Mastering Shopify Sales Reports to Scale Your Business

Table of Contents

1. Introduction
2. The Significance of Sales Reporting in E-commerce
3. How to Get Sales Report on Shopify: A Step-by-Step Guide
4. Understanding Key Financial Metrics
5. Advanced Reporting for Digital Products
6. Practical Scenarios: Turning Data into Action
7. Transaction Reports vs. Payout Reports
8. The Difference Between Online and Retail Reports
9. Strategic Planning with Shopify Data
10. Transparency and Predictability in Business
11. Conclusion
12. FAQ

Introduction

The creator economy is no longer a fringe movement; it is a global financial force projected to reach a staggering $480 billion by 2027. For the modern entrepreneur, this shift represents a golden opportunity to move beyond the limitations of physical inventory and tap into the high-margin world of digital products. However, scaling a business—whether you are selling organic skincare, handmade crafts, or professional photography workshops—requires more than just a great product. It requires a deep, analytical understanding of your data. Many merchants find themselves overwhelmed by the sheer volume of information generated by their stores, often asking the fundamental question: how to get sales report on Shopify?

At Tevello, our mission is to turn any Shopify store into a digital learning powerhouse. We believe that the key to sustainable growth lies in owning your customer data and maintaining a cohesive brand experience. When you understand your sales reports, you gain the clarity needed to identify your most profitable channels, understand customer behavior, and maximize the lifetime value of every person who visits your site. In this comprehensive guide, we will break down everything you need to know about accessing and interpreting Shopify sales reports. We will explore the nuances of financial statements, the differences between online and retail reporting, and how to use these insights to build a flourishing ecosystem where physical goods and digital courses live side-by-side. Our goal is to empower you with the knowledge to move from manual spreadsheets to automated, data-driven decision-making.

The Significance of Sales Reporting in E-commerce

Before diving into the technical steps of how to get sales report on Shopify, it is essential to understand why these reports are the lifeblood of your operation. A sales report is not just a list of transactions; it is a roadmap of your business’s health. Without accurate reporting, you are essentially flying blind, making guesses about inventory, marketing spend, and product development.

For merchants who are diversifying their revenue streams by adding digital products, reporting becomes even more critical. Unlike physical goods, where costs are tied up in manufacturing and shipping, digital products offer high margins and recurring revenue potential. By analyzing your sales data, you can see exactly how these digital offerings are impacting your overall profitability. You might discover that a customer who buys a $50 yoga mat is 40% more likely to purchase a $30 "Morning Flow" video course if prompted at the right time. This kind of insight is only possible when you have a firm grasp on your reporting tools.

Furthermore, accurate reporting is the foundation of professional bookkeeping and tax compliance. As your store grows, the complexity of managing VAT, GST, and local sales tax increases. Shopify produces a wide range of financial reports that show gross sales, discounts, and returns, providing the raw data necessary to keep your accounts in order. By mastering these tools, you move away from the "never-ending chore" of manual reconciliation and toward a streamlined system that supports long-term scaling.

How to Get Sales Report on Shopify: A Step-by-Step Guide

Accessing your data within the Shopify ecosystem is designed to be intuitive, though the level of detail available often depends on your specific Shopify plan. Whether you are looking for a broad overview or a granular breakdown of a specific product's performance, the process begins in the same place.

Accessing the Analytics Dashboard

To start, log into your Shopify admin panel. On the left-hand sidebar, you will find the "Analytics" section. Clicking this will reveal a submenu containing "Dashboards," "Reports," and "Live View." For the purpose of detailed sales analysis, click on "Reports."

Once you are in the Reports section, you will see various categories such as Sales, Acquisition, Customers, and Finances. Each of these serves a different strategic purpose. If your primary goal is to understand revenue, the "Sales" category is your most important destination.

Generating Specific Sales Reports

In the Sales category, you can choose from several pre-built report types. Common options include:

• Sales over time: This report shows your total sales broken down by day, week, or month. It is excellent for spotting seasonal trends or measuring the impact of a specific marketing campaign.
• Sales by product: This is one of the most valuable reports for inventory management. It tells you exactly which items are flying off the shelves and which are taking up space.
• Sales by channel: If you sell on Instagram, Facebook, and your online store, this report shows you which platform is driving the most revenue.

After selecting a report, you have the ability to set a custom date range. This allows you to compare this month’s performance against the same period last year or evaluate the success of a holiday weekend sale.

Exporting Your Data for Deeper Analysis

While Shopify’s internal viewing tools are powerful, many merchants prefer to conduct more advanced analysis in software like Excel or Google Sheets. To do this, simply click the "Export" button at the top right of any report. You can choose to export the current page or the full report, usually in a CSV format. This is particularly helpful for sharing data with your accountant or building custom data visualizations to track your progress toward specific KPIs. If you are looking to see all the key features for courses and communities that can enhance your storefront, having this baseline sales data is essential for measuring the ROI of your new digital offerings.

Understanding Key Financial Metrics

To truly master how to get sales report on Shopify, you must look beyond the "Total Sales" figure. Understanding the underlying metrics is what separates a hobbyist from a professional merchant.

Gross Sales vs. Net Sales

Gross sales represent the total value of all orders placed during a specific period. However, this number can be misleading because it does not account for discounts, returns, or cancellations. Net sales, on the other hand, is the figure that actually reflects your revenue. It is calculated by taking your gross sales and subtracting discounts and returns. Monitoring the gap between gross and net sales can help you identify if your promotional strategies are too aggressive or if a specific product has a high return rate that needs addressing.

Taxes Collected and Shipping Costs

For businesses operating in multiple jurisdictions, the "Taxes" report is non-negotiable. Shopify automatically calculates and collects tax based on your settings, but you are responsible for remitting those funds to the correct authorities. Regularly pulling a sales report by billing location ensures you are staying compliant and helps you prepare for tax season without the last-minute panic.

Shipping costs are another vital metric. While these are often passed on to the customer, many merchants offer free shipping over a certain threshold. Tracking your fulfillment expenses against your total revenue allows you to see if your shipping strategy is eating too deeply into your margins. If unifying your stack is a priority, start by a simple, all-in-one price for unlimited courses.

Discounts and Returns

Discounts are a powerful tool for customer acquisition, but they must be used strategically. The "Sales by discount" report shows you which coupon codes are being used most frequently. If you notice that a 20% off code is driving a high volume of sales but your net profit is plummeting, it may be time to pivot to a different loyalty strategy, such as offering a free digital "Quick Start" guide with every purchase instead of a cash discount.

Advanced Reporting for Digital Products

When you transition into selling digital products, such as online courses or memberships, your reporting needs evolve. This is where Tevello’s native Shopify integration provides a distinct technical advantage. Unlike third-party platforms that redirect your customers to a different URL, our solution keeps every transaction and interaction within your own Shopify store.

The Power of Native Integration

Because Tevello is built natively for Shopify, every course sale is recorded just like a physical product sale. This means you don’t have to reconcile data from two different platforms. When you look at your "Sales by product" report, your "Advanced Photography Masterclass" will appear right next to your "Professional Tripod."

This unified view is essential for understanding the true Lifetime Value (LTV) of your customers. For example, by generating over €243,000 by upselling existing customers, brands have demonstrated that the most profitable customer is the one you already have. When your digital and physical products share a reporting ecosystem, you can easily identify which physical purchases lead to digital upsells and vice versa.

Tracking Engagement as a Sales Metric

In the world of digital learning, engagement is a leading indicator of future sales. While Shopify’s standard reports tell you who bought a course, tools within our Unlimited plan allow you to see how students are interacting with that content. If a customer completes 100% of your "Beginner Crochet" course, they are a prime candidate for your "Intermediate Pattern Bundle." By combining Shopify’s sales data with Tevello’s engagement metrics, you can create highly targeted email marketing segments that drive recurring revenue.

Practical Scenarios: Turning Data into Action

To illustrate the power of these reports, let’s look at how different merchants might use them in the real world.

The Artisan Coffee Roaster

Imagine a merchant selling specialty coffee beans. By reviewing the Shopify App Store listing merchants install from, they decide to add a "Home Barista Basics" video course to their store.

By analyzing their "Sales by product" report, they notice that customers who buy their most expensive espresso blend rarely return for a second purchase. They hypothesize that these customers might be struggling to dial in the beans at home. They begin bundling the video course with the espresso blend. Three months later, their sales report shows a 25% increase in repeat purchases for that specific blend. The data confirmed that the digital product added value to the physical good, increasing customer satisfaction and LTV.

The Crafting Influencer

A popular crochet artist has been selling physical patterns and yarn for years. They decide to move their community and learning materials onto Shopify to own their brand experience. By seeing how the app natively integrates with Shopify, they are able to offer a unified login that reduces customer support friction.

Using the "Sales by billing location" report, they notice a huge surge in customers from Australia. However, the shipping costs for yarn to Australia are prohibitive. To capitalize on this interest without the logistics headache, they launch an Australian-specific digital marketing campaign focusing on their "Mastering the Stitch" digital course. This allows them to capture revenue from a region that was previously unprofitable due to shipping barriers. This is a prime example of how one brand sold $112K+ by bundling courses and digital content to reach a global audience.

Transaction Reports vs. Payout Reports

One area that often confuses merchants is the difference between a transaction report and a payout report. Understanding this distinction is vital for accurate bank reconciliation.

What is a Transaction Report?

A transaction report is a record of every payment event that occurs in your store. This includes successful charges, refunds, and even failed attempts. It is a log of customer activity. If you receive 100 PayPal payments in a week, each of those is an individual transaction. These reports help you answer questions like, "Which payment gateway is most popular among my customers?" or "What is the total value of refunds issued this month?"

What is a Payout Report?

A payout report, conversely, is a record of the money that Shopify (or your payment gateway) actually sends to your bank account. Because gateways often bundle several days' worth of transactions into a single transfer and deduct their processing fees first, your payout amount will rarely match your daily sales total exactly.

Shopify Payout reports are essential for bookkeeping because they show the "Net Revenue" you are receiving. They break down the gross charges, subtract the transaction fees, and account for any adjustments or held funds. For merchants looking for predictable pricing without hidden transaction fees, Tevello offers a significant advantage by charging 0% transaction fees on your course sales. This makes your payout reconciliation much simpler because you aren't calculating an additional "success fee" for every student who joins your community.

The Difference Between Online and Retail Reports

If you operate both an online store and a physical brick-and-mortar location, Shopify distinguishes between "Sales Reports" and "Retail Sales Reports."

Online Sales Reports

Standard sales reports focus on your e-commerce metrics. They track digital traffic, conversion rates for your online checkout, and the performance of your web-based marketing. For digital product sellers, this is where you will spend 90% of your time. You can analyze strategies for selling over 4,000 digital courses natively by looking at how your online storefront converts visitors into students.

Retail Sales Reports (POS)

Retail sales reports are designed for the Shopify POS (Point of Sale) system. They include data specific to physical locations, such as which staff member processed a sale or which register was used. For an omnichannel business, these reports are invaluable for understanding regional preferences. You might find that your physical store in London sells mostly "Yoga Mats," while your online store sees a higher volume of "Mindfulness Meditation" course sign-ups.

Combining these two views allows for a holistic "Omnichannel" strategy. You could, for example, offer a QR code at your physical checkout that gives in-store customers a discount on your digital community. Tracking the usage of that specific code in your online sales reports will show you exactly how well your physical presence is driving digital growth.

Strategic Planning with Shopify Data

Once you know how to get sales report on Shopify, the next step is using that data for long-term strategic planning. Data should inform your product roadmap, your marketing budget, and your community engagement efforts.

Identifying High-Value Customers

Not all customers are created equal. By using the "Sales by customer" report, you can identify your "Super-Fans"—the individuals who buy every new physical product and enroll in every new course. These are the people who should be invited to your exclusive inner-circle community. By offering a unified login that reduces customer support friction, you make it easy for these high-value customers to move between their physical order history and their digital learning dashboard.

Optimizing Your Product Mix

Your reports will quickly reveal your "Hero Products" and your "Underperformers." If a particular digital course has high initial sales but a high refund rate, it may indicate that the marketing is over-promising or the content needs updating. Conversely, if a low-cost "Mini-Course" has an incredibly high conversion rate, it might be the perfect "Tripwire" offer to include in your Facebook ad funnel.

Many merchants find that retention strategies that drive repeat digital purchases are far more cost-effective than constantly hunting for new customers. By analyzing which courses keep people coming back, you can focus your energy on creating content that builds long-term loyalty.

Transparency and Predictability in Business

At Tevello, we believe that your software should be a partner in your growth, not a tax on your success. This philosophy extends to how we structure our own pricing and features. Many platforms in the digital learning space use complicated tier structures or, worse, take a percentage of every sale you make. We find this counter-productive to the merchant's goal of scaling.

Simple, All-in-One Pricing

We offer a flat-rate plan that supports unlimited members, known as the Unlimited Plan. For $29.99 per month, you gain access to:

• Unlimited courses and students.
• Unlimited video hosting and bandwidth.
• Full community features (member directories, social feeds, and profiles).
• Drip content scheduling to keep students engaged over time.
• Quizzes and assessments to track student progress.

By choosing a fixed-cost model, your sales reporting becomes much easier to manage. You don't have to worry about your software costs ballooning just because you had a successful month. You keep 100% of what you earn, allowing you to reinvest those profits back into your marketing or product development.

Building Your Curriculum Risk-Free

We also believe in the "build before you buy" approach. This is why we offer a 14-day free trial. You can install the app, set up your entire curriculum, customize your community space, and see exactly how the native integration looks within your Shopify admin—all before paying a cent. This allows you to validate your idea and ensure our tools align with your business goals.

Conclusion

Mastering your Shopify sales reports is more than just an administrative task; it is a fundamental requirement for any merchant who wants to thrive in the modern e-commerce landscape. By understanding the difference between gross and net sales, navigating the nuances of transaction and payout reports, and leveraging the power of native digital product integration, you position your brand for sustainable, data-driven growth.

At Tevello, we are committed to providing you with the tools to turn your store into a digital learning powerhouse without the complexity of third-party redirects or the burden of transaction fees. Whether you are just starting your journey or looking to unify a fragmented system, the data in your Shopify reports will always be your most reliable guide. Remember, every data point is a story about a customer’s journey with your brand. By learning to read those stories, you can build a business that not only sells products but also fosters a thriving community.

Ready to take control of your digital products and see the data for yourself? Start your 14-day free trial today with 0% transaction fees and see how simple selling courses can be. To build your community without leaving Shopify, start by reviewing the Shopify App Store listing merchants install from.

FAQ

1. Can I see sales reports for digital products specifically?

Yes. In Shopify, you can filter your "Sales by product" report to show only your digital offerings. If you use a native solution like Tevello, these sales are integrated directly into your Shopify analytics, allowing you to see them alongside your physical product revenue for a complete financial overview.

2. Why does my Shopify payout not match my daily sales report?

Payouts rarely match daily sales because payment gateways (like Shopify Payments or PayPal) often collect transactions over several days before transferring them to your bank. Additionally, these gateways deduct their processing fees from the gross amount before the payout is issued. You should use the "Payouts" report under Finances for bank reconciliation.

3. Do I need a specific Shopify plan to access detailed sales reports?

While the Basic Shopify plan offers essential reporting, more granular data—such as "Sales by product" or "Sales over time"—is typically available on the "Shopify" plan and higher. However, all plans can access basic financial summaries and transaction data.

4. How can I track the profit margins of my digital courses?

Since digital courses have no shipping costs and minimal COGS (Cost of Goods Sold) after the initial creation, your primary "cost" is your software subscription and marketing spend. By using a flat-rate tool like Tevello, you can easily calculate profit by subtracting your $29.99 monthly fee and ad spend from your total course revenue, as we never take a percentage of your sales.