How to send investors a monthly update from Shopify (free template)
The founders who raise their next round easily are almost always the ones who sent a boring, consistent monthly update the whole time. Investors back people they trust, and nothing builds trust like a short note that shows up on the same day every month — in the good months and the flat ones.
If you run a Shopify store, you already have everything you need to write that update. This is a practical walkthrough: what to put in it, which numbers investors actually read, how to pull them from Shopify, and how to turn the whole thing into a clean PDF in about a minute.
Why a monthly investor update is worth 15 minutes
A monthly update does three quiet but valuable things. It keeps you top-of-mind with people who can write follow-on checks or intros. It forces you to look at your own numbers on a schedule. And it builds a paper trail of steady progress that makes your next raise a formality instead of a cold pitch.
The bar is lower than founders think. Investors are not grading your prose — they want to know the business is moving, that you know your numbers, and that you'll tell them the truth when something is off. Consistency beats polish every single time.
What to include in a monthly investor update
Keep it skimmable. A good update is something an investor can read on their phone in ninety seconds and forward to a partner without editing. Use the same structure every month so returning readers know exactly where to look.
- A one-line TL;DR — the single most important thing that happened.
- The core metrics, with the change versus last month (see the next section).
- Highlights — two or three wins: a launch, a partnership, a hiring.
- Lowlights — what didn't work and what you're doing about it. This section builds more trust than any win.
- Asks — specific intros, hires, or advice you need. Make it easy to help.
- Runway / cash position, if you've raised — months of runway at current burn.
The Shopify numbers investors actually read
Don't dump your whole dashboard. Investors want a small, consistent set of numbers they can track over time. For a Shopify store, these are the ones that matter — and every one of them comes straight out of your orders export:
- Total revenue for the month, and month-over-month growth %.
- Orders and average order value (AOV) — growth can come from either, and investors want to know which.
- Unique customers, and the split of new vs. returning if you track it.
- Refunds and net revenue — showing the net number signals you're honest about returns.
- Top products by revenue — a one-line read on what's actually selling.
How to export your data from Shopify
Shopify gives you everything in a couple of clicks. From your admin, go to Orders, set the date range to the month you're reporting on, and use Export to download the orders as a CSV.
That one file contains order totals, quantities, customers and refunds — the raw material for every metric above. You don't need any apps or a data warehouse; the standard export is enough.
Turn the export into a branded PDF in one click
The slow part has always been the spreadsheet work: pivot tables, a chart, formatting it so it doesn't look like a homework assignment. That's exactly the step worth automating.
Drop your Shopify CSV into ReportWise and it reads the columns automatically, calculates revenue, growth, AOV, refunds and your top products, and lays them out as a branded PDF with a revenue-over-time chart and a written summary. Add your logo and brand colour, then download. Your file is parsed in your browser and never uploaded, so your financials stay private. Your first report is free.
Make it a habit that sticks
The hard part isn't the first update — it's the twelfth. Pick a fixed day (the 3rd of the month is a good default, once the prior month has fully settled), put a recurring reminder on your calendar, and keep the format identical each time so you're filling in a template rather than starting from scratch.
Send it even when the month was flat. Especially then. The update you least want to send is the one that earns the most trust.