There are two ways customer data flows from Shopify to Katana:
Bulk customer import: a manual import you can trigger from the Customers tab, which will import all existing Shopify customers.
Per-order customer creation: when sync is active and a new Shopify order is imported, the order's customer is created in Katana if they don't exist yet.
This article focuses on the bulk import.
When to run a customer import?
First-time setup, if you want all your existing Shopify customers in Katana before sync is activated.
After a large customer cleanup in Shopify.
To pull customers who were created in Shopify but not synced.
How to begin customer import
Open the Shopify configuration page.
Choose the Customers tab and click Start customers import.
A yellow progress banner will appear at the top of the page while the import runs. When it finishes, a "completed" note appears in the Customers section.
You don't have to wait for the customer import to finish before doing other things — you can run a product import, stock import, or activate sync in parallel.
What is imported
For each Shopify customer:
Customer name (first + last) and company.
Email address.
Default and additional billing/shipping addresses.
Phone numbers.
Customer tags.
Existing Katana customers with a matching email address are linked rather than duplicated. Address changes on already-linked customers are updated to reflect the latest Shopify data.
Customers without an email address in Shopify are created as separate Katana records.
Per-order customer creation (when sync is active)
When sync is active, and a Shopify order arrives in Katana:
If the customer for the order already exists in Katana (matched by email), the order is linked to them.
If the customer is new, a customer is created using the order data.
This means you don't strictly need the bulk import — customers will arrive in Katana along with orders.
Limitations
Marketing consent flags and Shopify-specific fields (e.g. customer notes) aren't synced.
Past order history isn't transferred — only the customer record itself.
Deleting a customer in Shopify does not delete them in Katana.
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