One order, three numbers
Take a single order. A customer buys goods listed at €100, uses a 10% discount code and pays €5 for shipping. VAT at 21% applies to both. Each system records the same order differently.
| System | What it records | Amount |
|---|---|---|
| Webshop | Order total paid by the customer, including VAT and shipping | €114.95 |
| Payment provider | The same charge, less a processing fee, paid out days later | €112.98 |
| Accounting | Revenue excluding VAT, recognised when the order ships | €95.00 |
Illustrative figures. The processing fee assumes 1.5% plus €0.25 per transaction.
None of these is wrong. The webshop measures what customers paid, the payment provider measures cash received, and accounting measures revenue as the business must report it. The trouble starts when all three appear on different slides under the same word.
The five usual differences
- Gross or net. Is the figure before or after discounts, refunds, returns and cancellations? A refund in March for a February order changes one system’s February and another’s March.
- Timing. Order date, payment date, invoice date, shipping date and payout date can fall in different weeks, or different months at month-end.
- Tax and shipping. Some systems include VAT and shipping in their totals by default; accounting usually excludes VAT and may treat shipping separately.
- Currency. Orders in several currencies are converted at different rates and on different dates by each system.
- Scope. Test orders, internal accounts, B2B invoices raised outside the webshop and marketplace sales are included in one place and missing from another.
Why it matters more than it seems
A revenue figure rarely stays on one slide. It drives margin, which drives pricing decisions. It drives targets and commission. It goes into the board pack and, eventually, the forecast the bank sees. If the starting number is ambiguous, every figure built on it inherits the ambiguity, and the meeting spends its time working out which version is on screen.
Name different numbers differently
Often the right answer is not to force one number, but to keep two or three, each with its own name and purpose. Commercial teams need to see orders as they happen; finance needs revenue as it must be reported. Both are legitimate.
- Gross sales: what customers ordered, including VAT, on the order date. Useful for daily trading.
- Net revenue: what the business earned, excluding VAT, after discounts and refunds. Used for margin and reporting.
- Cash received: what reached the bank account, after fees. Used for cash planning.
The rule is simple: one name, one definition. The moment two different calculations share the word “revenue”, the confusion returns.
Write the definition down
The fix is not a better dashboard. It is an explicit definition that the finance team and the commercial team both sign off, written in a form precise enough to implement.
Net revenue
- Formula
- Order value excluding VAT, after discounts, less refunds and returns
- Includes
- Webshop, marketplace and B2B invoices; shipping charged to the customer
- Excludes
- Test orders, internal accounts, cancelled orders, gift card sales
- Timing
- Shipping date. Refunds reduce revenue in the month of the original order
- Currency
- Converted to euros at the daily rate on the shipping date
- Source
- Order lines from the webshop and ERP; refunds from the payment provider
Every field in that card is a decision someone has to make. Making them once, in writing, is most of the work.
Implement it once, reconcile it monthly
Once agreed, the definition is implemented in one place in the data model and every dashboard, brief and forecast reads from it. When the definition changes, it changes everywhere at once, and the change is recorded.
Finally, reconcile the modelled figure to the accounts every month. The two will rarely match to the cent, and that is fine, as long as the difference is small, stable and explained. A difference that suddenly grows is the earliest warning that something upstream has changed.