Shopify sales by payment method

How much came in by card, cash, gift card and every other method is the question at the end of most days. Shopify answers it in a finance report about payments, not in its sales reports. This is what that report gives, in Shopify's words, and what to know before you hand the figures to anyone.

The built-in report

Shopify's Payments finance report can group payments by "Payment method", among other groupings. For each method it gives "Transactions", "Gross payments", "Refunds" and "Net payments". Gross payments are "The amount paid by the transactions before refunds." Net payments are "total amount paid - the total amount refunded".

Three things to know

• It counts payments, not sales. A day's net payments and its total sales rarely match: gift cards sold, tips, payments not yet captured and refunds all move one and not the other. The reasons, in Shopify's words.
• Other shows as Manual. "If you mark an order as paid and select Other as the payment method, then the report displays the payment method as Manual".
• Gift card payments are a method of their own. "The amount paid by gift card is included in the Payments finance report as a gift card entry." The sale still counts in full; the gift card line is money the store took earlier.

On one page with the sales

Close of Day puts payments by method under the sales on the same page, for a day or a month, per location: for each method, what was collected, what was refunded and the net, with a line for the difference between total sales and payments. Each line follows Shopify's definition, worked out here. It costs $9 a month after a 14-day free trial, billed by Shopify. It is not yet on the Shopify App Store. More about Close of Day.