The Business Metrics section sits on the Profit & Loss page and answers the questions a finance lead asks every morning: what did it cost to acquire a customer, how efficient was our marketing, how many orders were actually profitable. Every metric here is traceable back to the orders that produced it, and every metric earns its place by one test.
[Screenshot placeholder] The Business Metrics section showing the Marketing, Customers, and Orders category headers with their rows across monthly columns
The one test for what belongs here
A metric appears in Business Metrics only if it needs Shopshot's cost and profit layer to calculate. If a number can be read straight from your ad platform without any cost or profit data, Shopshot leaves it where it already lives. This is the editorial filter that keeps the section focused on numbers only Shopshot can produce, rather than duplicating your ad dashboards.
The six categories
Category | What it answers | Examples |
Marketing | How efficient is our spend | Blended CAC, Blended ROAS, New Customer ROAS, MER, POAS |
Customers | Are we acquiring profitably | New and Returning Customers, New Customer AOV, Profit per New Customer |
Orders | What is the shape of demand | Orders, AOV, Avg items, Discount Usage Rate, Return order %, Profit per order, Profitable orders |
Products | What is the catalog doing | Total units sold, Total inventory value, Products Return Rate, Profitable Products |
Fulfillment | What does it cost to ship | Order Fulfillment Cost (avg), % Shipping, Shipping Cost Recovery |
Every metric is defined, with its exact formula and data source, in the Marketing metrics glossary and the other per-report glossaries. This article is the how-to; the glossaries are the reference.
Reading and comparing
The section uses the same Date range, Breakdown, and Compare to controls as the rest of the Profit & Loss page, so you can line metrics up month by month and against the previous period. You can Export to CSV or Email a snapshot.
[Screenshot placeholder] The Marketing category with Blended CAC, Blended ROAS, New Customer ROAS, MER and POAS across monthly columns
Why these numbers may differ from your ad platforms
Both MER and Blended ROAS use Net Sales as the numerator, and Actual ROAS uses last-click UTM attribution. Platform-reported ROAS is excluded, because ad platforms self-attribute and often claim the same conversion more than once. The result is a set of marketing metrics that are conservative, internally consistent, and agree with your P&L. See Attribution and acquisition cost (CAC) for the full logic.
Common questions
Why is your ROAS lower than Meta's or Google's? Platforms self-attribute and overlap on the same sales. Shopshot uses last-click UTM and Net Sales, so the figure is lower and consistent across every marketing metric.
A metric I expected is missing. Why? It probably did not pass the test above. If it can be read directly from your ad platform without cost or profit data, Shopshot does not duplicate it.
Why are my Marketing metrics zero? No ad platform is connected yet, so there is no spend to divide by. Connect Meta or Google Ads to populate them.
Where do I find the exact formula for a metric? In the per-report metrics glossaries. Each one lists the formula and where the data comes from.
Next step
Marketing metrics are blank until your ad spend is flowing. Connect Meta and Google Ads to unlock CAC, ROAS, MER, and POAS. → Integrations: Meta and Google Ads
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