Shopify reports: which built-in reports a small shop should read

A small Shopify shop can get most of what it needs from a few default reports: sales by product each week, inventory each week, acquisition and marketing each month, and finance at month end. Shopify's help centre groups its default reports into acquisition, behaviour, customers, finance, fraud, inventory, marketing, order, profit, retail sales and sales. Which ones you can open depends on your plan, so check in your own admin.

Daily: two numbers

Each morning, look only at yesterday's orders and sales against the same day last week. Anything deeper on a daily basis is mostly noise for a small shop.

Weekly: sales and stock

Sales by product

Answers: what sold, and what stopped selling? Sort by net sales and compare with the previous week.

Inventory reports

Answers: what will run out, and what is sitting still? Our post on slow-moving stock on Shopify covers sell-through and what to stop advertising.

Monthly: where customers came from

Acquisition and marketing reports

Answers: which channels brought sessions and orders? Treat these as directional. Each ad platform also reports its own figures, which rarely match Shopify's.

Customer reports

Answers: how many customers came back? A rising share of returning customers usually means email and product quality are working.

Month end: finance

Finance reports summarise sales, discounts, returns, tax and payments for the month. Share them with your accountant, and reconcile payouts with your bank.

Reports small shops often misread

• Gross sales vs net sales. Net sales take off discounts and returns. Use net.
• Tax in totals. Check whether a figure includes VAT before comparing it with ad spend. Our break-even ROAS guide shows why it matters.
• Conversion rate on low traffic. With a few hundred sessions a week, small changes swing the rate. Look at a month.

Bringing Shopify together with everything else

Shopify reports cover the shop. Ads, email and social sit elsewhere, so owners end up opening five tabs each morning. VirtualPA pulls Shopify sales and stock into one morning brief alongside Meta, Google and TikTok ads, Klaviyo, social and Amazon, and includes analytics such as cohort retention, customer lifetime value and frequently bought together.

Related reading from Braivex

Shops with several physical sites also need to read each site's Google reviews; see review management for multi-location businesses. Hiring a part-time marketing helper? Start with our UK job advert template.

Frequently asked questions

Which Shopify report shows best-selling products?

The sales reports, broken down by product.

Are all reports available on the Basic plan?

Report availability depends on the plan. Check the Reports area in your Shopify admin to see which your plan includes.

Why do Shopify and Meta show different sales?

They count differently. Meta credits sales it influenced over a window; Shopify records the order and its source.

Next step

Get Shopify, ads and email in one morning brief with a 15-day trial at mypa.services.