| Dimension | Google Sheets | Google BigQuery |
|---|---|---|
| Cost | Free with a Google account (subject to Google Workspace/GCP quotas). No per-query or storage fees aside from Google account limits. | Usage-based pricing. First 1 TiB of queries per month is free; above that ~$6.25 per TiB. Storage costs apply (roughly $0.02/GB-month). |
| Scalability | Modest. Supports up to 10 million cells per spreadsheet. Good for tens of thousands of rows, but performance degrades near the limit. | Extremely high. Designed for petabyte-scale datasets. Can handle millions or billions of rows with fast parallel querying. |
| Queryability | Basic. You can use formulas, filters, and the built-in QUERY function, but joining or complex queries are limited. Best for simple analysis and charts. | Advanced. Supports full SQL queries across tables, complex joins, aggregations, and built-in analytics functions. Integrates with BI tools (Data Studio, Looker). |
| Ease of Setup | Very easy. Just connect your Google account and create/select a sheet. No programming required. | Moderate. Requires setting up a Google Cloud project/dataset and granting permissions. The UI makes it straightforward, but it’s a heavier setup than a sheet. |
| Security | Data is encrypted at rest and in transit by Google. Sharing controls are managed via Google Drive. | Enterprise-grade. Data is encrypted at rest and in transit, replicated across zones for high durability, and offers fine-grained IAM access controls. Audit logs track access to data. |
| Data Retention | As long as the sheet exists in your Drive. No automatic deletion, but if you delete the sheet it’s gone (except limited version history). | Flexible. You can set table/dataset expiration policies. Includes 7-day time travel for undoing changes and long-term retention options. Data is kept indefinitely while paying. |
Use Google Sheets if you have a smaller store or just need quick reporting. It’s great for live dashboards and sharing with teams, but remember the ~10M-cell limit.
Use BigQuery if you expect large volumes or need heavy analytics. BigQuery can easily handle millions of rows and integrate your Shopify data with other datasets (ads, analytics, etc.) at scale.
Setting Up the Backup in SyncRange
SyncRange simplifies the backup process. (If you don’t have a SyncRange account, sign up for free.) Follow these steps to create an automated Shopify backup:
- Connect Accounts. In your SyncRange dashboard under Connections, add your Shopify store and a Google destination. Make sure you have a Shopify admin user authorize SyncRange (read-only) and connect a Google account. For Google: add a Google Sheets destination or a BigQuery destination (see docs on Configuring Google Sheets or BigQuery).
- Create a New Export. Go to Export Builder and click Create New Export. Choose Shopify as the data source. Select the Shopify store you connected. Then choose your Google destination (either a new/existing Google Sheet or a BigQuery dataset).
- Configure Export Settings. Customize what data to back up and how:
- Date Range: Pick how much history to include on the first run (e.g. “Last 30 days” or “Backup (10 years)” for a full history).
- Data Tabs: Shopify data is split into categories (Orders, Products, Customers, Inventory, etc.). SyncRange presents each as a separate tab. Enable the tabs you need, for a full backup you might enable Orders, Products, Customers, etc.
- Columns: For each tab, select which fields to include (e.g. Order ID, date, total, customer email for Orders). SyncRange provides all Shopify fields; tick those you want. You can use “Select All” or pick specific columns to minimize data.
- Data Handling: Decide whether to Replace or Append on each run. Replace clears old data and writes fresh (good for static data like product catalogs). Append adds only new rows (ideal for orders or sales metrics to build history over time).
Save & Run. After configuring, click Save to create the export. You can then Run Export Now to test it; SyncRange will pull the Shopify data and push it to your Google destination immediately. Check the sheet or BigQuery table to verify the data. Once confirmed, set a schedule (e.g. daily or weekly) for future runs.
SyncRange will now run on the chosen schedule, refreshing your backup automatically. For example, you could schedule daily exports of your Orders and Customers. Each run will either overwrite or append data as configured, keeping your backup up to date without manual work.
Recommended Backup Strategy and Cadence
A good backup plan depends on your store size and sales volume, but a simple and effective approach is to combine a full historical backup with incremental updates.
- Initial full backup: Start by exporting the maximum available data (for example, up to 10 years is possible). This gives you a complete historical snapshot of your store data from day one.
- Ongoing updates (append mode): After the initial backup, switch to using a “since last data date” approach in append mode for time-based data like orders and line items. This ensures only new data is added on each run, building a continuous history without duplication.
- Frequency:
- Orders and sales data: daily (or more frequently for high-volume stores)
- Inventory and product data: daily or weekly depending on how often changes occur
- Lower-change data: weekly or monthly
- Retention: Your backup naturally grows over time as new data is appended. There’s no need to repeatedly re-fetch full history unless required, your dataset becomes a complete, queryable record of your store.
- Pre-change backups: Before major updates (theme changes, bulk edits, new apps), run a manual export to capture a clean snapshot.
- Validation: Periodically check your destination (Google Sheets or BigQuery) to ensure data is updating correctly and remains accessible.
This approach keeps your backups efficient, avoids unnecessary processing, and ensures you always have both full history and up-to-date data available.
(These recommendations assume a small-to-medium Shopify store. Adjust as needed, an enterprise store with thousands of orders a day might back up orders hourly, whereas a tiny store might be fine with weekly exports.)
Troubleshooting Tips
- Failed connections: If SyncRange fails to connect, re-check your Shopify permissions. The Shopify integration needs read-access to Orders, Products, Customers, etc. Ensure you authorized SyncRange as an app in your Shopify admin. For Google, ensure the account you connected has permission to edit the chosen Sheet or BigQuery dataset.
- Empty or missing data: Make sure you’ve enabled the correct data tabs in the exporter (e.g. Orders tab must be checked to export order data). Verify the date range isn’t excluding your data – using “Last 30 days” will skip older orders. If nothing appears, try “Maximum (2 years)” once to grab all data, then switch to incremental dates.
- Performance issues: Google Sheets can slow down with very large data (approaching 10M cells). If runs are timing out or the sheet becomes unresponsive, switch to BigQuery for heavy tables.
- Duplicates: If you use Append mode, SyncRange will add all new rows each run. Duplicates shouldn’t occur unless the source data itself has duplicates. If you accidentally set Replace mode when you meant Append (or vice versa), you might see overlaps. In that case, correct the mode or clear the destination and rerun a clean export.
- Access errors: BigQuery may require configuring a dataset. Ensure the dataset exists and your Google account has BigQuery Data Editor permissions on it. For Sheets, make sure the destination worksheet isn’t deleted or renamed.
- SyncRange logs: In SyncRange’s Logs or Export History, you can see past runs and any error messages. If a scheduled run fails, the logs will indicate why (API rate limit, invalid credentials, etc.), which helps pinpoint the issue.
Once set up correctly, SyncRange’s Shopify exporter runs quietly in the background. Your Google Sheets or BigQuery tables will stay current without further intervention.
Try SyncRange Today
SyncRange makes Shopify data backups hands-off. With a free plan that covers one Shopify store and one destination, you can start exporting Shopify data immediately (no credit card required). Whether you choose a Google Sheet for a simple backup or a BigQuery database for large-scale analytics, SyncRange guides you through the setup in minutes.