A Comprehensive Guide to Shopify Sales Reports

Shopify was founded back in 2006 and generates a huge amount of revenue. In 2023 alone, it generated a whopping $7 billion in revenue and its share price on the U.S stock exchange continues to grow. With this in mind, it's highly likely Shopify is going to be a top sales platform for businesses around the world for the foreseeable future.

One of the reasons why merchants choose Shopify over competitor platforms is its comprehensive range of reporting tools. It produces a huge number of financial reports that show gross sales, discounts, returns, amongst a load of other data. On top of these, Shopify also boasts plenty of marketing resources, and it's fairly easy to get to grips with.

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This guide is going to take a deep dive into Shopify sales reports. We'll be looking at what they are, why you need them, and also how you can improve your Shopify sales and grow your online store.

What are Shopify Sales Reports?

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Shopify sales reports are reports that show valuable insights into sales performance. Everyone has access to the basic sales report features within their reports page. These still provide essential information despite being included in the lower priced plans. In addition to a total sales report, you can view orders by criteria such as product, net sales, or sales channel. The reports are up to date with real-time information.

Shopify sales reports take into account refunds and returns. This essential capability enables Shopify to track the value of your total sales over time. You can also use this information to understand the value of your assets and business as a whole.

Use the reports to make decisions based on real data and also spot trends and patterns within your business performance and marketing. For example, knowing what marketing efforts drive the best results so you can repeat and improve the process.

What's The Difference Between Sales Reports and Shopify Retail Sales Reports?

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Shopify Retail Sales Reports are specifically for brick-and-mortar stores who are also using Shopify (as opposed to solely online). They convey information about point-of-sales, such as location, staff, and products.

These show a whole host of valuable information for merchants, beyond simply what your best-selling products are. For example, you'll know which members of your sales team generate the most revenue for you. With this, you can make decisions about promoting employees or delegating tasks.

What Are Detailed Shopify Sales Reports?

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Detailed Shopify sales reports take reporting to the next level with an impressive amount of sales data on a granular level. They're available for Shopify merchants using the Shopify plan or higher.

For context, the Shopify plan is just one plan up from the cheapest 'Basic' plan. This means that it's not reserved for large businesses who are able to spend hundreds of pounds every month on their Shopify plan, which is great of course. Even smaller businesses will be able to access them..

Detailed Shopify sales reports can help you take your analytical, data-driven decisions to the next level. Here are some of the metrics you can track through your reports page:

• Sales over time: pretty self-explanatory, this one shows you the number of total sales your business has made over time. the finance report includes total sales by day and by month.
• Sales by product: Break down your sales data, minus the shipping costs. Look at vendors, product types, and net quantity of products sold with this finance report type.
• Average order value over time: Look at how your average order value has changed over a certain period of time. You can see if this corresponds with your marketing campaign efforts.
• Sales by customer name: This detailed finance report shows you the total sales of a specific customer over time. This is useful for understanding the value and profitability of a customer.

There are more reports included in the detailed reports feature. This is just a select few to give you an idea of how reports can give you a complete view of your business and your customers.

Benefits of Using Shopify Reports

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Let's have a look at the numerous benefits of using Shopify reports in your business processes:

Fast Decision Making

Shopify finances reports enable you to make decisions rapidly as you need to. The real-time capabilities of these reporting tools means you don't need to wait to gather data. You decisions will be based on up-to-date information that's reflects true business performance at any given time.

Accuracy

Making decisions based on data you've gathered and interpreted manually, not only takes more time, but can be prone to errors too. Software isn't perfect by any means. However, it doesn't make the same kind of errors that humans do. Therefore, you can trust the accuracy of your Shopify reports.

Data Consistency

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With Shopify reports, you can consistently access the data you need because it is automatically gathered and turned into a finance report. You don't need to manually pull data from different sources. Everything you need is consistently where you need it to be. You can review the same data types over time.

Track Your KPIs

Without tracking your KPIs, you can't measure performance in a meaningful way. Shopify reports allows you to track your KPIs, whether that's leads, sales, conversion rate, average order value etc. so you can improve them.

Scalability

Shopify reports are scalable and can also help you scale your business. So analysing your reports will give you the information you need to scale. Plus, as the amount of data increases inline with increased scales, you can be confident that the reporting will keep up. On the other hand, doing this manually is not scalable because the process would take longer as your total sales grow.

Collaboration

You can send your Shopify financial reports to other team members involved with your online store. For example, your marketing team or your accountant. This makes collaboration easier and ensures everyone is working from the right information.

Understanding Common Terms Associated With Your Sales Reports

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We're now going to look at the common terms associated with your sales reports so you can better understand them:

• Units per transaction: Net quantity divided by total orders.
• Gross sales: Product price X sales quantity.
• Net sales: Gross sales - discounts - returns.
• Average order value: Gross sales - discounts divided by number of orders.
• Gross profit: Net sales - product cost over a period of time.

How to Access Your Shopify Sales Report

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Accessing and creating your sales reports on Shopify is really easy. Here's how:

• Log in to your Shopify account.
• Head over to Analytics.
• Click on Reports, found on the left hand side.
• Choose a report on the reports page to create a finance report or a custom report.

You can also export each finance report, sales report, or other type of report as CSVs by clicking on the 'Export' button on the top right when you've got your report open. The reports are viewed as tables in spreadsheets using Excel or Google Sheets, for example.

Customising Sales Reports

There are customisation and editing features to mix up your reports with the information that matters to your business. You can add data such as returned quantity and purchase option, to create custom reports. You can also remove columns in your reports and adjust the date range as needed.

More Types of Shopify Reports

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Sales reports aren't the only essential type of report on Shopify. Use these reports in conjunction with other reports for a complete view of your business performance. The gift card sales report, for example, is useful to combine with inventory reports.

There are the other types of reports on the Shopify sales channel:

Customer Reports

These reports are all about customers (believe it or not!) and customer sales. They'll give you key valuable information about your customers, like those who are loyal customers because they've made multiple purchases from you. And, where your customers are located geographically. With customer reports, you can get a complete picture of customers and use the information to segment them.

Behaviour Reports

Closely connected with customer reports, behaviour reports dive deep into the habits of your customers and their actions. These reports can be useful for effective targeting campaigns, and upselling and cross-selling your products. Analyse metrics like abandoned carts, sessions by landing page, and conversions over a specific date range.

Inventory Reports

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Inventory reports will help you keep on top of your stock so you can avoid running out and disappointing customers. More than that though, you can generate inventory reports that show you, for example, average inventory sold per day, days of inventory remaining, and product sell-through rate. Going beyond the basic stock quantity numbers can really help you when it comes to understanding past and future orders and total sales of specific products.  

Marketing Reports

Drill into your marketing efforts and understand precisely what's working for you and what's not. With Shopify marketing reports, you'll be able to see which marketing channels generate the most gross profit and total sales so you know where to allocate your marketing budget and resources. With Shopify marketing reports, you'll be able to see information such as conversion by first interaction, sales attributed to marketing, and attribution model comparison.

Order Reports

Your order reports detail information like how many orders you get within a specific time-frame, in addition to details like returns and shipping times. They'll help you analyse your entire order process so you can improve it if needs be. They'll highlight issues with customers and products, such as defective items or poor quality merchandise.

Profit Reports

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Your profit reports analyse data like costs, margins, and the overall profitability of your online store. This will help you with your accounting and bookkeeping processes. Generate reports on, for example, profit by product or profit by point of sale location. For these reports to be accurate, you'll need to ensure you've added the correct cost per item within your Shopify account.

Custom Reports

Shopify allows you to create custom reports. These custom reports can be personalised and tailored to your specifications. You'll have access to a range of filtering and editing options to create individualised custom reports that mix and match different metrics and categories within your range of financial reports. For example, combining metrics from your marketing reports with your retail sales to understand correlations through your custom reports.

Acquisition Reports

Your acquisition reports use cookies to show you details of the visitors to your site and where they've come from. View information like sessions over time and by location. And, sessions by referrer. This shows you customer data like where your visitors have come from, such as social media channels or search engines.

10 Ways to Improve Shopify Sales

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Now we know all about the finance reports available with your online store, we're going to go through some practical steps for increasing your sales performance and boosting your business in general. Done correctly, you'll see the data across your sales, customer, and finance reports improving for your online store sales channel.

Use these Shopify tips to grow your sales:

1. Push best-selling products
2. Increase order value
3. Personalise communication
4. Showcase reviews and testimonials
5. Get new subscribers
6. Use chatbots and live chat
7. Use wish lists
8. Grow your organic traffic
9. Do A/B testing
10. Use the right technology

1. Push Best-Selling Products

Use the data within in your inventory reports and behaviour reports to identify what products to push to what customers. You can create custom reports to cross reference data to help you with this. But in essence, you want to spend your budget promoting products to the people who are most likely to buy them. Plus, the people who are most likely to come back to you time and again.

You can do this through PPC ads, social media marketing, on-site recommendations, gift card promotion, or email marketing; any way really.

2. Increase Order Value

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Your reports can give you ideas about ways to increase the average order value across your business. This will reduce your marketing costs and increase your net sales and profits. Your aim is to get as much profit as you can from each sale. In addition to pushing best-selling products as described above, there are a number of ways to increase order value:

• Set a minimum free spend threshold for free shipping.
• Offer a loyalty program with points and rewards.
• Offer a gift cards with specific amounts connected to each gift card, like £25 and £50.
• Bundle items together for a discount.
• Have flexible returns policies.
• Personalise recommendations based on previous activity.

3. Personalise Communication

Research suggests that 75% of consumers consider personalised communication to be a deciding factor for choosing what brand to shop with and also for future purchasing decisions. To that end, personalising communications such as marketing emails, product recommendations, and targeted ads can give you a potentially big boost in sales and repeat customers. Start by segmenting your audience. And then use marketing tools to personalise different interactions with your customers.

4. Showcase Reviews and Testimonials

Reviews and testimonials act as social proof for your customers. Ask customers for reviews on Google, Truspilot, social media sites, and on your online store and various other sales channels. Request reviews of your products, customer service, and their experience with your retail sales store and brand in general. You can also send polls and questionnaires to willing participants to gather information to help improve your online store. Display reviews and testimonials across your platforms.

5. Get New Subscribers

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Subscribing may not be a sale but it can be just as valuable. Your subscribers are people who are interested in having further communication from you. They give you permission to contact them with news, offers, and updates. With the right tactics, you can work to turn these subscribers into paying, long-term, loyal customers. Here are some ways to get more subscribers:

• Have a blog which you post on regularly and prompt people at the end to subscribe.
• Invite people to join an exclusive mailing list in exchange for a discount or gift card with their first order.
• Use an app that generates pop-up spinning wheels that give visitors a surprise discount or gift card.
• Sell or give away a gift card that someone can use themselves after signing up or give to a friend.

Side note: When using a gift card marketing campaign, your gift card sales report is a valuable asset for assessing how effective it is.

6. Use Chatbots and Live Chat

Make use of technologies that maximise your customer service, like chatbots. These can answer customers' questions quickly, saving both parties the time and effort of contacting you through email, for example.

Chatbots can be programmed to answer FAQs, direct people to specific information, and escalate queries if needed. They can also recommend products based on certain data, and pop up after a certain amount of time. Chatbots can be AI-powered and have intelligent-sounding conversions using NLP technologies.

7. Use Wish Lists

A wish list is two-fold. It'll allow customers to save products they like so they can go back to them at a later date. And, it gives you the opportunity to upsell and cross sell products. For example, you might offer a discount on a product in their wish list and let the customer know via email. You might also recommend similar or more expensive products based on their wish list.

Another great thing about a wish list is that the customer needs an account to have one. Therefore, they'll need to provide you with their email address; another opportunity to communicate!

8. Grow Your Organic Traffic

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Create custom reports with acquisition and marketing data, and use those to analyse and grow your organic traffic. Organic traffic is great because it's free. You can do simple things to help boost online store searches in search engines and help your website rank higher. For example, creating regular, up-to-date content, ensuring your site is optimised for mobile searches, and link-building.

9. Do A/B Testing

Finance reports across your sales channels and methods of communications are a great tool to help with A/B testing. And of course, measuring the results. A/B testing is the process of creating two versions of the same thing with one variation. You then use reporting and analytical tools to learn which version performs the best.

For example, you could create two landing pages with different titles and see which generates the most total sales within a specific date range. Or, you can create email campaigns with two emails that have a different CTA. The choices and possibilities are endless, and A/B testing can be done throughout many types of marketing campaigns.

10. Use the Right Technology

Technology is getting smart, there's no doubt. Therefore, in order for a business to maximise its potential retail sales, it needs to utilise the right technologies to avoid getting left behind. Shopify has a good range of technologies to help you grow your business.

Beyond that though you can use technology for your email marketing campaigns, automating your Shopify bookkeeping, or keeping on top of customer communications and customer data. Using automation will save you time, and increase efficiency and productivity throughout your business too.

Put Your Bookkeeping on Autopilot With Link My Books

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Speaking of technology, pairing Link My Books with your Shopify store will allow you to automate your bookkeeping tasks, saving you hours of time every month. It links with your Shopify accounting software, whether that's Xero or QuickBooks, and automatically transfers financial data. Here are the ways in which Link My Books can help you with your business:

Profit & Loss Statements

Link My Books generates profit and loss statements based on each Shopify payout. It breaks down this information into sales, fees, advertising fees, refunds, shipping, amongst others, and sends it to your accounting software. Once it hits your accounting solution, your data will be categorised correctly.

Tax Calculations

Link My Books walks you through a process called the Guided Tax Wizard. Once complete, the software will automatically calculate the correct sales taxes on every item you sell on Shopify. Sales taxes are also included in your statements and sent to your Xero or QuickBooks account.

Benchmarking

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Link My Books Benchmarking is a powerful reporting tool that tells you precisely how your business is performing compared with similar businesses in your industry that sell through the same sales channel as you. It looks at metrics like sales growth, refund ratio, and fee ratio.

Profit & Loss by Channel

Link My Books allows you to connect multiple sales channels to your one account, whether that's Shopify, Amazon, or TikTok Shop, to name a few. Once connected, you can compare the performance of each channel. For example, which generated the most sales or which resulted in the highest shipping costs. You can also analyse data by date range.

Reconciliations

Link My Books makes reconciliation easy. It ensures that each payout matches the transactions in your bank account. Financial data that's transferred to your accounting solution will always be accurate and reflect the true figures across your business. It'll ensure the net sales, gross sales, platform fees, shipping costs, and all the other data in your records is correct.

Drive Net Sales and Shopify Growth With Sales and Finance Reports

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Shopify comes with a load of reports, depending on which subscription plan you choose. You can build custom reports to match your business needs too. With these different reports, you'll be able to gain valuable insights, identify patterns and trends, and gather information about various aspects of customers and sales. In short, Shopify reports are a crucial asset to your business, whatever you sell.

Today, we've also gone through 10 ways to boost your business's performance. These include personalising communication, growing your subscriber list, and using the right technology. Implementing automation technology throughout areas of your business will enhance productivity and make your business more efficient.

Link My Books is a software designed and built for eCommerce sellers. It connect with multiple sales channels, consolidates your data, and sends it to your accounting software. It also comes complete with powerful analytical tools to grow your business.

Sign up for your free Link My Books trial today and manage your finances properly.

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