Profit by Tag
Profit by Tag shows the gross profit each product tag brought in, after the cost of the goods sold.
How It’s Calculated
The report is a table with one row per product tag. Rows are listed with the most gross profit first, up to 500 tags. Use it to compare groups of products that you’ve tagged in Shopify, such as a category or a season.
The tags come from your catalog as it is now, not as it was when the order was placed. A product with 3 tags counts in all 3 rows. Products with no tags aren’t in the report at all.
The columns are:
- Tag: the product tag.
- Orders: the number of orders that included a tagged product.
- Units Sold: the number of units sold.
- Net Sales: what the products sold for, after discounts: price times quantity, less the discount on that line. It leaves out returns, shipping and tax.
- COGS: the cost of the goods sold, worked out as quantity × unit cost.
- Gross Profit: Net Sales less COGS.
- Gross Margin: Gross Profit as a share of Net Sales.
- Units Returned, Return Rate and Kept Profit: the effect of returns, explained below.
A totals row under the table adds up the rows listed. Because a product can be in several tags, the totals can be higher than your real sales. Show totals row in the Report settings menu turns it on or off for every report.
Net Sales here means something different from Net Sales in Total Sales. This one is only items less discounts. Gross Profit isn’t reduced by returns, and shipping and tax aren’t part of it.
Unit Costs
COGS uses each product variant’s Cost per item from Shopify. It uses the cost set today, not the cost when the order was placed.
A unit whose variant has no cost counts as zero cost, so Gross Profit and Gross Margin are too high where costs are missing. This report has no Cost Coverage column. Unit Cost Coverage shows what’s missing.
Returns Columns
Returns take time to arrive, so these 3 columns count only orders placed more than 90 days ago:
- Units Returned: units refunded, counted against the order they came from, not the day of the refund.
- Return Rate: Units Returned as a share of units sold on those orders. A dash means fewer than 20 units, too few for a rate. It doesn’t mean no returns.
- Kept Profit: the profit on the units customers kept: each line’s net sales less its cost, weighted by the share of its units not returned.
Order lines that don’t record whether they were returned are left out too.
For a date range inside the last 90 days, Units Returned and Kept Profit show 0 and Return Rate shows a dash. For a longer range, they cover only the older orders, so don’t compare Kept Profit with Gross Profit in the same row.
What Counts
- Orders count on the day they were processed, in your store’s time zone.
- Canceled orders, and orders whose payment was voided or expired, are left out.
- Sales Channel, Segment and Filters narrow the report. There’s no comparison period.
What Good Looks Like
A tag is only useful here if it groups products that belong together. Read each row against your own other tags.
- Gross Margin is similar across tags that should behave alike. A tag far below the rest is worth a look.
- Return Rate is low on the tags that carry most of your profit.
What to Do About It
- Tag what you want to compare. Add tags in Shopify for a category, a season or a supplier. Tags are read as they are now, so a new tag also applies to past orders.
- Review low-margin tags. Check their prices, costs and discounts.
- Look inside a tag. Profit by Product shows its products one by one.
Get AI Insight at the top of the report asks Copilot for a short read of it.
Where to Find It
- Profit by Tag: open Reports and look under Profitability.
- Products Sold by Tag: units and sales by tag.
- Profit & Margin: gross profit and margin over time.