Shopify guide · Cart History
How to see what customers added to their cart in Shopify
Updated
Short answer
Shopify doesn't show carts. Its Abandoned checkouts page only lists shoppers who reached checkout and entered contact details, and analytics count add-to-cart sessions without saying what was added or by whom. To see each cart as it was built, you need a record of cart updates as they happen, such as Toolbench's Cart History, which logs every item added, removed or changed and ties the cart to the customer and the order.
How to do it with Toolbench
Toolbench's Cart History records every cart built on your online store: each item added, removed or changed in quantity, with the time, and whether the cart was ordered, left at checkout, abandoned or emptied. A cart is tied to the customer as soon as they sign in, start checkout or place an order, and what they did as a guest in that cart moves with it. The customer page shows their carts, and the order page shows the cart behind the order, including anything removed before ordering. Cart History is currently in beta.
- Install Toolbench from the Shopify App Store and choose Premium (it starts with a 14-day free trial).
- Open Cart History, click Turn on, and approve the access it asks for: read orders and customers, and the app proxy its theme embed reports through.
- In Online Store > Themes, click Customize, open App embeds, switch on Cart History and save. Without the embed, a cart is only tied to a customer at checkout or when they order, not when they sign in.
- Browse carts in the app, or open a customer or an order and use the Tools block to see its carts.
- Set how long carts are kept in the tool's settings. Guest carts are kept 30 days by default (up to 90), and carts tied to a customer or an order 365 days (up to 730).
Why this happens
A customer says an item disappeared from their cart. Support wants to know what a regular customer was looking at before they called. Merchandising wants to know which products get added and then taken out before checkout. All of this happens before an order exists, where the Shopify admin has nothing to show.
Most carts never reach checkout, so they never appear as abandoned checkouts either.
Your options in Shopify
Abandoned checkouts (Orders > Abandoned checkouts)
Lists checkouts where the shopper entered an email or phone number and didn't pay, with the items at that moment. Carts that never reached checkout aren't there, and it doesn't show what was added or removed along the way.
Analytics and reports
Show how many sessions added to cart and reached checkout, by day or by product. They're totals, not individual carts or customers.
Live View
Shows how many carts are active right now. It's a live count, not a record of what's in them.
A custom pixel (Settings > Customer events)
A developer can write a pixel that sends add-to-cart events to an analytics tool. It's code to write and maintain, and the data lives outside the Shopify admin.
You only approve what Cart History needs
Toolbench asks for no permissions when you install it. When you turn on Cart History, Shopify asks you to approve only what this tool uses: read orders and customers, and the app proxy its theme embed uses.
It doesn't ask for products, inventory, discounts or checkout settings. Each of Toolbench's other tools asks for its own access separately, and only if you turn that tool on, so you never grant access for tools you don't use. Read access means Toolbench can see that data but can't change it.
Before you turn it on
- It records from the moment it's turned on. It can't recover carts from before that.
- It covers online store carts. Draft orders, POS sales and orders created by other apps have no cart to show.
- A guest's cart stays anonymous until they sign in, start checkout or order.
- Item prices are shown before discounts, because Shopify's cart updates don't include them.
- It's in beta, so its screens may still change.
Pricing
Cart History is a Premium tool. Premium is $9.99 a month with a 14-day free trial and includes the first 1,000 orders tracked each billing cycle. An order counts once per billing cycle when Cart History ties it to a cart it recorded, and an order Order Change History also recorded still counts once. Carts that never become an order aren't counted.
Questions
Can I see abandoned carts in Shopify, not just abandoned checkouts?
Not natively. Shopify only lists checkouts where the shopper entered contact details. Cart History records carts from the first item added, and marks a cart Abandoned after 24 hours with no change and no order.
Can I see what a customer removed from their cart before ordering?
Yes. The order page shows the cart behind the order, including items removed before the customer checked out.
Does Cart History slow down my store?
The theme embed only runs for signed-in shoppers: an inline script of about 2 KB that reports the cart once per session after the page has loaded. Guests get no script at all.
Does Cart History send abandoned cart emails?
No. It records carts for your team to see. Shopify's own abandoned checkout emails keep working as before.
What permissions does Cart History need?
Only the ones it uses: read orders and customers, and the app proxy its theme embed uses. It doesn't ask for products, inventory, discounts or checkout settings. Toolbench asks for no permissions at install, and each of its other tools asks for its own access separately, only if you turn that tool on.