Manage orders instead of an Excel order list
From the Excel list to order management: import products and customers as CSV, capture orders from e-mail, export orders back to Excel as CSV.
The Excel list that keeps things running
Many small businesses rely on a single file that holds everything together. You might have one sheet for products and prices, another for customers, and one for the current month’s orders. These files grow over the years, and while someone on the team knows exactly how every column works, the system is sufficient for daily tasks. Switching to a full inventory system just to replace one file often feels like overkill, and usually, it is.
The real problem occurs when orders arrive via e-mail. For every single order, you must search the list for the customer, locate every product, copy the row, and enter the quantity. If the order arrives as a PDF attachment or a photo of a handwritten list, you have to type everything in manually. Each new order increases this workload.
Onshop starts at this specific point, without requiring you to stop using Excel.
Importing your data from Excel
Onshop needs your data to match incoming orders with your specific products and customers. To do this, save your Excel sheet as a CSV file and upload it. Onshop automatically recognises common column headers, such as “Item no.”, “Description”, or “Unit price” in English, and “Artikelnummer”, “Bezeichnung”, “Preis”, or “Einheit” in German. The system handles prices with decimal commas, files using semicolons as separators, and the Windows encoding that Excel uses for CSV exports.
You will see a preview before any changes are applied. This shows how many products will be created or updated, which ones remain unchanged, and which rows contain errors—such as an item number that appears twice or a price that is not a number. You only apply the import once everything is correct. A template for the file is available directly on the import page.
You import customers and contacts in the same way, using one file that includes your customer numbers. If you upload a new file later, Onshop updates existing products by item number and customers by customer number rather than creating duplicates.
What happens in between
Onshop regularly reads your order mailbox and creates draft orders from every order e-mail, including those with attachments, using your uploaded products and customers. For every line item, you can see the exact passage in the e-mail where the information came from. If details are missing, Onshop drafts a reply to the customer with the necessary questions. You then review and confirm the order.
Sending orders back to Excel
You can export confirmed orders as a CSV file, with one row per line item. The “for Excel” format ensures the file opens correctly with a double click by using semicolons as separators, commas as decimal marks, and correct umlauts. You can filter by period, status, and customer to move the month’s orders directly into your existing reports.
What does not work yet
Directly uploading Excel files in .xlsx format is not yet possible. In Excel, use “Save as” and select “CSV (comma delimited)”. There is also no two-way sync that automatically sends Excel changes to Onshop; the import is a manual step you repeat whenever your list changes.
