Your Shopify numbers, to the cent

How we tested

A Shopify test store holds 150 orders made on purpose to be awkward: percentage and fixed discounts, free shipping, partial and full refunds, returns with and without restocking, orders cancelled before fulfilment, a test order, two markets (one with VAT included in prices, one with tax added on top), a second currency, bundles, a digital product and an order placed minutes after midnight. The same orders go through our real Shopify reader and our real profit engine, and an automated test fails if any figure moves. The orders and amounts are synthetic: no merchant data is involved.

From Shopify’s Total sales to Marginful’s net revenue

September 2026 on the test store, all orders:

Shopify “Total sales”

₪ 152,309.10

minus taxes

− ₪ 19,884.19

Marginful net revenue

₪ 132,424.91

Identical, to the cent.

Line by line, when prices exclude tax

On the 32 US-market orders, every revenue line is the same number in both:

Where the numbers differ, and why

Three things make a Shopify report and Marginful read differently. All three are on purpose, and the test covers each.

• Cancelled orders

  Shopify counts the 7 orders cancelled before fulfilment as orders (149 in all). Marginful leaves them out of the order count (142) because no sale happened. Both leave out test orders. The money of the cancelled orders nets to zero, so revenue still matches.

• Prices that include VAT

  When your prices include VAT, Marginful’s sales lines include it too. Take the VAT out and you get Shopify’s figure exactly: on the 110 Israeli-market orders, net sales are ₪ 111,816.78 with VAT, minus ₪ 17,067.55 of VAT, equals Shopify’s ₪ 94,749.23.

• Refunds after month end

  Shopify reports a refund in the month it is paid. Marginful keeps it on the month of the order it belongs to. In the test, one September order was refunded ₪ 472.00 (₪ 400.00 plus ₪ 72.00 VAT) in October: Shopify shows it in October, Marginful in September.

Check it on your own store

1. In Shopify, open Analytics → Reports → Sales over time and pick a month.
2. Note Total sales and Taxes. Total sales minus Taxes is the figure to compare.
3. In Marginful, open Profit or P&L for the same month and read Net revenue.
4. They should match. If your prices include VAT, or you have cancelled orders or refunds across month ends, the differences above explain what you see.

Shopify can rename its reports; look for the one with sales, discounts, returns, shipping and taxes.

What this does not prove

Costs, payment fees and ad spend are not in Shopify’s reports, so profit itself cannot be compared to a Shopify number. Marginful shows the whole bridge from gross sales to net profit on the Profit page and defines every line in the documentation. The test store is synthetic; your store may have cases we have not built. If a figure of yours does not match, tell us and we will find out why.