I agree with Charles, Tim; there's a lot of information missing. Let's start here:

1) You say you need "the most elegant way to archive this". That sounds like you're already able to create the .csv, and all you want to know is how to save it for long-term storage.

But if that were true, you wouldn't be showing us the instructions from HikaShop support. 2) You also say you want to do the conversion with "the minimum monthly manual input required". So now I'm guessing you know how to create the .csv, but it's labor-intensive; you want an easier way to do it.

If so, that's a worthwhile question, but we need to know how you create it in the first place, the hard way I mean. You tell Charles that the HikaShop documentation "describes in detail the required .csv format"; but if so, the details are clear only to someone who already knows more than I do. For instance, the instructions speak of a "category"; but what is a category, and why would I want to create one? I don't see anything named "category" in the .xlsx you posted.

Then, too, the instructions start by saying I can "add one category per row", but finish by saying "the categories can be in row1, 3, 9 and 14". All in all, it's not just that I don't understand what the instructions are saying, it isn't clear to me what I would be trying to create. It's easy to create a .csv, but clearly this .csv has to have a particular layout.

How do you do it manually, then?