How do I read my Shopify sales and profit?

What you need

• Your Shopify store, connected. See how to connect your Shopify store.
• The Sales permission. Shopify asks for it once, in one click, the first time you press Enable on Sales.
• The Pro plan or above for Profit & loss. The Graph view is open to every account on the last 30 days; any plan opens the whole history.

Step by step

1. 1.Open Shopify Manager. It opens on the Overview tab.
2. 2.If Sales shows an Enable button, press it and accept on Shopify.
3. 3.Press the date button at the top and choose the window, such as Last 30 days.
4. 4.Under Compare to, choose Previous period or Previous year, then press Apply.
5. 5.Read the tiles: each one shows its figure on the window and its change against the comparison.
6. 6.Click a tile to draw its curve on the chart. Click a second one to draw it beside the first, on its own axis.
7. 7.Switch the Overview to Profit & loss to read the profit of each month.

The sales figures on the Graph

• Revenue: your Shopify sales on the window.
• Average basket: revenue divided by orders.
• Orders and Items: how many orders and how many units sold.
• Refunded: the units refunded.
• Returning customers: orders from customers who had ordered before, and Returning rate, their share of the customers who ordered.

With Google Analytics connected, Sessions, Visitors and Total CR (orders divided by sessions) join them; with Search Console, the SEO clicks, impressions and position; with your ad accounts, the ad spend and return. The chart draws two curves at most, each with its own axis, and the comparison period in dashes of the same colour.

Compare two periods

The date button offers 24 hours, Last 7 days, Last 14 days, Last 30 days, Last 90 days, Last 12 months, or Custom with a start and an end date. Compare to sets what every figure is measured against: Previous period, the same length just before, Previous year, the same dates a year earlier, useful in a seasonal business, Custom, or No comparison. The window you choose applies to every tab of Shopify Manager.

Shopify first gives the last 60 days of orders. To read further back, press Enable all data and accept on Shopify: the full order history is then read.

The Profit & loss

The Profit & loss puts the months side by side, the current month to date first, then the month before; with Enable all data, twelve months. Every line starts folded; press its plus to see what it is made of.

Three things Shopify cannot know are typed on their own line and kept for your account: the shipping cost per order, the payment fees, and your other costs, each with a name and a monthly amount. The table recomputes as you type. On Taxes, Ignore or Include decides whether the tax inside your prices counts, and Modify opens your tax settings on Shopify.

Good to know

• Approximate on purpose. The Profit & loss gives a sound idea of whether a month made money. It is not an accounting statement.
• Products without a cost. The units sold without a cost per item are counted apart under Units with a cost, never guessed. Type the costs in Products › Inventory; they are written to Shopify. See the inventory view.
• Ad spend per campaign lives in the Ads tool, on the same dates.
• Your AI fashion agent reads the same Overview and Profit & loss as you. Ask it in the chat why last week's sales dropped, and it runs the same window.