Shopify to Square Migration

Shopify to Square Migration: The Complete Guide for Success

Moving your store from Shopify to Square is not just a platform switch; it’s an infrastructure change that affects your catalog, customer data, and order history all at once. If you manage to get it right, you land on a platform better aligned with your business operations.

That’s why LitExtension – #1 eCommerce Migration Expert created this guide, covering every stage of the Shopify to Square migration process.

How to Migrate Shopify to Square with LitExtension

LitExtension’s All-In-One migration service puts a certified expert team in full control of your Shopify to Square migration, handling every technical layer so you don’t have to touch a single export file. From data mapping and platform configuration to testing and post-launch verification, every step is managed end-to-end by specialists. No manual exports, no data mapping errors, and no disruption to your live stores.

Step 1. Technical consultation with LitExtension experts

Your Shopify to Square migration begins with a personalized technical consultation led by LitExtension’s expert team. During this session, our specialists assess your Shopify store’s structure, size, and specific business requirements, reviewing everything from products and orders to customer records, blog content, and any custom fields.

By identifying potential challenges at the outset, we build a migration strategy precisely tailored to your store. If your Shopify setup includes unique entities or non-standard configurations, we document every detail to ensure nothing is lost or misaligned when your data lands on Square.

Step 2. Pre-migration customization

With the consultation complete, our team prepares both platforms for a clean and accurate data transfer. We verify the readiness of your Shopify store and your Square store–collecting store URLs, admin credentials, and all technical settings required to establish a secure connection between the two platforms. We also confirm that your Square store is correctly configured to receive the incoming data.

From there, we move into data mapping: aligning your Shopify data structures with Square’s format. Any custom fields or specific business rules are adapted so everything transfers cleanly and fits Square’s system without manual rework on your end.

Step 3. Demo migration running

Before executing the full Shopify to Square transfer, LitExtension runs a demo migration to validate the entire setup. A carefully selected sample of your Shopify data is migrated to your Square store, allowing us to verify the data structure, field mapping, and formatting, and confirm that products, customers, and orders display correctly in Square.

Then, our team conducts a thorough internal review of the demo results. Any inconsistencies or alignment issues identified at this stage are resolved before the full migration proceeds, ensuring there are no surprises at go-live.

Step 4. Perform the full Shopify to Square migration

Once the demo is reviewed and approved, we execute the full Shopify to Square migration. All selected data entities are securely and completely transferred into your Square store following the customized migration plan built in the earlier stages.

A key advantage of migrating with LitExtension is that your Shopify store stays fully live throughout the entire process since the migration runs automatically on our secure cloud infrastructure. This way, we ensure no downtime, no maintenance mode, and no interruption to your business operations. Once the Square to Shopify transfer is complete, you’ll receive a notification to begin reviewing your new Square store.

Step 5. Migration results testing

After the full Shopify to Square migration completes, LitExtension enters a dedicated testing phase to verify that every record has transferred accurately. Our team thoroughly reviews all critical elements, checking for any inconsistencies, missing fields, or formatting issues and resolving them immediately. Once everything is verified and structured as planned, you’ll receive a detailed project outcome report so you can review the final migration results with complete confidence.

Step 6. Post Shopify to Square migration tasks

Because your Shopify store remains active during the migration, it may continue to receive new orders, customer sign-ups, or product updates while the transfer is running. To keep your Square store fully in sync, LitExtension provides a set of post-migration services at no additional cost:

• Unlimited Recent Data Migration: Syncs any new data generated during the migration window, applicable if it is less than 5% of the initial volume
• 2 Re-migration: Runs the full migration again at no extra charge
• Unlimited Smart Update: Keeps your migrated data current with any ongoing changes from your Shopify store

Step 7. Customer support post-migration

Even after the Shopify to Square migration finishes, LitExtension’s support commitment doesn’t end there. For up to 60 days following your Shopify to Square migration, our dedicated Customer Support Team is available to answer questions and resolve any technical issues you might have when setting up your new Square setup. With LitExtension in your corner, you can focus on running and growing your business, confident that expert help is always just a message away.

Manually Transfer Data from Shopify to Square

Migrating from Shopify to Square manually is a viable option for merchants with small catalogs and straightforward store structures. It requires no third-party service and gives you direct control over what gets moved and when.

That said, the manual process is time-intensive, heavily reliant on CSV formatting accuracy, and offers no built-in safety net–any field mismatch, encoding error, or import conflict has to be diagnosed and fixed by hand. There is also no native way to transfer order history or customer passwords, which are hard limits of the manual method, regardless of technical skill level.

If your store has a large catalog, complex product variants, or years of order history to preserve, the manual route carries significant risk. For those cases, LitExtension’s managed service is the more reliable and efficient path. But for merchants who choose to migrate manually from Shopify to Square, here are the exact steps:

Step 1. Export your product data from Shopify

• Log in to your Shopify Admin and navigate to Products in the left sidebar
• Click Export in the top-right corner and select the products you want to migrate
• Select the CSV file format you want to export to and click Export products
• Shopify will email the CSV file to your store’s admin email address

Step 2. Reformat the CSV for Square

• Download and open Square’s library template
• Open the exported Shopify CSV in Excel or Google Sheets
• Remap your Shopify columns to match Square’s required format. You might need to delete any Shopify-specific columns that Square does not recognize
• Save the reformatted file as a .csv in UTF-8 encoding to avoid character import errors

Step 3. Import Shopify products into Square

• Log in to your Square Dashboard and navigate to Items & Orders → Items in the left-hand menu
• Click Import/Export in the top-right area, then select Import Items
• Upload your reformatted CSV file
• Square will display a preview of the import. Make sure to review for any flagged errors before confirming
• Click Import to complete the product upload

Step 4. Manually recreate orders and customers on Square

Unfortunately, Square does not support native order and customer import functionality. Therefore, you’ll need to create these entities manually by copying each entry from Shopify to Square.

Post-Migration Checklist for Shopify to Square Migration

Once your Shopify to Square migration is complete, don’t go live without running through these verification steps. Missing any one of these can result in operational issues, lost revenue, or a broken customer experience.

• Cross-check a sample of migrated products in your Square Dashboard against your Shopify store. Confirm that product names, descriptions, variants, pricing, and images have all transferred correctly with no truncation or formatting errors.
• Navigate to Items & Orders → Items in Square and verify that stock levels match your Shopify inventory records. Any discrepancy needs to be corrected manually before you start processing orders.
• Ensure all product categories are correctly structured in Square, and items are assigned to the right categories. Miscategorized products affect both storefront browsing and internal reporting.
• Spot-check imported customer profiles for completeness. Confirm that names, email addresses, and phone numbers have carried over without encoding issues or missing fields.
• Run a test transaction in your Square store to confirm that your payment methods, tax calculations, and checkout flow are working correctly.
• Place a live test order on your Square storefront and trace it through to fulfillment. Verify that order notifications, confirmation emails, and inventory deductions all trigger correctly.

How to Integrate Square with Shopify

If a full platform migration isn’t the right move for your business right now, integrating Square with Shopify is a practical middle-ground, letting you run both platforms in parallel and sync data between them. This approach suits merchants who operate both an online Shopify storefront and a Square-powered physical POS, and want to keep inventory, sales, and customer data aligned across both.

Fortunately, Square offers a basic native connection for merchants who want to sync in-person Square POS sales with their Shopify inventory:

1. Log in to your Square Dashboard and navigate to Apps & Integrations → App Marketplace
2. Search for Shopify and select the official integration
3. Follow the authorization flow to connect your Shopify store
4. Map your product catalog between both platforms and configure which inventory locations should sync
5. Confirm the connection and monitor the first sync cycle for any item mapping conflicts