Why a figure looks wrong

Before assuming a number is wrong, check what it is actually measuring. Four things account for nearly every surprise.

Is it a blank, or is it a zero?

A dash, a blank or "not recorded" means Tideswell could not read something and declined to guess. A zero means zero.

This rule runs right through the product, and it is deliberate:

• A blank margin means no cost was recorded in Shopify for that product.
• "No completed orders yet" on a supplier means nothing could be scored, rather than 0% on time.
• "Not recorded" on a delivery cost means nobody entered freight and duty.
• A hit rate showing a dash means no commitment could be measured.
• A missing money figure in an analyst answer means you lack the permission for it, and it was left out rather than shown as nothing.

If a figure is blank where you expected one, the fix is usually to record the missing data rather than to distrust the screen.

Is the date range what you think?

On Store › Analytics, one picker drives every card and its comparison. The comparison is always the equal-length period immediately before.

Two things catch people:

• The range resets to Last 30 days on reload, since it is not held in the address. A figure that changed between two visits may just be a different window.
• "Include today" shifts a rolling window rather than lengthening it. Last 7 days is seven days either way, which is a deliberate difference from Shopify's behaviour.

See How to change the date range.

Is there a scope note on the card?

On a busy store, a card may tell you it is based on the most recent orders and that older history was not scanned.

That is a scope note on the number above it, not decoration. It matters most on long windows: a Last 365 days figure carrying that note is not a year of data, and narrowing the range often removes it.

The analyst does the same thing, flagging when a result reached its edge. See How to check where the figures came from.

Is the page a few minutes stale?

Analytics and Inventory are served from a snapshot rebuilt every few minutes, which is why they open instantly.

The Updated N minutes ago stamp in the header tells you, and Refresh forces fresh numbers. A page with no stamp was computed live.

That explains most "I just changed it in Shopify and it is not here" reports.

Stock figures specifically

Shippable available is not the same as on hand. Shippable is on hand minus what is committed to unfulfilled orders, and it is what the inventory screens rank by. On hand is what you can count on a shelf.

Days of cover depends on the ranking window. Thirty days reacts to a promotion as though it were the new normal; a year smooths seasonality away. Changing that window changes every suggestion on the page, per How to choose a stock view and ranking window.

A suggested reorder subtracts incoming, so it can look low when an order is already on the way.

A variant stocked in many locations can under-report and appear falsely low. If a product you know is well stocked shows in a low list, check it in Shopify before ordering.

Oversold is read from Tideswell's own stored copy of stock rather than a live lookup, because "how long has this been negative" needs history. That is why it can differ slightly from the rest of the page.

Money figures across currencies

The order book totals per currency and never adds them together, which is the only honest way to total a multi-currency book.

An order takes its supplier's currency when it is created and never re-resolves it, so changing a supplier's currency today does not re-price old orders. See How to write a purchase order.

On purchase order lines, retail price and margin are shown in the order's currency, and margin is calculated on unit cost rather than landed cost. On an order with significant freight, the true margin is thinner than the column shows.