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Channel Performance Dashboard

Written by Emily Burrows

About

Learn how your Channel Performance dashboard uses your latest sales data and estimated operating costs to show you which sales channels actually make you money, in real-time.

1. What is Channel Performance?

Channel Performance helps you understand how profitable each sales channel is using the latest sales data together with estimated operating costs.

The challenge with understanding your real-time profitability is timing. Some of your biggest costs, like marketplace fees, shipping, and returns, don't finalize until days or weeks after a sale. Waiting for every invoice, marketplace report, and shipping charge means you're always looking at an outdated picture.

Unlike accounting reports, which rely only on finalized transactions, Channel Performance solves this by estimating the costs that haven't landed yet, based on your store's own recent history. The result: a near-real-time view of which channels are winning and which are quietly losing money, while you can still act on it.

Every estimate is yours to control. If your business runs differently than your history suggests, you can review and override any estimate in Settings.

Note: Because estimates rely on your recent patterns, Channel Performance is available for the last 90 days only.

2. Why are some costs estimated?

Some operating costs aren't available immediately after a sale.

For example:

  • Marketplace fees are often calculated after orders are fulfilled.

  • Shipping costs may be received after shipments are completed.

  • Payment processing fees become available after payments are settled.

  • Returns may happen days or weeks after the original sale.

Rather than waiting for these costs, Channel Performance estimates them using your store's historical patterns, giving you a more up-to-date view of profitability.

3. Which values are actual and which are estimated?

Always actual (taken directly from your transaction data):

  • Gross sales

  • Discounts & promotions

  • Sales

  • Product COGS

  • Ad spend from connected platforms

Always estimated (based on your store's historical patterns):

  • Refunds & returns

  • Shipping & fulfillment costs

  • Processing fees

  • Marketplace selling fees

  • Affiliate commissions (in TikTok)

  • Ad spend (depending on the source and configuration)

Every estimated value can be reviewed and overridden from Settings.

4. How estimates work

Each estimate is calculated independently for each store using that store’s historical patterns.

The historical period is continuously updated to reflect recent business activity, so the estimates adapt as your business changes over time. Different costs use different estimation methods depending on how they are incurred.

Refunds & Returns

Refunds are estimated using your store's historical refund patterns.

This accounts for returns still expected after the selected period, while avoiding temporary swings caused by recently placed orders. If your expected refund rate differs from your recent history, you can override the estimate.

How this estimate is calculated

Finaloop estimates future refunds and returns by analyzing a group of historical orders that is old enough for most refunds and returns to have already occurred. It calculates the historical refund and return rate and applies that rate to the selected period.

Using mature historical data helps ensure the estimate isn't understated simply because recent orders haven't had enough time to be refunded or returned.

Restock Rate

Not every returned product can be returned to inventory.

The Restock Rate estimates the percentage of returned products that are expected to be restocked. This is used to recover the appropriate portion of Product COGS from returned items. If your business has a different restocking rate, you can adjust it.

Shipping & Fulfillment Costs

Shipping costs are estimated differently depending on how orders are fulfilled.

  1. Merchant Fulfilled (FBM):Estimate shipping costs using either a historical shipping cost rate (based on your actual shipping payments and sales activity) or a fixed cost per item (simpler, if your cost per shipment or item is fairly consistent).

  2. Marketplace Fulfilled (Amazon FBA, TikTok FBT): Estimated using historical marketplace charges, since these are calculated after fulfillment and aren't always available immediately.

How this estimate is calculated

Finaloop estimates shipping costs for merchant-fulfilled (FBM) orders using historical shipping payments across all merchant-fulfilled sales channels, including Shopify, Amazon, TikTok Shop, and others when applicable.

It analyzes historical order data and the corresponding shipping payments, then allocates the total shipping cost across channels based on each channel's share of sales. This produces an estimated shipping cost rate that is applied to the selected period.

Processing Fees

Processing fees, for branded stores like Shopify, are estimated using a blended average processing rate across all payment methods processed through Shopify Payments.

If your processing fees differ from the estimated rate, you can adjust the values in Settings.

Marketplace Selling Fees

Marketplace selling fees are estimated using historical fee rates for each marketplace.

Each marketplace is estimated independently based on its own historical activity.

If your fee structure changes, you can update the estimate at any time.

Affiliate Commissions (TikTok)

Affiliate commissions, on TikTok only, are estimated using your historical commission rates.

If your commission structure changes, you can override the estimate.

Ad Spend

Channel Performance includes advertising costs from both connected advertising platforms and cash-based marketing expenses.

Spend Logic

For each ad source, whether a connected ad platform or a cash-based ad expense, you can choose how spend is estimated using:

  • Spend from the selected period, or

  • A historical average.

This gives you flexibility to choose the calculation that best represents your marketing costs.

Store Allocation

Ad accounts are not always dedicated to a single store.

Store Allocation lets you decide how ad costs are distributed across your stores, allowing Channel Performance to attribute marketing costs where they belong.

You can customize the allocation for each ad account.

How this estimate is calculated

For connected advertising platforms, Finaloop uses the actual daily advertising spend recorded during the selected period.

For advertising expenses tracked through bank transactions or bills, Finaloop calculates an average daily spend based on historical data and applies that average to the selected period.

Using a historical daily average helps produce a more accurate estimate by reducing the impact of irregular payment dates and providing a more accurate estimate of ad costs.

5. Platform and Store Views

Channel Performance can be viewed in two ways.

  1. Platform view: Groups all stores that belong to the same sales platform, such as Shopify or Amazon.

  2. Store view: Shows profitability for each individual store.

Regardless of the selected view, estimates are calculated separately for each store using that store's historical patterns.

6. What Shopify Data is Included

The Shopify channel includes only orders generated directly on your Shopify store.

It does not include:

  • Shopify POS orders.

  • Orders imported or synchronized from external sales channels, such as Faire or Facebook.

These channels are reported separately when supported.

7. Frequently Asked Questions

Why doesn't Channel Performance exactly match my accounting reports?

Channel Performance is designed to help you monitor profitability as your business operates, so some costs are estimated using your store's historical patterns rather than waiting for every cost to finalize.

Accounting reports include only finalized transactions and may therefore differ from Channel Performance, especially for recent periods. This is expected, and by design.

Can I change the estimates?

Yes. Every estimated value can be reviewed and overridden from Settings.

Why is Channel Performance limited to the last 90 days?

Channel Performance estimates costs using your store's recent historical patterns. As you look further back in time, those patterns become less representative of how your business operated during those periods.

To provide more reliable insights, Channel Performance is currently available only for periods within the last 90 days.

Are estimates calculated separately for each store?

Yes. Every estimate is calculated independently for each store using that store's historical patterns.

When viewing Platform mode, the store-level calculations are combined into a single platform view.

If you have any questions at all, feel free to reach out to support at [email protected] for more help.

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