There is no single button that exports everything. The main catalog and inventory fields are split across different files, so most jobs take two or three exports.
This article covers the Old Experience catalog. Tell the two apart by the web address of your Products page. The Old Experience page has /inventory/ in its address, ending either /inventory/items-and-variants or /inventory/products. If your address ends /catalog/products, read Exporting your catalog and inventory out of Thrive (New Experience) instead. Both pages can show an Actions menu, so the menu on its own does not tell them apart.
Which file to use for which job
What you need | Use |
SKUs, barcodes, prices, costs, reorder points, per-location values | Edit Variants spreadsheet |
Product names, categories, descriptions, shipping weights and dimensions | Edit Products spreadsheet |
Quantities and stock value by location | Inventory Report CSV |
A quick list of what is on the screen in front of you | Download CSV on the Products page, if your address ends |
As much as Thrive exports, for a move to another system | The first three options — no single file has it all |
1. The Edit Variants spreadsheet — the richest catalog export
Products → Actions → Bulk Upload → Edit Variants → choose your filters → Generate Spreadsheet.
The picker describes this sheet as: "Edit variant-level details like name, SKU, barcode, price, default cost, reorder point, reorder target, quantity, and vendors."
In your list of bulk uploads the same sheet is listed under its longer name, Bulk Edit Variants. The Bulk Upload item in the Products page's Actions menu opens a picker headed Bulk Upload Products and Inventory. You can also start from Bulk Uploads → Start Bulk Upload, which opens a wider picker headed Bulk Upload covering every kind of sheet rather than the catalog ones alone.
Main data columns
One row per variant: ID, Product Name, Product Categories, Variant Name, SKU, Barcode, Price, Default Cost, Reorder Point, Reorder Target, Vendor 1, Vendor 1 SKU (and more vendor pairs if you use them)
Then, repeated for each location you picked: Use Defaults, Price, Default Cost, Reorder Point, Reorder Target, Quantity In Stock
Next to most of these the sheet also carries an editable column named New … — New SKU, New Price and so on. Those are the cells you type into when you mean to upload the sheet back.
This is the only export that puts per-location price, cost, reorder points and stock side by side.
Filters you can set in the picker before generating: locations (one is required), categories, vendors, active or inactive, in stock or not, requires shipping, and created on or after. Particular products or variants are not chosen in the picker; they come from what you selected on the catalog page before you started the sheet.
Four things to know
It opens as a Google Sheet, not a download. To turn it into a file, use File → Download → Comma-separated values (.csv) in Google Sheets.
Simple products with no variants are included. Their Variant Name cell is just blank.
Pick more than one location and an item only appears if it is switched on at every location you picked. If your products differ from shop to shop, generate one sheet per location. A location filter is required.
Bundles are not on this sheet.
If the sheet will not generate
Bulk uploads have to be switched on for your account.
Edit Variants needs two permissions: "Product management" and "View cost & profit margins". Without both, the card is grayed out and reads "Permissions required: Product management, View cost & profit margins".
Without either the "Product management" or the "Update stock counts & prices" permission, the picker does not stay open. It closes straight away and an Access Restricted message reads: "Sorry, but you do not have the necessary permissions to generate catalog spreadsheets."
If your filters match nothing at all, Thrive raises an error rather than handing you an empty sheet. Widen the filters.
Generating sheets is rate-limited by how many you have started recently, not by whether the last one has finished. When you hit the limit the error names the number of seconds to wait; wait that long and try again.
During maintenance you may see: "We're upgrading the system right now. Your Bulk Upload will be ready to process once the upgrade is complete. Please try again in 1 hour."
Where to watch it and find it again. Your sheets are listed on the Bulk Uploads page, with columns Bulk Upload Type, Started By, Date Started, Date Submitted and Status. In that list the sheet is named Bulk Edit Variants. There is also a Tasks page: click your profile picture at the bottom of the sidebar and choose Tasks. The page is headed Server Tasks. It shows work the server is doing, with Status, Description, Progress and Updated columns.
2. The Edit Products spreadsheet — product-level fields
Products → Actions → Bulk Upload → Edit Products → choose your filters → Generate Spreadsheet.
This one works at the product level rather than the variant level. It holds the fields Edit Variants leaves out: descriptions, shipping weights and dimensions, active status, and which locations and sales channels a product is switched on for. Product names and categories are on both sheets.
It has no SKU and no price columns — those are on the Edit Variants sheet. If you want SKUs, you want Edit Variants.
3. The Inventory Report CSV — quantities and value
Which Inventory Report you have depends on your account, not on your catalog. This section describes the Inventory Report with Download CSV in its Actions menu. If your Inventory Report has a Download icon instead, or you are using the Inventory entry marked with a ⚡ lightning bolt, see section 3 of Exporting your catalog and inventory out of Thrive (New Experience).
Reports → Inventory → Actions → Download CSV. Download PDF sits in the same menu.
Picking either one opens a Download Options box asking "What would you like to download?", with two choices: Current Page Only and All Pages. There is no summary-only choice on this report.
Columns you get, in this order: Product, Variant, Location, Categories, Vendors, SKU, Barcode, In Stock, List Price, Cost/unit, Total Value, Potential Revenue, Potential Profit, Profit Margin, Markup.
Current Page Only builds the file from the rows on screen and downloads it there and then. All Pages builds the whole report in the background and then asks whether you also want it emailed. Either answer saves it. The full report goes to Saved Reports (Reports → My Saved Reports) whether or not you ask for the email, and a "Your report has been saved" notification tells you it is ready. To have the report run on a timetable, use Actions → Schedule this Report, which appears if report scheduling is available on your account.
Five things to know
Regenerating the same report replaces its saved files. The match is on your own user, the report type, the date and every saved filter, and the old files are deleted. It does not keep versions.
There are two separate 100,000-row behaviors. Above 100,000 rows this page refuses to build the full report at all: "This report is too large to export. Please download a single page, or apply a filter to reduce the number of results and try again." Where a file is built and the server has to cut it short, the CSV itself says so on a line reading "... {n} results not displayed".
At 3,000 rows or more you get the CSV but no full PDF. Below that, both are written. Asking for a PDF above 3,000 rows on this page gives you: "This report is too large for PDF format. You may download a single page, apply a filter to reduce the number of results, or download the full report to CSV instead."
If you switch every column off, the export fails with "No columns selected for export" rather than producing an empty file.
Five columns are missing for users without permission to see costs — Cost/unit, Total Value, Potential Profit, Profit Margin and Markup — in the file as well as on screen.
Three things the Inventory Report leaves out, whatever you do: products with inventory tracking switched off, bundles, and products with a blank quantity. A blank quantity means no stock history at all, which is different from zero. A product at zero does appear, unless you set the filter to in-stock only.
You do not have to save or schedule anything to get the whole report. Choose All Pages and Thrive builds the full file for you. While the single-page file is being built you see "Please wait", then "Your report has been downloaded." when it arrives. Starting the full report shows "Generating your report" instead, and the file appears in Saved Reports when it is ready.
4. Download CSV on the Products page — quick, but narrow
This download is only on the Products list whose address ends /inventory/products. If your address ends /inventory/items-and-variants, that list's Actions menu has no Download CSV or Download PDF; use Edit Variants or the Inventory Report instead.
Products → Actions → Download CSV. The file downloads straight away and you get a "CSV downloaded successfully." toast. The file is named like inventory_list-sep-21st-2026_03-45pm.csv. There is a Download PDF next to it that works the same way.
It is much narrower than it looks:
It exports one page of the grid, not your catalog. A page holds 25 products by default and 100 at most, plus a row for each named variant those products have.
It is not "every column you can see". Only nine columns are ever written: Product, Categories, Vendors, SKU, Barcode, Price, Default Cost, Total Quantity and Locations — and only the ones currently switched on in the grid. Vendor IDs and Current Cost can be on screen and will still be left out.
Product rows are marked with a
>in an unnamed first column; variant rows are blank there. A simple product with no named variants gets the one>row and nothing under it.SKU and Barcode come out as
="12345". That is deliberate, so spreadsheets keep leading zeros. Some tools show them as formulas; paste-special as values if that bothers you. A#in a SKU or barcode is removed.
Use it for a quick look. Use Edit Variants or the Inventory Report for anything you are going to rely on.
Which export carries what
Edit Variants sheet | Edit Products sheet | Inventory Report CSV | Products page CSV | |
One row per variant | Yes | No (per product) | Yes, per variant per location | Named variants only, under a |
SKU and barcode | Yes | No | Yes | Only if those columns are on |
Price | Yes, plus one per location | No | List Price | Only if on |
Cost | Yes, plus one per location | No | Cost/unit and Total Value | Only if on |
Quantity | Yes, per location | No | In Stock | Total only, if on |
Reorder point and target | Yes, plus per location | No | No | No |
Vendors | Yes, with vendor SKUs | No | Yes | Only if on |
Categories | Yes | Yes | Yes | Only if on |
Description, shipping weight and dimensions | No | Yes | No | No |
Bundles | No | Yes, unless the Bundles filter hides them | No | Yes, as rows in the list |
Format | Google Sheet | Google Sheet | CSV, download or emailed link | CSV, instant download |
What no export gives you
Product images. None of these three exports carries a product image or an image address.
A single combined file. Nothing joins the three exports for you, and they share no common key. Edit Variants is keyed on a variant ID, Edit Products on a product ID, and the Inventory Report CSV has no ID column at all. Pick the one export that holds the fields you need.
Still stuck?
Start a chat with us from the app or the help center. Tell us which fields you need and what you are going to do with them, and we will point you at the right combination.