Shopify always reflects the current metafield value the moment you save it, and its Analytics can now group and filter by a metafield like Sales Category directly. What Shopify doesn't offer is a way to schedule that metafield-based data as a recurring, automated report. For scheduled monthly delivery, an app like Report Pundit fills that gap, and it keeps its own copy of your metafield data refreshed automatically so the scheduled report always reflects the latest value.

Shopify's side of this never lags. The instant you update the Sales Category metafield on a product, that's the live value in your store's admin, and if the metafield's "Use in Analytics" setting is on, Shopify's own Reports and Explore already reflect it too. What Shopify's native reporting doesn't do is send that report out on a recurring schedule the way a monthly automation needs. That's where a reporting app comes in: Report Pundit builds the schedule and works from its own synced copy of your store data.

That copy refreshes automatically every 6 hours and again whenever a scheduled report runs, so a metafield update made any time before the monthly run is already reflected by the time the report generates. The only setup requirement is that the metafield's sync is turned on and it's added as a report column, both one-time steps, after which every future value change carries through on its own without needing a manual resync.

For the full setup, including adding a product metafield as a report column, see How to Use Custom Properties. To confirm how the monthly run itself is configured, see How to Schedule Reports Automatically.