What Is the Shopify ABC Analysis Report?
The Shopify ABC Analysis report ranks every product variant by how many units it sold in the period you choose, then assigns each one an A, B, or C grade based on its cumulative share of total units sold. It turns a flat product list into three tiers so you can see, in one view, which variants carry your demand and which barely move.
Two things are worth being clear on. The grade is built on units sold, not revenue and not stock on hand, so a high-volume item outranks a slow one regardless of price. And unlike a top-sellers list, this report classifies your whole catalog, so the long tail of low movers is just as visible as the winners.
Merchants use it to decide where to put attention. Grade A variants are the small group you protect first when reordering, while Grade C is where you look for products to bundle, discount, or drop.
Which Fields Are Included in the Shopify ABC Analysis Report?
These fields let you see each variant's sales volume, where it falls in the ranking, and the grade that follows from it.
You can customize the pre-made report by adding, removing, or rearranging fields. Bring in collection or metafield fields to grade products within a specific group, pull extra data through the API, and set a date range that reaches beyond Shopify's roughly one-month native ABC window when you want to compare longer trends.
Important Insights You Can Find in This Report
How concentrated is your demand across Grade A?
Watch how fast the Cumulative column climbs. If a handful of variants reach a large share of total units sold, your demand is concentrated and those few A rows effectively carry the store. That changes how you manage risk: a stockout on a single A variant costs more than a stockout across several C variants. Protect their reorder cadence first.
Is your Grade C long tail worth keeping?
Grade C variants each sell very little, but together they can take up real catalog space, storage, and purchasing attention. Look at the size of that tail against what it costs you to carry. It points you toward products to bundle, run down, or discontinue. For a full playbook on acting on each grade, see how to use ABC analysis to streamline Shopify inventory management.
Which variants are sitting on a grade boundary?
Rows near the A/B or B/C cutoff in the Cumulative Rank can shift tier with only a small change in units sold. Comparing the same report across two periods shows which of these borderline products are rising and which are fading. That is your early signal to double down on a climber before it hits Grade A, or to hold off cutting a Grade C product that is quietly trending up.
THE ANALYST'S READ: The Signal Most Merchants Miss
The grade reflects units sold, not profit. A cheap, fast-moving item can land in Grade A while a pricier, slower item sits in Grade C even though it earns more per sale. Before you treat Grade A as your most valuable products, compare that list against your margins or cost data. The variants that are both high-grade and high-margin are the ones truly worth defending.
How Can You Automate the Shopify ABC Analysis Report?
Open the pre-made ABC Analysis in Report Pundit and press Save, or rebuild it under Custom Reports using the fields above with your own date range. From there you can schedule it by email on a daily, weekly, or monthly cadence so the grading refreshes on its own, and send it straight to your team, VA, or accountant. You can also export to Excel, CSV, or PDF, or push it to Google Sheets or Google Drive.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does the Shopify ABC Analysis report grade products by revenue or units sold?
By total units sold over the period you select. Each variant's grade comes from its cumulative share of units sold, not its revenue, so volume drives the ranking rather than price.
What do Grades A, B, and C mean in this report?
Grade A is the small set of variants behind most of your units sold, Grade B is the steady middle, and Grade C is the long tail that each sell very little. The grade is assigned from the Cumulative Rank.
How is the Shopify ABC Analysis different from the Shopify Best Selling Products report?
Best Selling Products lists your top performers by total sales. ABC Analysis classifies your entire catalog into A, B, and C tiers using cumulative units sold, so you see the low movers alongside the winners rather than only the top of the list.
Can I change the time period the grades are based on?
Yes. Set any date range and the units sold, cumulative totals, and grades recalculate for that window, which lets you compare how grades shift between periods.
Can I export or schedule this report?
Yes. Export it to Excel, CSV, or PDF, push it to Google Sheets or Google Drive, or schedule it by email daily, weekly, or monthly.