Sales Reporting Checklist

Channel Data Collection

    Export the prior week's orders, refunds, and discounts from Shopify Analytics or the Orders API. Filter by financial_status (paid, refunded, partially_refunded) and use processed_at, not created_at — refunds backdate to the original order and will skew the period if you key off creation time.

    Pull the Business Reports (Sales and Traffic by ASIN), the Date Range Report under Payments, and the FBA reimbursement report. Reconcile gross sales against settlement to catch A-to-z claims, chargebacks, and returns that hit a different period than the order.

    From eBay Seller Hub pull Orders and the Financial Statement; from Walmart Seller Center pull Sales by Item and Settlement. Confirm marketplace-facilitator tax is excluded from net sales — including it inflates revenue and breaks the tie-out to settlement.

    Export spend by campaign from Meta Ads Manager, Google Ads, Amazon Ads (Sponsored Products / Brands / Display), and TikTok Ads. Required for ROAS, MER, and TACOS calculations downstream.

    Check that GA4, Triple Whale (or Northbeam / Lifetimely), and Klaviyo show data through end-of-period. Broken pixels, consent-mode rollouts, and iOS attribution gaps routinely cause underreporting; flag any feed that is stale before continuing.

Data Reconciliation and QA

    Reconcile platform gross sales to the actual deposits hitting the bank: Shopify Payments payouts, Amazon settlements, eBay managed payments, Walmart settlements. Discrepancies above 1% usually mean a missing refund batch or a held reserve.

    A material variance is anything over 2% of channel gross or $5,000 absolute, whichever is smaller. Common causes: marketplace-facilitator tax double-counted, FBA reimbursements posted to wrong period, currency conversion timing on international orders.

    Record the channel, dollar amount, suspected root cause, and the period it should be reclassed to. Finance needs this for the books-vs-platform reconciliation at month-end close.

    Sync the SKU-to-ASIN-to-product-name mapping from Akeneo or your PIM. New variants and recently retired SKUs will show as 'unknown product' in pivots if the master isn't current.

Sales Performance Analysis

    Net sales = gross minus discounts, refunds, and marketplace fees. AOV and UPT are channel-level — DTC AOV is usually 1.5-2x marketplace AOV, and mixing them hides real channel health.

    Platform ROAS from Meta and Google, MER (total revenue / total ad spend) for blended efficiency, and TACOS (Amazon ad spend / Amazon sales) for marketplace health. TACOS rising while sales are flat is the early signal of a ranking decline.

    Top 20 and bottom 20 SKUs by contribution after COGS, fees, and shipping — not by gross revenue. Top sellers by revenue are sometimes margin-negative once Amazon fees and inbound shipping are loaded.

    Flag any SKU whose returns rate jumped more than 3 points week-over-week. Reason codes (sizing, defective, not-as-described) point to which team owns the fix — merchandising, QA, or photography.

    Compare net sales, contribution, and CAC to the quarterly plan and the prior-year comp week. Note which channels drove the variance.

Report Pack Build

    One page: net sales, MER, contribution, AOV, returns rate vs. plan and prior week. Three bullets on what moved and why. Leadership reads this in under two minutes.

    Spend, ROAS, CPA, and new-customer share by campaign across Meta, Google, Amazon, and TikTok. Marketing uses this to reallocate budget for the upcoming week.

    Channel gross, fees, refunds, chargebacks, and net deposits with the variance log from the reconciliation step. This is what finance posts to the GL and what the bookkeeper ties to the bank.

    When the weekly target is missed, schedule a 30-minute review with the Head of E-commerce and the Performance Marketing Manager before the next ad-spend pacing decision. Bring channel-level variance and one proposed reallocation.

    Post the pack to the shared drive and email links to leadership, marketing, and finance. Head of E-commerce signs off before archiving.

Data Governance and Archive

    Drop raw channel exports into the dated S3 / BigQuery folder so analysts can rerun any pivot without re-pulling from the platforms. Retention follows the company data policy (typically 7 years for finance-tied records).

    Customer-level data and margin detail are restricted to leadership and finance; marketing gets aggregated channel views only. Confirm permissions before the link goes out — over-shared margin reports leak to vendors and reps.

    Record the period, run date, reviewer, and any unresolved variances. The register is the audit trail finance points to during annual review and 1099-K reconciliation.

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