Metrics

The general structure of how Kleio organizes your data — not a full list of every available metric.

Kleio matches Shopify’s Total Sales to the cent, but defines a few rows differently on purpose. Here’s why.

The P&L Waterfall

	Metric	Definition
	Gross Sales	Product + shipping revenue before discounts are subtracted.
−	Discounts	Total discounts applied to products and shipping lines.
=	Sales	Gross Sales − Discounts. The initial order value before returns.
−	Returns	Refunded amount for products and shipping.
+	Return Fees	Fees charged to customers for returns.
=	Revenue	Sales − Returns + Return Fees. What’s left in your bank account after returns. Matches Shopify’s Total Sales incl. tax.
−	Tax	Net tax collected (sale tax − refunded tax) on products and shipping.
−	COGS	Cost of Goods Sold.
=	Contribution Margin 1	Revenue (excl. tax) − COGS. Your product margin.
−	Variable Costs	Costs that vary with sales volume (shipping, payment processing, etc.).
=	Contribution Margin 2	CM1 − Variable Costs. Your margin after COGS and all variable costs.
−	Ad Spend	Total advertising and marketing spend.
=	Contribution Margin 3	CM2 − Ad Spend. Your margin after all COGS, variable costs, and ad spend.
−	Fixed Costs	Costs that don’t vary with sales volume (rent, salaries, etc.).
=	Net Profit	CM3 − Fixed Costs. Your bottom line profit.

Variable Costs Breakdown

Variable costs can be broken down into:

Category	Definition
Shipping Costs	Shipping and fulfillment costs including delivery, packaging, and logistics.
Returns Costs	Costs related to processing returns and refunds.
Payment Costs	Payment processing fees from Stripe, PayPal, Shopify Payments, etc.
Customs Costs	Customs duties, import taxes, and international shipping fees.
Fulfillment Costs	Fulfillment costs including pick, pack, and warehouse handling fees.
Other Variable	Other variable costs not categorized above.
Agency Fees	Marketing agency fees calculated as a percentage of ad spend.

Ad Spend Breakdown

Ad spend can be broken down by platform:

Platform	Definition
Google Ads	Ad spend from Google Ads.
Meta Ads	Ad spend from Meta (Facebook/Instagram) Ads.
Snapchat Ads	Ad spend from Snapchat Ads.
TikTok Ads	Ad spend from TikTok Ads.
AppLovin	Ad spend from AppLovin.
GoAffPro	Ad spend from GoAffPro affiliate program.
Other Marketing	Fixed marketing costs (agency fees, banner ads, etc.) allocated to ad spend.

Tax Toggle

You can switch between viewing metrics with or without tax using the tax toggle in the filter settings. This affects all metrics from Gross Sales through Revenue.

Metrics below Revenue (COGS, contribution margins, variable costs, ad spend, fixed costs, net profit) always exclude tax regardless of the toggle.

Order Date vs Accounting Date

By default, Kleio dates every cost and refund on the day it happened. If you process a refund today, Kleio subtracts it from today. This is the accounting date (or event date) view: it shows what hit your bank account on a given day.

Order-date metrics work differently. They move an order’s costs and refunds back to the day of the original order, so they sit with the sale that created them. You’ll see these as the (O) metrics in the Edit Metrics dialog, for example CM3 (O).

Why it helps with acquisition

Suppose you handle refunds once a week, in a batch. On the accounting date view, all of those refunds land on the single day you process them. That one day looks very bad, and the other six look good. To judge your acquisition, you now have to work out by hand whether that one bad day wipes out the profit from the other six. You can’t just look at the numbers and know.

Order date fixes this. It moves each refund back to the day of the order it came from, so the refund sits with the sale that caused it. Every day then shows its own real result, and you can read your acquisition straight off the numbers. That is why Kleio’s Acquisition page uses order-date metrics by default.

Seeing it on a timeline

An order comes in on day 1. You refund it on day 8, your weekly batch day.

                day 1                      day 8
  Accounting    +$100                      −$30
  Order date    +$100  −$30

Accounting date leaves the refund on day 8, the day you processed it. Order date moves it back to day 1, onto the order it came from.

Comparing with Shopify

Most users compare Kleio’s numbers to Shopify’s Finance Summary overview. Here, Kleio’s Revenue equals Shopify’s Total sales down to the cent (remember that Shopify shows Total sales incl. tax and you can toggle tax on/off in Kleio).

The rows above (Gross sales, Discounts, Returns, Shipping) won’t always line up one-to-one with Shopify because Shopify excludes tax and anything shipping-related in those rows.

Shopify Finance Summary row	Why Kleio’s number is different
Gross sales	Shopify only counts product sales. Kleio counts product sales and shipping revenue.
Discounts	Shopify only counts product discounts. Kleio also counts shipping discounts.
Returns	Shopify only counts product refunds. Kleio also counts shipping refunds.
Shipping charges	Shopify gives shipping its own row, combining shipping revenue and shipping refunds into one line. Kleio counts shipping inside the rows above instead.
Total sales	Matches Kleio’s Revenue when the tax toggle is set to incl. tax. Kleio defaults to your Shopify tax-display setting, so if your store displays prices excl. tax, switch the toggle to “incl. tax” to see the match.

If you’ve enabled Skip orders with 0 in sales under Settings → Filters, your numbers might also differ from Shopify because free/100%-discount orders are excluded entirely in Kleio while Shopify still counts them.

Why Kleio includes shipping in the top rows

The final Revenue number comes out the same either way. We just think it’s more correct to include shipping in everything — shipping is money hitting your bank account just like product revenue, and for many stores it’s a meaningful revenue lever, so we want to be able to analyze it too.