Refund Profit Impact

Refund Profit Impact shows what refunds cost your profit over time. It’s the money you refunded, less the cost of the goods you got back.

The Refund Profit Impact report, with summary cards, a chart of net profit impact and refund amount, and a table with one row per day

How It’s Calculated

The cards at the top show Net Profit Impact, Refund Amount and Refunds for the date range. With Compare on, each card also shows the change from the comparison period, and the chart adds a line for it.

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:

Refunds: the number of refund payments made in the period. Each successful refund payment counts once. An order refunded twice counts as 2, and so does a refund returned in 2 payments.
Refund Amount: the money refunded to customers in the period.
COGS Recovered: an estimate of the cost of the refunded goods that you get back.
Net Profit Impact: Refund Amount less COGS Recovered. A higher figure means a bigger hit to your profit.

A totals row under the table adds up every column. Show totals row in the Report settings menu turns it on or off for every report. The chart draws Net Profit Impact and Refund Amount, with a toggle for line, area or bar.

COGS Recovered

By the Numbers can’t see which items a refund covered, so it estimates. For each refund it takes the refund amount times the order’s cost of goods as a share of what its items sold for after discounts.

For example, if an order’s goods cost 40% of what they sold for, a refund of 100 recovers 40, and the Net Profit Impact is 60.

The estimate treats every refunded item as back in stock. If you write an item off, the report still counts its cost as recovered. A refund on a high-margin product hurts more than one on a low-margin product, because less of it is recovered.

A refund on an order placed more than 2 years before the range starts counts in Refund Amount. Its COGS Recovered is 0, because the order’s costs aren’t looked up.

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 COGS Recovered is too low and Net Profit Impact too high where costs are missing. Unit Cost Coverage shows what’s missing.

What Counts

A refund counts on the day it was made, in your store’s time zone, not the day of the order.
Only successful refund payments count. Test payments don’t.
Refunds on canceled orders, and on orders whose payment was voided or expired, aren’t counted.
Sales Channel, Segment and Filters narrow the report to refunds on matching orders.

What Good Looks Like

Refunds are a normal cost of selling. What matters is that they stay a small and steady share of your sales.

Refund Amount stays a small share of sales. Compare it with your Total Sales for the same range.
Net Profit Impact doesn’t rise faster than Refund Amount. If it does, refunds are landing on your higher-margin products.

What to Do About It

Find what comes back. Product Return & Kept Rate shows which products are returned most.
Check the trend. Return Rate Trend shows whether returns are rising or falling.
Fix the cause. Sizing, photos, descriptions and packaging are common reasons for returns. Change one, then watch this report.
See the money in. Refunds Processed shows the refund amounts alone, without the profit effect.

Get AI Insight at the top of the report asks Copilot for a short read of it.

Where to Find It

Refund Profit Impact: open Reports and look under Profitability.
Refunds Processed: refund amounts and counts, without the profit effect.
Profit & Margin: gross profit and margin over time.