Does Shopify have a way to report on pre-order dates stored in order notes or line item properties?

Shopify’s reports do not offer order notes, note attributes, or line item properties as columns, so pre-order dates saved there cannot be reported on natively. Dates saved in an order metafield can be. For the other fields, the values must be pulled out first.

Where pre-order dates actually live

Shopify’s Help Center says a pre-order app is needed to show pre-order details on the product page and at checkout. The page doesn’t describe a date field you can report on. Apps and themes therefore save the date wherever is convenient:

• Order note: a line of text typed by the customer or staff.
• Note attribute: a custom name and value pair added to the order, often from a date picker in the cart.
• Line item property: a custom value attached to one product in the order, such as “Ships on: 15 Nov”.
• Metafield: a structured custom field, which is the cleanest option if the app supports it.

Each of these is stored differently, so there is no single column in a standard report that holds “the pre-order date.”

What Shopify can do

Metafields work in reports. Shopify’s custom reports can use order metafields as a dimension or filter. The metafield type can be date or date-time, and its “Filter or group data in Analytics” option must be turned on. If the pre-order app writes the date to an order metafield, this is the cleanest native route.

The order export includes notes. The order CSV has a Notes column and a Note Attributes column. The date arrives as text in a single cell, so it has to be split out and cleaned in a spreadsheet before sorting by date. The export is a one-time download, so this has to be repeated for every report.

Why the gap exists

Shopify’s report editor and ShopifyQL only reach custom data through metafields. Notes, note attributes and line item properties are free-form by design, and Shopify’s documentation doesn’t list any of them as report fields. If the date lives in one of them, it stays visible on the order but outside the reports.

How Report Pundit reads these fields

Report Pundit has a Custom Properties option in the report designer. It adds line item properties, note attributes, and metafields as ordinary report columns. Setting it up takes a few steps:

1. Open a report in the report designer. The pre-made Order Tags and Line Item Properties report is a quick starting point, because it already includes Order Name, Date, Product Title, Note, and line item property title and value columns.
2. Open Custom Properties and choose the property type: line item property, note attribute, or metafield.
3. Name the new column, for example “Pre-order date.”
4. Select the key where the pre-order app saves the date and save the property. Metafield keys may need a sync before they appear.
5. Set the date range, add filters such as fulfillment status, and save the report.

The saved report then shows one row per order with the pre-order date in its own column. It can be sorted, filtered, exported, and scheduled by email like any other report.

One practical tip: the column shows the value exactly as the app stored it. A consistent format such as 2026-11-15 sorts correctly, while a free-typed date in a note may need a standard format agreed first.