Margins dashboard metrics library

About

Margins tracks 100+ metrics and line items across your whole business: sales, cash, products, returns, channel profit, marketing efficiency, and where your money goes when you spend it. This article lists every one of them and says what each measures, so you can check whether Margins covers the numbers you track today.

The dashboard has four tabs. Home holds the sales, cash, product, returns, profit and marketing metrics, in sections 2 to 7. Lifetime value (coming soon), Spend analysis is section 8 and SKU analysis is section 9. Each tab has its own period control, so they can sit on different date ranges at once.

Every metric can be sliced by channel and compared against the previous period. Four of them can be compared against similar brands rather than only against your own history. And the marketing ratios are calculated twice, once from your own sales and once from what the ad platforms report, so you can see the gap between the two.

In this article

How every metric breaks down
Overview
Sales by business type
Products
Returned items
Channel performance
Marketing
Spend analysis
SKU analysis
FAQs

1. How every metric breaks down

Most metrics on the page aren't a single number. They're a number plus a set of ways to slice it, and the slices are what turn a total into something you can act on.

Slice	What it shows
Trend	The metric plotted across the selected period, so you see the shape and not just the total.
By channel	The metric split by sales channel, such as Shopify, Amazon, or TikTok Shop.
By store	The metric split by connected store, for brands running more than one.
vs. previous period	The same metric for the period immediately before the one selected, of equal length, with the change between them.
New vs. returning	The metric split by whether the order came from a first-time customer or a repeat one.
Peer benchmark	The equivalent figure for a set of brands similar to yours, shown alongside your own.
$ or % of sales	A toggle between the dollar amount and the same figure as a percentage of sales.
Drilldown	Click into a card to see the line items that add up to the headline number.

Each tab has its own Period control at the top, with a Compared to control alongside it on Home. Setting the period drives every card on that tab. The tabs don't share a period, so Home and Spend analysis can sit on different windows at the same time.

Drilldowns are available from sales, cash, returned items, and all four marketing ratios. Peer benchmarks are live on AOV, sales growth, return rate, and the two platform blended marketing ratios. On Spend analysis the peer column is present but marked Benchmark data coming soon, so it carries no values yet.

Not every card carries every slice. Where one is missing, the section below says so.

The Margins dashboard period and comparison selector screenshot

2. Overview

The top of the dashboard answers two questions: how much you've sold, and how much cash you're holding right now.

Metric	What it measures	Available slices
Total sales (GMV sales)	The full value of orders placed in the period across every connected channel, after discounts and excluding tax. GMV is gross merchandise value.	Trend, by store, vs. previous period, peer growth
Gross sales	The full value of sales before any discounts or deductions.	None
Fulfillment rate	The rate of units in the period that have been fulfilled.	None
Net cash balance	The combined balance of your connected bank and payment accounts.	By currency, by account, over time
Cash inflow	Money that came into your accounts during the period.	By account
Cash outflow	Money that left your accounts during the period.	By account
Net cash flow	Inflow minus outflow for the period.	By account
Live sales	A running feed of orders and invoices as they come in, each showing its amount, the time it landed, and the customer's location.	None

Net cash balance is a point-in-time figure, so it reads as of now rather than for the period selected. Cash inflow, cash outflow, and net cash flow all follow the selected period.

Total sales vs. peer growth compares how fast your sales are growing against how fast similar brands are growing. It's a growth-rate comparison rather than a size comparison, so a smaller brand growing quickly comes out ahead of a larger one that's flat.

3. Sales by business type (GMV sales)

Margins splits sales into four business types:

DTC and marketplace
B2B sales
Physical stores
Services and other

Each carries the same three headline metrics:

Metric	What it measures
Sales	The value of orders in that business type for the selected period.
Orders	The number of orders in that business type for the selected period.
AOV	Average order value, or what the typical order was worth, calculated as sales divided by orders.

AOV = Sales ÷ Orders

Here's what each business type includes and which slices it carries.

Business type	What's included	Trend and vs. previous period	By channel	New vs. returning
DTC and Marketplace	Your Shopify store, plus marketplaces such as Amazon, eBay, Walmart, and TikTok Shop	Yes	Yes	Yes, on sales, orders, and AOV
B2B	Wholesale, retail and other business-to-business orders	Yes	Yes	No
Physical stores	In-person and point-of-sale orders	Yes	Yes	Yes, on sales, orders, and AOV
Services and other	Service revenue and anything that isn't a product sale	Yes	Yes	No

Running more than one of these at once is the case this section is built for. A brand doing DTC, wholesale, and a pop-up shop sees each one separately and all of them together, without keeping three spreadsheets.

Peers AOV sits alongside DTC and Marketplace AOV, so you can see whether your average order is above or below what comparable brands are getting.

Screenshot of a sales card showing the trend, channel breakdown, and previous-period comparison.

Sales composition

Click on any sales card to see details on sales over time, channel breakdowns, comparisons against different periods, an a breakdown into the line items that build up to the headline figure, in the order they stack. This is where a jump in sales resolves into products, shipping income, or a discount that came off.

Line item	What it measures
Product sales	The value of the products themselves, before shipping and fees.
Shipping income	What customers paid you for shipping.
Gift wraps	Gift-wrapping charges collected at checkout.
Tip income	Tips customers added at checkout.
Services	Revenue from services rather than physical goods.
Royalties	Licensing and royalty income.
Restocking fee	Fees charged to customers when they returned an item.
Return shipping fee	Shipping costs passed back to customers on returns.
Various fees	Other fees charged to customers
Sales before discounts	Everything above, added together.
Discounts & promotions	The total value of discounts and promotions applied in the period.
Sales	Sales before discounts, minus discounts and promotions.

Sales before discounts − Discounts & promotions = Sales

The Sales figure at the bottom of this drilldown is the same Sales figure on the card it opened from, so the breakdown always reconciles to the headline.

4. Products

The Products section ranks your catalog three ways and shows the per-product numbers behind each ranking.

Best $ sellers: Products ranked by sales value in the period.
Most items sold: Products ranked by units sold in the period.
Most profitable: Products ranked by profit in the period.

Metric	What it measures
Sales per product	Sales value for a single product.
Units sold per product	Units sold for a single product.
Profit per product	Sales for that product, minus the product cost of the units sold.
Profit margin per product	Profit as a percentage of that product's sales.
Missing cost indicator	A flag on any product that has no cost recorded.

Best sellers and most profitable are rarely the same list, which is the reason both are here.

Note: A product with no cost recorded has nothing to subtract, so its profit reads higher than it really is. The missing cost indicator points at exactly those products rather than leaving you to find them, and adding the costs corrects every profit figure that uses them.

5. Returned items

A return costs you twice: the sale comes back, and the unit may or may not return to sellable stock. This section tracks both, which is what separates a returns problem from a restocking one.

You can choose to track these metrics by return date or by order date.

Metric	What it measures	Available slices
Return rate	The share of your sales that came back as returns.	By channel, trend, vs. previous period, peer benchmark
Returned units	The number of units returned in the period.	By channel, trend
Returned sales	The value of those returned units.	By channel, trend
% restocked	The share of returned units that made it back into sellable inventory.	By channel
Restocked & returned units	Returned units and restocked units side by side, so the gap between them is visible.	None

Peers return rate shows the equivalent rate for similar brands. A return rate well above your peers' usually points at sizing, product photography, or one specific SKU rather than at the channel, which makes it one of the faster things on this page to act on.

Note: Restock data isn't equally complete on every channel. Margins syncs restock data automatically from Shopify, Amazon, and Walmart. Where a channel doesn't report restocks, % restocked for that channel reads lower than what actually came back to the shelf.

6. Channel performance

This is the section that shows which channels are actually making money. It's a profit waterfall: start at gross sales, subtract each cost in turn, and land at contribution profit, for every channel side by side.

Channel performance includes your live, synced data plus estimates customized for your business where real data isn't yet available to give you live visibility into your channels profitability.

Line item	What it measures
Gross sales	Sales value before discounts and returns.
Discounts & promotions	Discounts and promotional value applied to those sales.
Sales	Gross sales minus discounts and promotions.
Refunds & returns	The value of refunded and returned orders expected in the period.
Net sales	Sales minus refunds and returns.
Product COGS	Cost of Goods Sold, meaning what the products you sold cost you.
Cost of delivery	What it cost to get those orders to customers.
Shipping & fulfillment costs	Pick, pack, and fulfillment costs, broken out by fulfillment method such as FBA expected in the period.
Selling fees	Commissions and referral fees the sales channel charges you.
Processing fees	Payment processing fees expected for that period, also shown per payment processor.
Gross profit	Net sales minus product COGS and all the fulfillment and fee lines above it.
Ad spend	Advertising spend attributed to the channel, also shown by ad account.
Affiliate commissions	Commissions paid to affiliates and partners (relevant for TikTok Shop only).
Product giveaways	The cost of units given away rather than sold.
Contribution profit	Gross profit minus ad spend, affiliate commissions, and giveaways.
Restock rate	The share of returned units that went back into sellable inventory.

Every line in this waterfall can be viewed by platform or by store, and in dollars or as a percentage of sales. Two extra controls sit on top of it:

Blended average rates show the average rate you're actually paying on a cost line across the channels in view, rather than each channel's individual rate.
Fixed cost and rate-based cost estimates fill in costs that aren't reported per order. Margins estimates them either as a fixed amount per order or as a rate applied to sales.

Key takeaway: Gross profit shows whether a channel's unit economics work. Contribution profit shows whether the channel still works after you've paid to acquire the order.

Screenshot of the channel performance waterfall comparing three channels as a percentage of sales.

7. Marketing

Every marketing ratio is calculated twice, and the difference between the two is the point of the section.

True blended ratios use your actual sales, across all channels, measured against your total ad spend. They show what your advertising did to the business.

Platform blended ratios use what the ad platforms themselves report, meaning their attributed conversions and conversion value, measured against that same spend. They show what the platforms are claiming.

The two rarely agree, and the gap between them is attribution. Platforms take credit for orders that would have happened anyway, and they can't see orders that closed somewhere they don't track. Having both on one screen is what makes the gap visible.

Metric	What it measures	Available slices
True blended ROAS	Return on ad spend (ROAS), calculated from your own sales.	By channel, trend, vs. previous period
Platform blended ROAS	Return on ad spend, calculated from the conversion value the ad platforms report.	By channel, trend
True blended CPA	Cost per acquisition (CPA), calculated from your own order and customer counts.	By channel, trend, vs. previous period
Platform blended CPA	Cost per acquisition, calculated from platform-reported conversions.	By channel, trend

True blended ROAS     = Sales ÷ Total ad spend
Platform blended ROAS = Platform-reported conversion value ÷ Total ad spend
True blended CPA      = Total ad spend ÷ Orders
Platform blended CPA  = Total ad spend ÷ Platform-reported conversions

Under the New customers toggle, the same four use new-customer sales and new-customer acquisitions in place of total sales and total orders.

Note: On these cards a green change marks a favorable move rather than an upward one, so a falling CPA and a rising ROAS are both green.

Two things sit alongside these four cards rather than as cards of their own.

Peers ROAS and Peers CPA appear as the right-hand figure on the two Platform blended cards, so peer comparison is available on the platform view and not on the true blended one. And an All customers / New customers toggle at the top of the section recalculates all four ratios against first-time customers only, which is how you get new-customer ROAS and CPA.

Ad spend metrics

Metric	What it measures
Total ad spend	Everything spent on advertising in the selected period.
Ad spend by platform	Spend split by ad platform, such as Meta, Google Ads, or Amazon Ads.
Ad spend by ad account	Spend split by individual ad account, for brands running several on one platform.
Ad spend by channel	Spend attributed to a sales channel.
Ad spend over time	Spend plotted across the selected period.
Selected period spend	Total spend for the period selected.
Trailing 30-day average spend	Average spend over the 30 days up to the end of the selected period.
Trailing 60-day average spend	The same, over 60 days.
Trailing 90-day average spend	The same, over 90 days.

The trailing averages exist so a single heavy spend day doesn't read as a trend. Selected-period spend well above the trailing 90-day average means you're scaling. Well below means you're pulling back.

Conversion and acquisition metrics

Metric	What it measures
Conversions	Conversions as reported by the ad platforms.
Conversion value	The sales value the ad platforms attribute to those conversions.
New customer sales	Sales from customers ordering for the first time.
New customer acquisitions	The number of first-time customers acquired in the period.
Number of acquisitions	The count used as the denominator in the CPA figures.
Orders	Total orders in the period, used as the CPA denominator.
Sales	Total sales in the period, used as the ROAS numerator.

Screenshot of a ROAS and CPA card showing true blended and platform blended figures side by side.

8. Spend analysis

The Spend analysis tab answers a different question from everything above it: not what you earned, but what you paid out to earn it, and whether that spending is keeping pace with your growth.

Note: Spend analysis is built on cash spend, meaning money that actually left your accounts, rather than accrual accounting entries. It answers "what did we pay out", not "what did we book". That's why a figure here won't always match a cost line in section 7.

This tab has its own Period control and a View by control that sets how much category detail you see.

Category distribution

Metric	What it measures
Total spend	Everything you spent in the selected period, across every category.
Spend by category	The amount spent in each spend category, such as paid online ads, pick and pack, selling fees, or production costs.
Category share of spend	Each category as a percentage of total spend, so the big line items surface without arithmetic.

Categories are listed alongside a donut chart and paged through when there are more than fit on screen.

Spend by category trend

Metric	What it measures
Spend by category, as % of sales	Each category's spend measured against sales for the same month. This is the one that shows a category growing faster than revenue.
Spend by category, as $ spend	The same trend in dollars rather than as a ratio.

Both run month by month and can be read as a table or as a line chart.

Key takeaway: Dollars tell you what a category cost. Percentage of sales tells you whether it's getting more expensive to run your business.

Peer comparison

Metric	What it measures
Amount spend	What you spent in each category over the period.
% of sales	That category's spend as a share of your sales.
Peers	The equivalent share for similar brands.

Vendor spend

Metric	What it measures
Existing vendors	Vendors you were already paying, ranked by spend, each showing the categories it maps to.
Change vs previous	How much a vendor's spend moved against the previous period, in dollars and as a percentage, with the direction.
New vendors	Vendors that appear in this period and weren't in the one before, ranked by spend.

Change vs previous is what turns a spend total into something you can act on: it names the vendor that got more expensive rather than just the category that grew.

Ask AI about your spend

A set of ready-made prompts you can copy into an AI tool, aimed at questions the dashboard doesn't answer directly, such as which categories are growing faster than sales and which vendors are behind the change.

Note: A banner reads Some expenses aren't included because transactions are waiting for your input, with a Review link. Uncategorized transactions sit outside these totals until they're reviewed, so a spend figure can read low while that banner is showing.

9. SKU analysis

The SKU analysis tab is one table with a row for every active SKU in the selected period, so you can rank products against each other on sales and on profitability rather than reading them one at a time.

Column	What it measures
Product	The product name and its SKU, with a link out to the product itself.
Source	The sales channel the row's figures came from.
Sales	Sales value for that SKU in the period.
Discounts	Discounts applied to that SKU, shown as a negative.
Net Sales	Sales minus discounts minus refunds for that SKU.
Product COGS	Cost of Goods Sold for the units sold.
Profit	Net sales minus product COGS.
Profit margin	Profit as a percentage of that SKU's net sales.

Net Sales = Sales − Discounts Profit = Net Sales − Product COGS Profit margin = Profit ÷ Net Sales

Important: A SKU with no cost recorded shows Product COGS of $0, which makes its profit equal its net sales and its margin read 100.00%. That's the missing-cost problem in section 5 seen at the row level. A banner at the top of the tab flags it and links to Review Products, and filling the costs in corrects every figure in the table.

Controls on this tab

Control	What it does
Period, From, To	Sets the date range, including an All time option and explicit start and end dates.
Filters	Narrows the table. [VERIFY: which fields can be filtered]
Sources	Limits the table to specific connected channels.
US$ / Units	Switches every figure between dollars and unit counts.
Show returns	Brings returns into the table when toggled on.
Search	Finds a row by product name or SKU.
Export	Downloads the table. [VERIFY: which file formats Export offers]

The US$ / Units switch is the one worth knowing about: the same table answers "which products made the most money" and "which products moved the most units", and those are rarely the same ranking.

FAQs

Where does Margins get these numbers?

Margins syncs with your sources of truths, including your sales channels, payment processors, ad platforms, banks and credit cards, bill management platforms, invoicing platforms, and more.

What's the difference between true blended and platform blended ROAS?

True blended ROAS uses your own sales figures across all channels. Platform blended ROAS uses the conversion value the ad platforms report for themselves. The true blended figure shows what happened to your business, and the platform figure shows what the platforms are claiming credit for.

Can I compare my numbers against other brands?

Yes, on five metrics: AOV, ROAS, CPA, return rate, and sales growth. Each one shows the equivalent figure for a set of brands similar to yours next to your own, so you can tell an industry-wide shift from something specific to your business.

Can I see every metric broken down by channel?

Most of them, but not all. Sales, orders, AOV, return rate, ad spend, and the marketing ratios all carry a channel breakdown. Cash metrics break down by account and by currency instead, since cash arrives in accounts rather than channels.

Need help?

If you're evaluating Margins and want to know whether a metric you track today is covered, reach out to our team through chat or at [email protected], and tell us the metric name and the channel you track it on.