Practical writing on Shopify profitability, ad spend aggregation, multi-store reporting, and the hidden costs most dashboards miss. Written by the team building custom profit dashboards at Perch.
A $40 CPA tells you nothing on its own. Here is how to set profit-aware CPA targets per store and per product, with the contribution-margin math and worked examples.
Shopify shows discounts as a revenue line. The real hit lands in gross margin, and stacking, free shipping, and loyalty programs make the gap 1.5 to 2.5 times bigger than reported.
Most Shopify reporting shows revenue and gross margin, then quietly ignores the 4 to 6% of real costs buried in payment fees, chargebacks, and refunds. Here is the full formula, step by step.
A $5M Shopify brand pays Triple Whale around $33,870 over three years. A Perch build for the same brand costs $12,500 once. Here is the full math, and where Triple Whale still wins.
Most brands use one store-wide breakeven ROAS. That is useful for reporting and useless for campaign decisions. Here is how to calculate BER per SKU, with worked examples.
Airwallex typically holds around 13% of your payouts for 75 days. For a $1M per month brand, that is about $130,000 sitting unavailable at any given time. Here is what this means for your real cash position.