Gross Sales
What your products were worth at their own prices, before a single discount came off.
What it means
Gross Sales is item price multiplied by quantity, added up across every line on every order in the period. Nothing has come off it and nothing has been added: no discounts, no refunds, no shipping, no tax. It's the top of the revenue stack — the number everything else falls away from.
Show the math
Formula and a worked example
Item price is the price on the product line. Quantity is the units on that line. Every line on every order in the period is added together.
Worked example. In March you sell 1,760 units: 1,200 at €35 and 560 at €55. Gross Sales = (1,200 × 35) + (560 × 55) = 42,000 + 30,800 = €72,800. Take off €7,300 of Product DiscountsProduct DiscountsSurfaces which products lean hardest on markdowns. and the same month reads €65,500 for the products. The €7,300 gap is what the markdown cost you, in euros rather than a percentage.
A code applied at checkout never touches this number — it lands in Discounts. A product you permanently reprice does, because the new price is now the item price. That's the difference between a promotion and a price change, and only one of them is visible here.
It answers the question
What was this catalogue worth at the prices you set? Everything below it — discounts, shipping, tax, refunds — is what happened to that number on the way to your bank.
Why it matters
Gross Sales is the only revenue line untouched by what you gave away, which makes it the fixed point you measure markdown against. The distance between it and what you actually charged is the exact cost of your discounting, per product, in euros.
Sorted on the Products table, it also tells you which lines genuinely carry the catalogue. Revenue after discounts flatters the products you protected and punishes the ones you used to clear stock — this one ranks them all at their own prices.
What good looks like
There's no universal figure here: Gross Sales is a euro total, so it scales with how big your store is. Judge it against your own trend and the same period last year. The comparison that always pays is Gross Sales against QuantityQuantityThe core volume measure across products. — divide one by the other and you get your average selling price, and a quiet slide in that is invisible in either number alone.
How to improve it
| Lever | What you do | Expect | How long | Watch out for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fast Raise price where demand isn't price-led | Test 5–10% on products people buy for fit, brand or refill rather than price | Gross Sales up on flat units | 2–4 weeks | Conversion on those pages usually softens first, so orders and units dip for a few weeks before the extra price shows up as profit. |
| Fast Lead with the larger variant | Preselect the bigger size or the multipack on the product page instead of the cheapest option | Line price up 5–15% | 1–2 weeks | A bigger first purchase stretches the gap before the next one, so repeat orders thin out a quarter later even though this month looks better. |
| Slow Hold stock on your top lines | Set reorder points from unit velocity on the products that generate the most Gross Sales | The units you were losing to stockouts come back | 1 quarter | Deeper cover ties up cash and raises end-of-season markdown risk, so some of the recovered revenue comes back out as Discounts later. |
| Slow Add a tier above your bestseller | Build a higher-priced version of the product that already sells | Average line price rises, Gross Sales with it | 1–2 quarters | Development, stock and photography cost real money up front, and a premium tier often takes sales from the mid-price product rather than adding new ones. |
Every lever costs something somewhere. The last column is the one to read twice.
Read it with
Gross Sales says what the catalogue was worth. Next to Discounts, it says how much of that you kept.
Selling at your prices
Demand grew without markdown paying for it. This is the shape that survives into profit, and it's rarer than it should be.
Growth you paid for
Both rose, so the question is which rose faster. Discounts outpacing Gross Sales means each extra euro of catalogue value cost you more than the last.
Cleaner but smaller
You stopped discounting and lost some volume with it. Often the right trade — less revenue at a much better margin can beat the month you're comparing to.
Discounting into a decline
You're giving away more and selling less. Price is rarely the problem when this shape appears — look for a stockout, a broken page, or a competitor's offer.
The catalogue at list price and the amount you knocked off it. Together they give the markdown rate per product, which is the only way to see that your bestseller — the line that needed no help — is giving away more euros than the slow stock you meant to clear.
One is the top line at your prices, the other is what survives product cost. Gross Sales up with Gross Margin down means the extra volume came from your cheapest-to-buy, thinnest-margin lines.
Common misreads
Nothing has come off it. Discounts are still in, refunds are still in, and shipping and tax aren't added yet. Order RevenueOrder RevenueRevenue measured at the order level. is the number the customer was actually billed.
Checkout discounting is invisible here by design — that's the whole point of the line. The cost shows up entirely in the gap beneath it.
Price is the other half of the sum. Selling the same units at a lower list price reads exactly like selling fewer units at the old one. Check Quantity before you conclude demand moved.
Also called
Line item revenue · gross revenue · sales at list price · pre-discount revenue
See yoursGross Sales for the period, and per product on the Products table next to Discounts and Quantity.
Open Shopify Products →