Orders Over Time

Orders Over Time shows how many orders your store took in each period, how many customers placed them, and what they were worth.

How It’s Calculated

The cards at the top show Orders, Customers and Total Sales for the date range. With a comparison on, each card also shows the change from the comparison period. The chart draws Orders for each period, and the table has one row per period.

The columns are:

• Orders: the number of orders placed.
• Customers: the number of different customers who placed them.
• Total Sales: Gross Sales minus Discounts, plus Shipping and Tax, minus money refunded in the 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

A customer who orders twice in a period counts once under Customers for that period. The Customers card adds up the periods, so a customer who orders in 2 different periods counts twice there. An order with no customer attached counts as its own customer.

What Counts

• An order counts on the day it was placed, in your store’s time zone.
• Orders that were canceled, or whose payment was voided or expired, don’t count. Pending, authorized and partly paid orders do.
• Total Sales drops by refunds on the day they were made, not on the day of the original order. A period with many refunds can show less than the orders in it were worth. Refunds on orders placed more than 2 years before the start of the date range aren’t counted.
• Orders from every channel count, including point of sale. Use Sales Channel, Segment and Filters to narrow the report down.
• Amounts are in your store’s currency.

What Good Looks Like

Healthy order volume grows compared with the same period a year ago. Set Compare to 1 year ago, so the same season is compared with the same season.

Read Orders next to Customers. If orders grow and customers grow with them, you’re winning more customers. If orders grow while customers stay flat, the same customers are ordering more often.

What to Do About It

• Orders falling, customers falling: you’re losing customers. Check First-time vs Returning Sales to see whether new or repeat customers dropped.
• Orders flat, sales falling: orders are getting smaller. Check Average Order Value.
• One period standing out: check Sales by Channel for where it came from, then record the reason as an annotation.
• Orders falling after a change in ad spend: check your spend and traffic on Advertising.

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

• Orders Over Time: open Reports and look under Sales.
• Total Sales: the same orders, broken into gross sales, discounts, shipping, tax and returns.
• How to Choose a Date Range: date ranges and comparisons.