WooCommerce Reports: Sales, Products and Customers

A good WooCommerce report shows three things clearly: how much you really sold (counting the right order statuses), which products earned it, and whether customers are coming back. WooCommerce, the e-commerce plugin for WordPress, records the orders; your report needs consistent rules about which orders count and how to treat refunds, shipping and VAT. This guide sets out those rules, the metrics that matter and a monthly layout.

Decide which orders count

WooCommerce orders move through statuses such as pending payment, on hold, processing, completed, cancelled, refunded and failed. Your totals change a lot depending on which you include. A common approach:

On-hold deserves attention in South Africa, where many shops accept EFT payments. A large on-hold value may be money on the way, or orders that will quietly never be paid. Report its count and value, and how many on-hold orders from last month were eventually paid. If custom statuses have been added by plugins, map each to one of these groups.

Core sales metrics

• Net sales = product sales − discounts − refunds, excluding shipping and VAT (or state clearly if included).
• Orders and average order value = net sales ÷ orders.
• Gross margin = (net sales − cost of goods) ÷ net sales, if you record product costs.
• Refund rate = refunds ÷ product sales.
• Shipping recovery = shipping charged ÷ shipping cost, if you track courier costs.

Say your store took R96,000 in paid orders in June: R88,000 products and R8,000 shipping. Discounts were R5,500 and refunds R2,500. Net product sales are R80,000 across 320 orders, an AOV of R250. If couriers cost you R11,000, shipping recovery is 73%, meaning you subsidised R3,000 of delivery. That's a margin leak most dashboards never show.

Product reports

Rank products by net sales, then add units, margin, refund rate and current stock. Report variations (size, colour) where they matter: a T-shirt that sells well overall may be losing money on returns in one size. Two useful views:

• Top and bottom movers: largest rand increase and decrease versus last month.
• Slow stock: items with stock on hand but few or no sales in 60 or 90 days, tying up cash.

For stock-related metrics like sell-through and days of cover, see retail and inventory KPIs.

Customer reports

Split orders and net sales between new and returning customers, and track repeat purchase rate over 12 months. Watch for guest checkouts: if many orders are placed without an account, count customers by a consistent key such as the billing email, internally only. Report counts and segments, not individual names. Regional splits by province can guide courier choices and marketing.

Payment methods and gateway fees

Split net sales and order counts by payment method: card, instant EFT, manual EFT, buy-now-pay-later or cash on collection, whatever your store offers. Two things usually come out of this view. First, fees: if you record the gateway fee per order, show fees as a percentage of sales by method, because the cheapest method for you may not be the one customers prefer. Second, failure and abandonment: a method with many failed or pending orders may be confusing customers at checkout. Say manual EFT is 25% of orders but 60% of the on-hold value that never gets paid; that is worth fixing with clearer payment instructions or a reminder email.

Pitfalls to avoid

• Counting pending or failed orders as sales.
• Mixing VAT-inclusive and VAT-exclusive figures in one table.
• Ignoring refunds processed in a later month than the original order; decide whether they reduce the month of the refund or the month of the order.
• Test orders left in the live store.

A monthly WooCommerce report template

1. Summary: net sales, margin and orders versus last month and last year.
2. KPIs: net sales, orders, AOV, margin, refund rate, returning customer share.
3. Order status: on-hold count and value; failed and cancelled orders.
4. Products: top 10, movers, slow stock.
5. Customers: new vs returning, by province.
6. Shipping: charged vs cost.
7. Actions for next month.

WooCommerce is one of the app integrations Summarix can connect as a source. It computes the KPIs and charts with code, adds data-quality notes, and writes the summary and recommendations around your figures. If you also sell on another platform, compare the approach in our Shopify sales reports guide.

Conclusion

Fix your status rules first, separate shipping and VAT, then build product and customer views on top. With consistent definitions, your WooCommerce report becomes something you can compare month after month instead of a number that changes depending on who pulled it.