There are a couple of reasons why Data Studio reporting will differ from Shopify Sales Reports:
1) In the API that is used for our connector, the values reported are the current total of all orders, whereas the Sales Reports only refer to goods exchanged between the merchant and the customer within a given time frame.
For example, if a merchant refunds a custom amount of $5 because the customer complained it took too long to ship, but no items were refunded and restocked, then the -$5 difference will not appear in the Sales reports, but will be deducted from API total.
2) Refunds are reported in the Shopify Sales Reports by the date they were refunded. Power My Analytics reports refunds the same way: each refund arrives from Shopify with its own timestamp, and we record it on the day the refund happened. Returns and cancellations work the same way, so these events align with your Shopify reports by date.
If a report contains data collected before June 18, 2026, refunds in that data may still appear on the original order date. Running a manual backfill over the affected date range will re-collect it with the correct refund dates.
Orders edited after the order date
Sometimes an order changes after the day it was placed: an item is added, an item is exchanged, or a quantity is changed. Shopify and Power My Analytics both capture the change, but they date it differently.
Shopify's reports treat the edit like a new order on the day of the edit. In
Shopify's own words, "if you edit an order after the day the order was placed, then the edit displays as a separate order in your reports."
Power My Analytics records the order's updated totals on the original order date. This happens because of a limitation in Shopify's API: it reports each order's current state but does not tell us when an edit occurred, so there is no edit date for us to use.
For example: a customer places a $105 order on July 6, then exchanges the item for a $150 one on July 14.
Report view | July 6 | July 14 | July total |
Shopify report | $105.00 | +$45.00 | $150.00 |
Power My Analytics | $150.00 | (no change) | $150.00 |
Both systems agree on the month; they disagree on the two individual days. If the edit happens in a different month from the order, the two systems will attribute that portion of revenue to different months.
What is and is not affected:
- Refunds, returns, and cancellations are not affected. Shopify provides an exact timestamp for these, so we report them on the day they happened, matching Shopify exactly.
- Only orders edited on a later day are affected: typically a small fraction of orders, and the differences largely cancel out over longer date ranges.
- Nothing is lost or duplicated: over a date range wide enough to include both the order date and the edit date, our totals reconcile with Shopify's.
- Because we record edits on the original order date, figures for a past period can shift slightly if an order from that period is edited later.
- Running a backfill will not change how these edits are dated, since Shopify's API does not provide edit dates for us to collect.
If your store runs a free gift promotion, your Gross sales and Discounts may look lower in your Power My Analytics report than in Shopify's Total sales over time report. That report counts a free gift's value twice: once in Gross sales and again in Discounts. Because the two entries cancel each other out, Net sales and Total sales are unaffected.
Power My Analytics counts the gift once, matching your Shopify order pages and Shopify's Sales by product report. Shopify's own reports can disagree with each other on this point, so when you review a store with free gift promotions, compare your Power My Analytics report with the order page or the Sales by product report.
For example: a customer places a $175 order that qualifies for an automatic free gift valued at $25, and also uses a 10% discount code ($17.50).
Report view | Gross sales | Discounts | Net sales |
Shopify order page, Shopify "Sales by product" report, and Power My Analytics | $200.00 | -$42.50 | $157.50 |
Shopify "Total sales over time" report | $225.00 | -$67.50 | $157.50 |
Net sales, Total sales, taxes, returns, shipping, and order counts align across all of these views.