Monthly Ecommerce Report: A Board Pack

A monthly ecommerce report should show results against plan, explain the main changes, and name the decisions needed. Include sales, orders, acquisition costs, customer return, margin, and stock risks that affect next month's work. Use a repeatable template, with the supporting reports behind it.

Start with the result and the decision

Open the board pack with what changed, whether it met the plan, and what needs approval. A reader should understand the main issue before opening the detailed charts.

For example: “Sales exceeded plan, but heavier discounts reduced gross profit. We recommend revising the next promotion before approving more advertising.” The supporting pages should establish whether that explanation holds.

Keep urgent monitoring in the team's daily workflow. Checkout failures and stockouts need attention when they happen; the monthly meeting reviews patterns and approves next steps. For the underlying report setup, use the guide to creating custom Shopify reports.

Copy this monthly report template

Copy these fields into a document or deck and keep the order consistent between months. Link the source reports in an appendix so the board can check the evidence.

Store and period: [store, completed month, currency, report prepared on]

Headline: [result against plan, main change, and its business consequence]

Approval needed: [decision, proposed action, accountable person, and due date]

Area	Results to enter	Question for the board
Sales	Net sales, orders, AOV	What drove the gap to plan?
Acquisition	Spend, new customers, CAC	Is growth affordable?
Customer return	Returning buyers and sales	Is demand becoming more durable?
Economics	Gross profit, discounts, refunds	Did sales leave more money?
Stock	Stockouts, slow stock, commitments	What limits the next plan?

Comparisons: [actual against plan, previous month, and the same month last year]

Main explanations: [change, supporting report, confidence in the explanation]

Next review: [decision outcomes to check and the agreed review date]

Sales needs orders and average order value, or AOV, beside it. More orders with smaller baskets raises different questions from fewer orders with larger baskets. Keep the sales label specific, including whether it covers discounts, refunds, shipping, or taxes.

Acquisition needs spend and new customers beside customer acquisition cost, or CAC. State which costs the CAC measure includes. Use return on ad spend, or ROAS, to discuss a channel's attributed sales, while keeping the store's sales total separate. Ad revenue is not profit, and several platforms may claim the same purchase.

Customer return needs a named measure and a window. Returning customers and customers who ordered repeatedly within a period answer different questions. Add a customer cohort view when the decision concerns whether recently acquired buyers come back. Avoid treating a change in lifetime value as proof that this month's campaign worked.

Economics needs gross profit beside sales, with incomplete product costs flagged. Add advertising and operating expenses when discussing profit after those costs. Ask finance to supply the cash balance and upcoming commitments when the board is deciding what it can afford.

If this pack goes to an agency client, adapt the approval and responsibility fields using the Shopify client reporting template. The board pack should still reflect the store's own plan.

Keep the comparisons consistent

Show actual results against the agreed plan before discussing external benchmarks. Then show the previous month and the same month last year, where available.

Keep the main table compact: use metric, actual, plan, and gap as its columns. Put the historical trend in a supporting chart. Note differences in month length, promotion timing, and stock availability before calling a change an improvement.

Record the date range, currency, sales channels, and metric definitions used for the pack. Agree on the sales and profit labels with finance before circulating the first version. If a definition changes, explain the break in the comparison rather than silently replacing the previous result.

Check differences between store reports, finance records, and ad platforms before the meeting. Keep unresolved differences visible with an owner and an explanation of what remains uncertain. Adding attributed revenue from several ad platforms does not reconcile it to store revenue.

Keep last 90 days peer context beside monthly results

Peer context can help the board ask better questions about order value. Keep it in a separate box labeled with its period, beside the store's own results and plan.

BTN BenchmarkAOV peer context for the last 90 days

Across hundreds of Shopify stores, order values varied substantially within store categories over the last 90 days ending October 7, 2026. In clothing and fashion, the median AOV was $126. The middle half ranged from $80 to $235.

AOV by category, last 90 days ending October 7, 2026

Median average order value
Middle 50% of stores

Clothing and fashion$126

Food and drink$61

Health and beauty$69

Home and garden$154

Dots show the median; bars show the middle half of store AOVs over the last 90 days. Compare with your matching period.

Source: By the Numbers benchmark of 1,403 Shopify stores, Jul 2026 to Oct 2026.

View the data

	25th percentile	Median average order value	75th percentile	Stores
Clothing and fashion	$80	$126	$235	266
Food and drink	$47	$61	$98	205
Health and beauty	$47	$69	$113	367
Home and garden	$90	$154	$319	101

Compare these figures with your own AOV for the same last 90 days ending October 7, 2026. Keep the month's AOV for comparisons against your monthly plan and previous months. A single month's result is not a matching comparison for this peer range.

The figures are in US dollars. Differences in products, prices, and customer mix can matter even within a category. A higher AOV also says nothing on its own about gross profit, refunds, or acquisition costs.

Explain the change before asking for approval

Investigate the largest gaps to plan, then include the breakdown that changes the proposed action. Separate what the report shows from what the team thinks caused it.

If conversion declined, check the path from product views through cart and checkout to purchase. Compare mobile with desktop and inspect traffic sources before proposing a site change. A shift toward traffic that rarely buys can lower overall conversion without establishing a checkout problem.

If a channel needs more spending to bring in new customers, inspect those buyers' repeat buying before expanding its budget. Keep that comparison within the same customer group and observation window.

Check product sales, gross profit, and availability together. A bestseller that ran out may explain lost orders and create a purchasing decision. Slow stock may call for a smaller reorder, while a heavily refunded product needs investigation before another promotion.

Here is an illustrative decision note: “Discounted products contributed more sales while gross profit fell. Merchandising will review product margins and propose an offer; finance will confirm acceptable spending before approval.” Set the deadline before the next promotion is scheduled. At the following review, check whether the revised offer met the agreed gross profit goal before repeating it. This identifies a plausible next step without claiming that the sales report alone proves the cause.

Keep a decision record at the end of the pack:

Decision: [what the board approved, declined, or deferred]
Owner: [person responsible for the next action]
Dependency: [stock, costs, creative, or access needed]
Due date: [agreed deadline]
Review: [result to check and when to check it]

Open the next meeting with these commitments and their outcomes. If evidence remains incomplete, record the question to investigate rather than presenting a guess as a finding.

Check the file before scheduling delivery

Choose a spreadsheet when reviewers need to inspect the figures, and a fixed PDF when they need a meeting record. Keep the reviewed version and its source references together. Remove customer details the board does not need, and test recipients' access.

Before choosing a reporting tool, test the required metrics, comparisons, exports, and permissions with a real monthly pack. The Shopify analytics app checklist gives a broader buying checklist.

By the Numbers supports CSV exports from most report tables and PNG downloads of charts for a deck. Its ecommerce reporting features also include scheduled report exports as CSV or Excel files. CSV export requires a paid plan and the teammate's Export Data permission.

Review the first scheduled file for dates, filters, currency, and recipients before relying on it. Assign someone to check delivery and finish the commentary. Automation can deliver the supporting figures; the team still needs to explain the decision and record its owner.

Methodology

These benchmarks use anonymized, aggregated data from Shopify stores in the By the Numbers network. No individual store is identifiable from any figure. Stores that use an analytics app are not a random sample of all Shopify stores, so read the figures as a reference point, not as an average for the whole market.

Keep reading

If you want the full picture on Shopify analytics and reporting, start with the Shopify reporting framework.

By the Numbers builds this into the dashboard. See Shopify analytics reporting.