Total Sales
Total Sales shows the money your store brought in over time, and the parts that make it up: gross sales, discounts, shipping, tax and returns.
How It’s Calculated
The cards at the top show Total Sales, Gross Sales and Orders for the date range. With a comparison on, each card also shows the change from the comparison period. The chart draws Total Sales for each period, and the table breaks it down.
Each row of the table is one period. The length of the date range sets how long a period is:
- 3 days or less: one row per hour
- Up to 93 days: one row per day
- Longer: one row per month
The columns are:
- Orders: the number of orders placed.
- Gross Sales: each item’s price times its quantity, before discounts, shipping, tax and returns. Gift cards sold count here too.
- Discounts: the discounts Shopify records on those orders.
- Shipping: shipping charged on those orders.
- Tax: tax charged on those orders.
- Total Returned: money refunded to customers in the period.
- Net Sales: Gross Sales minus Discounts, plus Shipping, minus Total Returned. It doesn’t add tax, so if your prices include tax, it still contains it.
- Total Sales: Gross Sales minus Discounts, plus Shipping and Tax, minus Total Returned.
If your prices include tax, Gross Sales already contains it. Total Sales then doesn’t add the Tax column a second time, so the columns won’t add up across. Duties aren’t included in any column.
What Counts
- A sale counts on the day the order was placed. A refund counts on the day it was made, not on the day of the original order.
- Orders that were canceled, or whose payment was voided or expired, don’t count. Pending, authorized and partly paid orders do.
- Refunds on orders placed more than 2 years before the start of your date range don’t count.
- Days follow your store’s time zone, and every amount is in your store’s currency.
Sales from every channel count, including point of sale. Use Sales Channel, Segment and Filters to narrow the report down. Reporting Methodology explains these rules in more detail, and why they can differ from Shopify’s reports.
What Good Looks Like
Healthy Total Sales grows compared with the same period a year ago. Set Compare to 1 year ago to see that, since most stores sell more in some months than others. Comparing with Previous period mixes real change with the season.
Look at the parts as well as the total. Discounts and Total Returned should stay a steady share of Gross Sales. If sales grow only because discounts grow, you’re buying that growth with margin.
What to Do About It
When Total Sales falls, find which part moved:
- Fewer orders: check Orders Over Time and First-time vs Returning Sales to see whether you’re losing new customers or repeat ones.
- Smaller orders: check Average Order Value.
- Rising discounts: check Sales by Discount Code to see which codes cost the most.
- Rising returns: check Product Return & Kept Rate to see which products are coming back.
- One channel down: check Sales by Channel.
Get AI Insight at the top of the report asks Copilot for a short read of it, with recommendations, for the date range and filters you chose.
Where to Find It
- Total Sales: open Reports and look under Sales.
- Reporting Methodology: how By the Numbers counts sales and returns.
- How to Choose a Date Range: date ranges and comparisons.