The short version
If you move goods from Spain to other EU member states above the applicable thresholds, Intrastat wants structured dispatch data: who received what, where, with what value and mass. Shopify knows your orders. It does not produce that structure. That gap is the whole job.
What Intrastat cares about
- Flow: dispatches (Spain → another member state) vs. arrivals. This guide covers dispatches.
- Partner state: the member state of destination.
- Value and mass: statistical value and net mass per line, aggregated sensibly.
- Period: calendar month, reviewed and archived.
Thresholds and detailed commodity rules change; confirm the current position with your advisor. Product tooling prepares data — it does not determine your obligation.
Where Shopify data fits
Shopify orders carry items, values, dates and shipping destinations. With weights maintained on
products and exclusions configured (domestic, refunds, non-goods), that maps cleanly to dispatch
candidates.
The failure mode is manual: CSV → spreadsheet → copy errors → version drift → a painful question
six months later.
Read the result by evidence type
Narrowforge Intrastat Europe keeps the review legible:
- Observed: values returned by Shopify, such as fulfilment, destination and product fields.
- Confirmed: details you enter or approve, such as CN8, origin, net mass and the warehouse mapping.
- Derived: period, partner country, readiness and issue severity calculated from those inputs.
- Archived: the finalized period snapshot and its export hash.
This lets a finance or compliance teammate see what came from Shopify, what the merchant decided and
what the app calculated. A clean status is a review result, not a government approval.
A calm monthly routine
- Close the month in Shopify (refunds settled where possible).
- Open the period review in Narrowforge Intrastat Europe.
- Confirm the reporting country and included fulfilment locations.
- Resolve flags — usually missing weights, destination or commodity data.
- Reconcile totals against your own order export.
- Finalize the period, export and archive by period.
- Record the submission reference in your existing filing workflow.
What this workflow cannot answer
It cannot determine whether your business must file, replace a tax adviser, confirm an
unreviewed classification or tell you that an authority accepted the declaration. Thresholds,
deadlines and detailed commodity rules change; confirm the current position with your adviser.
Related: Getting started · Monthly review workflow · Exporting data
This guide is operational background, not legal advice.