DEV Community: April

How to Clean a Messy Stripe / Shopify / Gumroad CSV Before Google Sheets (or Make)

April — Tue, 27 Oct 2026 15:22:22 +0000

If you sell online, you've probably exported a CSV from Stripe, Shopify, Gumroad, or a CRM and dropped it into Google Sheets — only to watch duplicates pile up, phones arrive in five formats, and Make mappings break on header names with spaces.

This is a practical walkthrough of how I clean those exports by hand. Every step works in Sheets (or Excel) with no special tools. At the end I'll mention a small browser helper for when the file is big enough that manual cleanup gets tedious.

Who this is for: solopreneurs and ops folks who need a Make- or Sheets-ready file before an import — not a data-engineering pipeline.

What "messy" usually looks like

A typical export mixes:

Headers with spaces or Title Case (Full Name, Customer Email)
Leading/trailing spaces in cells
Blank rows left over from the export
Duplicate people (same email after a refund + repurchase, or a double export)
Mixed-case emails (Jane.DOE@Example.com)
Phones in every format ((555) 123-4567, 555-123-4567, +1 555 123 4567)

Tiny example:

Full Name,Email,Phone,Notes,Amount,Status
Jane Doe,jane.DOE@Example.com,1-555-123-4567,"VIP , client",49.00,paid
Jane Doe,jane.doe@example.com,5551234567,duplicate row,49,paid
  John Smith  , JOHN@ACME.IO ,(555) 987-6543,,120.50,paid
,,,,blank row should go,
Ava Lee,ava@shop.io,555.222.3333,Shopify export,19.00,paid

Same person twice, inconsistent phones, mixed-case emails, a blank row, and headers that Make will choke on if you map them literally.

Step 1 — Fix the headers first

Before you touch rows, make column names boring and predictable: snake_case, no spaces, lowercase.

Before	After
Full Name	`full_name`
Email	`email`
Phone	`phone`
Amount	`amount`
Status	`status`

Freeze the header row, rename by hand (or paste values from a helper row). Make field mappers and Sheets QUERY ranges stay stable when headers are identifiers, not display labels. Keep a one-row "dictionary" tab mapping original export headers → your canonical names so the next Stripe dump is faster.

Step 2 — Trim whitespace and drop blank rows

Trailing spaces look identical in the UI and fail equality checks. For a text column:

=TRIM(A2)

Fill down, then Paste special → Values only over the original.

Remove empty rows: Data → Create a filter → on email, filter Blanks → delete those rows → clear the filter. Also catch rows that are only commas or spaces.

Step 3 — Normalize emails

Lowercase and trim. Domains are case-insensitive; treating Jane@Example.com and jane@example.com as different people creates fake duplicates.

=LOWER(TRIM(B2))

Light checks before import: exactly one @, no spaces. I usually skip heavy regex validation in Sheets — lowercase + trim is enough for Make/Sheets and avoids false negatives on unusual but real addresses.

Step 4 — Normalize phones (US-ish exports)

Pick one target format. For US lists going into Sheets/Make I use: digits only, 10 digits when possible, stored as text so Sheets doesn't eat leading zeros or turn values scientific.

Set the phone column to Plain text before pasting cleaned values.
Strip non-digits:

=REGEXREPLACE(C2, "[^0-9]", "")

If the result is 11 digits and starts with 1, drop the leading 1.
If it isn't 10 digits after that, flag the row — don't invent a number.

Add a phone_ok column (TRUE/FALSE) so Make can route bad rows to "needs review" instead of failing the whole scenario.

Step 5 — Dedupe on the right key

Don't dedupe on name. Use email for customer lists, or order id for transactions.

In Sheets: Data → Data cleanup → Remove duplicates → check only email (or order_id) → review the removed count before closing.

If two rows share an email but different amounts or statuses (refund vs charge), decide the keep rule up front: latest by date, status paid, or keep both and mark one duplicate_of. Blind dedupe without a rule is how refunds disappear from a finance sheet.

Step 6 — Split names only when required

If Make or your CRM wants first_name / last_name and the export only has Full Name, split carefully — multi-part names still need a human pass. Don't over-automate if you're mailing real people. Keeping full_name is often cleaner for Sheets reporting.

Step 7 — Export a clean UTF-8 CSV

When the sheet looks right: File → Download → Comma-separated values (.csv). Open it once in a plain text editor and glance at the first 20 lines — no blank header names, emails lowercased, phones consistent. That file is what you feed Make's CSV module or re-import as the "clean" tab your automations read.

Reusable checklist

[ ] Headers → snake_case
[ ] TRIM all text columns
[ ] Drop blank rows
[ ] Lowercase emails
[ ] Phones → digits, 10-digit US where possible, stored as text
[ ] Dedupe on email (customers) or order id (orders) with an explicit keep rule
[ ] Split names only if required
[ ] Spot-check 10 random rows
[ ] Download UTF-8 CSV and peek in a text editor

When the file is bigger than "I'll just fix it in Sheets"

Manual cleanup is fine under a few hundred rows. Past that — or when you're cleaning the same Stripe/Shopify/Gumroad shape every week — a small, repeatable cleaner saves time.

I built OpsCSV for this workflow: drop a CSV in the browser, trim, dedupe, normalize phones/emails, optionally apply a Stripe / Shopify / Gumroad / Make / Sheets-oriented pass, then download. Processing stays on your device (nothing uploaded).

Free up to 1,000 rows: simplypearlnicole-opscsv.netlify.app
Pro ($19 one-time) for bigger files: payhip.com/b/WFdQI

Use the checklist either way. The tool just runs the same steps faster.

If you're also wiring cleaned CSVs into Make + Sheets on a schedule, the companion Ops Kit (code FIRST10) covers that side — optional, not required for cleaning.

Wrap-up

Messy CSVs aren't a character flaw — they're what payment and store exports look like. Fix headers, trim, normalize email/phone, dedupe on a real key, then export. Do it the same way every time and Make/Sheets stop being fragile.

Questions about a specific export shape (Stripe Balance vs Payments, Shopify customers vs orders)? Leave a comment with the platform and roughly how many rows — happy to sketch the column map.

5 Make.com + Google Sheets Automations Every Solopreneur Should Steal (Free Walkthrough)

April — Tue, 27 Oct 2026 14:13:59 +0000

I kept rebuilding the same five workflows for every solopreneur I helped. Different business, same problems: leads getting lost, invoices nobody chased, new clients waiting on a welcome email, content that never got posted, and a pile of receipts in Gmail at tax time.

So here they are. Each one runs on Make.com plus a Google Sheet, and each one fits inside the free Make plan if your volume is small. I'll walk through the module chain in plain language so you can build them yourself this afternoon.

Quick note before we start: you don't need to be technical. If you can make a spreadsheet with column headers, you can do all of this.

1. Lead capture: form to Sheet row plus an instant alert

The problem: someone fills out your contact form, the notification lands in an inbox you check twice a week, and by the time you reply they've hired someone else.

The Sheet: one tab called Leads with columns Timestamp, Name, Email, Source, Message, Status.

The module chain:

Trigger: Google Forms "Watch Responses" (or a Webhooks "Custom webhook" if you use Tally, Typeform, or a form on your site).
Google Sheets: Add a Row. Map each form field to its column. Set Status to New and Timestamp to {{now}}.
Router with two paths:
- Gmail: Send an Email to yourself, subject like New lead: {{Name}}, with the message in the body.
- Slack: Create a Message (optional) to a #leads channel if you live in Slack.

Why it works: the Sheet becomes your tiny CRM. Add a filter view on Status = New and you have a to-do list. When you reply, change it to Contacted. That's the whole system, and it beats a CRM you never open.

Tip: add a Source field to the form (hidden field or a dropdown) so you know which post or page actually brings in leads.

2. Invoice and payment tracker with an overdue flag

The problem: you send invoices from three places, and "did they pay yet?" lives in your head.

The Sheet: tab Invoices with Invoice #, Client, Email, Amount, Sent Date, Due Date, Paid (checkbox), Status.

Put a formula in Status so the Sheet does the thinking:

=IF(G2, "Paid", IF(TODAY() > F2, "OVERDUE", "Open"))

The module chain:

Trigger: Schedule, once a day at 9am.
Google Sheets: Search Rows where Status equals OVERDUE.
Iterator is built in here, since Search Rows outputs one bundle per row.
Gmail: Create a Draft to the client: "Hi {{Client}}, just a friendly nudge on invoice {{Invoice #}} for {{Amount}}, which was due {{Due Date}}."
Gmail: Send an Email to yourself with a summary (use a Text Aggregator before it to list all overdue invoices in one email).

Why drafts and not sends: you'll want to eyeball reminders before they go out, at least for the first month. Once you trust it, swap Create a Draft for Send an Email.

Bonus: if you take payments through Stripe, add a second scenario that watches for payment_intent.succeeded and ticks the Paid box by searching for the matching invoice number.

3. Client onboarding: new row to a welcome email draft

The problem: a client says yes, and then there's a weird two-day silence while you scramble to send the intake form, the calendar link, and the "here's what happens next" email.

The Sheet: tab Clients with Name, Email, Package, Start Date, Onboarded (checkbox).

The module chain:

Trigger: Google Sheets "Watch New Rows" on the Clients tab.
Google Docs: Create a Document from a Template (optional). Use a welcome packet template with {{Name}} and {{Package}} placeholders, saved to a client folder.
Google Drive: Create a Folder named after the client, and move the doc there.
Gmail: Create a Draft with the welcome message, your booking link, and the folder link.
Google Sheets: Update a Row to set Onboarded to true so it never fires twice.

Why it works: adding a row is the only manual step. The client gets a polished welcome in minutes instead of days, and you look far more organized than you feel.

Gotcha: "Watch New Rows" only sees rows added after the scenario starts, and it reads based on row order. Don't sort the tab, or insert rows in the middle, or it can skip or repeat. Always add to the bottom.

4. Content calendar reminder at 8am

The problem: you planned two weeks of posts in a Sheet, then forgot the Sheet existed.

The Sheet: tab Content with Publish Date, Platform, Topic, Caption, Link, Posted (checkbox).

The module chain:

Trigger: Schedule, every day at 8:00. Set the scenario's timezone in Make's scenario settings (I use America/Chicago). This is the number one reason reminders show up at 3am.
Google Sheets: Search Rows where Publish Date equals today and Posted is false. Use {{formatDate(now; "YYYY-MM-DD")}} and make sure the Sheet column is formatted the same way.
Text Aggregator to bundle everything into one message: platform, topic, caption.
Gmail: Send an Email (or a Slack or Telegram message) with "Today's posts" and the captions ready to copy.

Why it works: it turns your content plan into a morning nudge with the caption already written. You go from "what should I post?" to copy, paste, done.

Next step if you want it: for platforms with Make modules (like LinkedIn or Facebook Pages), you can post directly instead of reminding. I'd start with reminders though. Auto-posting a typo to your whole audience is not fun.

5. Expense and receipt logger from Gmail attachments

The problem: receipts arrive by email all year, and in April you search "receipt" and cry.

The Sheet: tab Expenses with Date, Vendor, Subject, Amount, Category, Receipt Link.

The module chain:

Trigger: Gmail "Watch Emails" with a filter, for example a Gmail label called Receipts. Set up a Gmail filter that auto-labels emails from vendors you pay, or just drag receipts into the label.
Iterator over the attachments.
Google Drive: Upload a File to a Receipts/2026 folder. Rename it like {{date}}_{{sender}}_{{filename}} so it's searchable.
Google Sheets: Add a Row with the date, sender, subject, and the Drive file's web link.
Optional: a Text Parser "Match Pattern" module with a regex like \$\s?([0-9,]+\.[0-9]{2}) to pull the dollar amount from the email body. It won't catch everything, but it gets most of them.

Why it works: your accountant gets one Sheet with links to every receipt. Fill in Category once a month while you watch TV.

Gotchas that will bite you (so they don't)

Reconnecting Google. If your Google Cloud app for Make is in "testing" mode, or if you change your Google password, connections can expire and scenarios quietly stop. Check Make's scenario history once a week, and turn on Make's email notifications for errors.

Operations limits on the free plan. Make counts every module run as an operation, and the free plan gives you a limited monthly allowance. A scenario with 5 modules that runs every 15 minutes burns through that fast, even when nothing happens. Fixes:

Use Schedule triggers once or twice a day instead of every 15 minutes when real time doesn't matter.
Use instant triggers (webhooks) where possible, since they only run when something happens.
Put filters early in the chain so empty runs stop at step one.

Date formats. Sheets and Make don't always agree on dates. Format your date columns as plain YYYY-MM-DD and compare with formatDate() in Make. It saves you an hour of confusion.

Test with yourself first. Use your own email as the "client" until each scenario behaves. Drafts are your friend.

Want the shortcut?

Disclosure: I made and sell the kit below, so weigh my opinion accordingly.

Everything above is buildable for free, and I'd honestly encourage you to build at least one yourself so you understand how it works. But if you'd rather import than build, I packaged all five as Ops Kit: the Make blueprints plus matching Google Sheet templates with the columns and formulas already set up. You import, reconnect your Google account, and run.

It's $39, and this week the code FIRST10 takes $10 off, so it's $29: https://simplypearlnicole-ops-kit.netlify.app/?ref=devto

Either way, steal these. And if you build a sixth one I should know about, tell me in the comments.