Lifetimely: Income Statement - Metric Definitions

At a glance: The income statement (also known as a profit and loss statement) in Lifetimely is a powerful tool for tracking your store's financial performance. It provides insights into your revenue, costs, and profitability — helping you make data-driven decisions to optimize your ecommerce business.

⚠️ Heads up: Lifetimely calculates Net Sales differently from Shopify.
Shopify: Gross Sales – Discounts – Refunds (excludes Shipping Revenue)
Lifetimely: Product Revenue + Shipping Charged – Discounts – Refunds – Taxes
This means your Net Sales figure in Lifetimely will not match Shopify's. This is expected behaviour, not a data error. → Lifetimely vs. Shopify Reporting: Understanding the Difference

💡 Tip: Definitions for each metric can also be found directly in the report by hovering your cursor over the small grey "i" icon, or by clicking on the metric name.

Key terms and definitions

Gross Revenue: Total income generated from sales before any deductions.
Cost of Goods Sold (COGS): Direct costs of producing or purchasing the products you sell.
Gross Profit: Revenue – COGS. Indicates how much money you're making before expenses.
Operating Expenses: Costs of running your store, such as ad spend, software subscriptions, and salaries.
Net Income: Final profit or loss after deducting all expenses from gross profit.

Net sales: Sales after discounts and refunds, including tax.
Marketing costs: Total ad spend across all integrated marketing accounts, plus any manual entries in the Custom costs tab.
COGS: Product costs + shipping costs + transaction fees + fulfillment expenses.
Net profit: Sales after discounts minus all costs (refunds, taxes, COGS, marketing costs, and operating expenses).

Income statement metrics

Sales: Total sales before discounts and refunds.
Product revenue: Sales from products before discounts and refunds.
Shipping revenue: Shipping costs paid by customers before discounts and refunds.
Discounts: Value of coupon code discounts from Shopify (excludes line-item discounts).
Refunds: Total value of refunds.
Net sales: Sales (including taxes) after discounts and refunds.
Taxes: Total taxes assessed on orders. Note: Taxes may include VAT, Sales Tax, or GST, depending on your country.
COGS: Product costs + shipping costs + transaction fees + fulfillment expenses.
Products sold: Cost of goods sold, based on Shopify's cost per item and/or costs entered in the Product costs tab.
Shipping: Shipping costs, calculated from the Shipping costs tab.
Transaction fees: Payment processor fees, set in the Transaction costs tab.
Fulfillment expense: Handling costs, set in the Handling costs tab.
Marketing: Total ad spend from integrations + manually entered marketing costs.
Contribution margin: Sales – discounts – refunds – taxes – COGS – marketing spend.
Operating expenses: Custom costs entered in the Custom costs tab that are not marketing costs.
Net profit: Sales – discounts – refunds – taxes – COGS – marketing spend – operating expenses (i.e., Contribution margin – Operating expenses).

KPIs (Key Performance Indicators)

% Gross margin: (Net sales – taxes – COGS) ÷ Net sales
% Net margin: Net profit ÷ Net sales
% Refunds: Refunds ÷ Net sales
% COGS: COGS ÷ Net sales
% Marketing: Marketing spend ÷ Net sales

Acquisition metrics

Blended CAC: Total marketing spend ÷ number of new customers
Blended ROAS: Net sales ÷ total marketing spend
New customer ROAS: New customer net sales ÷ total marketing spend
New customers: Number of new customers in the time period
New customer sales: Net sales from new customers
Repeat customers: Number of repeat customers in the time period
Repeat customer sales: Net sales from repeat customers
% Repeat: Repeat orders ÷ total orders
% Repeat sales: Repeat customer net sales ÷ net sales

Order metrics

Orders: Total number of orders in the time period
AOV (Average Order Value): Sales (after discounts but before refunds) ÷ number of orders. Note: Lifetimely's AOV includes shipping revenue, whereas Shopify's AOV does not.
New customer AOV: New customer net sales ÷ new customer orders.
Repeat customer AOV: Repeat customer net sales ÷ repeat customer orders.
Average number of items: Average total quantity of line items across all orders.