Why a figure looks wrong

Figures in Tideswell come from your Shopify store and your own purchase orders. You read them on What is Store analytics? (Selling › Analytics and Selling › Inventory), on What are suppliers and purchase orders? (Buying › Purchase orders) and in answers from the What is the Agent?.

Before deciding a number is wrong, check what it is measuring. This page takes the usual causes in the order to check them.

Is it a blank, or is it a zero?

A dash, a blank or Not recorded means Tideswell had nothing to work from and left the figure empty rather than guess. A zero means zero.

You see this in several places:

• A best seller with no margin beside it. At least one sale of that product had no cost per item in Shopify. Add the cost in Shopify and the margin appears.
• No data or Nothing finished yet under a figure on a supplier's page, such as On time in full. None of that supplier's orders has been scored yet, which is different from an on-time rate of 0%.
• Not recorded as a delivery's total in Receipt history. No goods, freight or duty cost was captured for that delivery. A delivery with blank freight and duty still shows the cost of its goods.
• A dash under Hit rate on Brain › Decisions. Nothing could be judged yet, and the Couldn't measure column says how many outcomes that covers.
• A dash under Cover on Selling › Inventory. The product has no recorded demand, has nothing in stock, or Shopify does not track its stock.
• No order values in an Agent answer about purchase orders. You do not hold View purchase orders and the buying calendar in Settings › Permissions, so the money was withheld from you. It was not zero.

If a figure is blank where you expected one, record the missing information, such as a cost per item in Shopify. The screen fills in once the data exists.

Is the date range what you think?

On Selling › Analytics, one date picker drives every card. The arrows on Revenue, Orders and Avg order value compare your range with the period of the same length immediately before it.

Three things catch people out:

• The range goes back to Last 30 days each time you open or reload the page. Note the range before you compare a figure with one you saw earlier.
• Include today moves a rolling window rather than lengthening it. Last 7 days is seven days whether it ends today or yesterday. Shopify counts eight days when it includes today, so its figure covers one more day than yours.
• Waiting to ship ignores the date range. It counts the orders waiting now, whatever range you pick.

Include today is greyed out for calendar periods such as Last month, and for ranges that run to date, because those have fixed dates. See How to change the date range.

Is there a note under the card?

On a busy store, a card can carry a short note that begins Based on the most recent orders only. On Selling › Inventory the same note begins Ranked from the most recent orders only.

That note qualifies the number above it. It matters most on long ranges: a Last 365 days figure carrying it does not cover a full year of orders.

Narrow the range until the note goes away, then compare like with like. For the cards themselves, see How to read the Analytics page.

How fresh are the numbers?

Selling › Analytics can open with figures Tideswell prepared shortly before you arrived. When it does, a line above the cards says how old they are, such as Updated 5m ago.

If that line ends some data may be delayed, one or more cards are showing their last good figures because the latest ones could not be read. Press Refresh to try again.

The Updated stamp beside Refresh in the page header is different. It shows when your screen last fetched, so it reads Updated just now straight after the page opens. If you have just changed something in Shopify, press Refresh to fetch new figures.

Why do the stock figures disagree with Shopify?

Most stock surprises on What is Inventory? come from reading a different column from the one you meant.

In stock is not the same as on hand. In stock is Shopify's available count at the locations you ship from, which leaves out units already committed to unfulfilled orders. On hand is everything on the shelf, including those units.

Cover and Reorder come from expected demand, not the ranking window. Click a Reorder figure to see its Demand line, which names its source: seasonal forecast, trend forecast or 30-day average, not a forecast. The ranking window decides which products appear on the list, per How to choose a stock view and ranking window.

Reorder counts what is already coming. It covers your vendor's lead time plus safety stock, after taking off what is In stock and Incoming. A Reorder figure that looks low usually means an order is already on its way. See How to find out what you need to reorder.

A product you know is well stocked shows as low. Check it in Shopify before you order.

A product on the Oversold view shows a slightly different count from Shopify. Open the product in Shopify to see its stock right now. If Shopify's own count is wrong, correct it per How to work out a restock cost and correct a stock count.

Why do money figures not add up?

Usually because they are in different currencies, or because two columns measure cost differently.

Totals keep currencies apart. The Total on Buying › Purchase orders gives one figure per currency, separated by a dot, and adds up only the orders the list is showing. The Landed total above an order's Receipt history also keeps currencies apart.

An order keeps the currency it started with. A new purchase order takes its supplier's currency when you create it. Changing a supplier's currency later applies to new orders only. See How to write a purchase order.

Some columns show a dash on an order in another currency. When an order's currency differs from your Shopify store's, Retail price and Margin % show a dash. Unit cost then shows only the cost typed on the order or brought in by an import, so type the agreed cost on each line.

Margin % is worked out on unit cost, not landed cost. On an order with heavy freight or duty, switch on the Landed cost column to see what each unit really costs you. See How to add products and choose your columns.

What about a figure in an Agent answer?

Press What I checked under the answer. It lists the figures the answer was built from and notes anything the Agent could not see. See How to check where the figures came from.