Multi-Channel RetailRetail / Enterprise5 min read

Monitor Store Health from One Dashboard

A weekly promotion review built on one profit-aware dashboard, with clear limits: discounted orders only, no alerts, no refunds, one dashboard per store.

A fictional retailer with several Shopify storefronts runs a weekly promotion review on each store's Discount Prime dashboard: revenue and Estimated Profit from discounted orders, discount given, margin colors, and recent orders. The dashboard covers discounted orders only, has no alerts or health score, does not subtract refunds, and shipping ROI compares revenue, not profit.

At a glance

Challenge: A retailer with several storefronts read five disconnected reports and could not agree whether its promotions were earning money.
Approach: A weekly routine on each store's dashboard: Estimated Profit next to revenue, discount share, margin colors, cost coverage, and refunds checked in Shopify.
Discount Prime campaign types used: Profit AnalyticsMargin Health MonitoringMultiple campaign types

Scenario-based case study: the merchant is fictional and modeled on patterns across Discount Prime stores. Prices, costs and outcome figures are illustrative assumptions for teaching, not measured results from a real store.

Short Answer

Discount Prime's dashboard gives one screen for promotion health: revenue and Estimated Profit from discounted orders, discount given, discounted order count, revenue mix by campaign type, top campaigns with margin colors, and recent orders with their profit. It is a good first screen for a weekly promotion review. It is not a whole-store health monitor: it covers orders that carried Discount Prime campaigns, it has no health score and sends no margin alerts, it does not subtract refunds, and each Shopify store has its own dashboard. Use Shopify's own analytics for total store sales, traffic, and conversion.

Merchant Scenario

Peak Commerce Group is a fictional retailer with several Shopify storefronts in different categories, each running its own wholesale, tiered, Buy X Get Y, free shipping, and flat product campaigns. Marketing reads revenue, finance reads a profit spreadsheet, operations reads shipping costs. Each team reaches a different conclusion about the same week.

The goal is a short, shared routine: the smallest set of numbers that tells the team whether promotions are earning their keep, and where to look when they are not.

What the Dashboard Shows, and What It Does Not

Element	What it shows	Watch out for
Summary tiles	Revenue, Estimated Profit, discount given, discounted orders, with period-over-period trend	Scope is orders that carried a Discount Prime campaign, not all store orders
Revenue mix	Revenue split by campaign type	Attributed revenue, not caused revenue
Top campaigns	Campaigns with revenue, profit, margin, colored green, yellow, or red	Colors are thresholds you set (defaults: below 0% red, below 20% yellow), not a score
Recent orders	Latest discounted orders with discount, delivery, total, and profit; click through to the full breakdown	Paid orders only
Shipping promotion ROI	Shipping subsidy spent next to "additional orders" value	See the caution below

Estimated Profit is revenue after discounts for lines with a Shopify cost, minus product cost, minus shipping subsidy. It excludes payment fees, fulfillment, returns, ads, and taxes, and refunds or cancellations are not subtracted. Lines without cost are left out of both revenue and cost.

Several storefronts. Each Shopify store installs the app separately and has its own dashboard. A group view across stores means exporting or reading each store and combining the numbers yourself or in a BI tool.

Alerts. There are no margin alert emails and no store-health score. The weekly email is sent on Tuesdays, but its figures count all orders in the last seven days, not only discounted ones, and its "top campaign" is ranked by discount given. Use it as a reminder to open the dashboard, not as a measure of what the campaigns caused.

Alternatives Compared

Approach	Fits when	Does not fit when
Shopify analytics and reports	You need total store sales, sessions, conversion, and sales by discount	You need app-campaign attribution with cost per order
Weekly spreadsheet	One owner, few campaigns, finance wants its own logic	Many campaigns change weekly; nobody owns the file
BI dashboard	You need several stores combined, refunds, fees, and ad spend in one view	You lack an analyst or data pipeline
Discount Prime dashboard	Most promotions run in Discount Prime and you want campaign-level profit per store	You need whole-store health or a cross-store total

A practical setup for a multi-store group: Shopify analytics for store totals, Discount Prime per store for promotion detail, and a monthly BI or spreadsheet roll-up across stores that subtracts refunds.

A Weekly Review Routine

Illustrative readings for one storefront over 7 days, to show what each step looks at:

Tile	Reading
Revenue (discounted orders)	$612,000
Estimated Profit	$148,000
Discount given	$71,400
Discounted orders	9,800

Profit next to revenue. $148,000 / $612,000 is about 24% Estimated Profit on discounted revenue. Compare with the previous period's ratio, not only the revenue trend.
Discount depth. $71,400 / $612,000 is about 12% of revenue given as discount. A rising share with flat profit is the first thing to explain.
Margin colors. Open any yellow or red campaign in Top campaigns and look at its orders.
Cost coverage. In those orders, check for highlighted lines without cost; a campaign can look healthy or unhealthy simply because cost is missing.
Refunds. For categories with high return rates, check Shopify's refund figures, which the dashboard does not subtract.
Decide. Adjust depth or threshold, narrow the products, end the campaign, or plan a controlled test.

Replace the readings with your own; the ratios, not the totals, are what make weeks comparable.

Reading Shipping Promotions

The shipping ROI banner compares the shipping subsidy spent with a "generated" figure: for each order that received a shipping discount, the amount by which the order total exceeded the store's average order value in the 30 days before the campaign started. Two cautions:

It compares revenue with the subsidy, not profit. An extra $20 of revenue at 40% gross margin covers $8 of shipping, not $20.
Orders that qualify for a spend threshold are, by construction, larger than average. Part of the "generated" amount would exist without the campaign.

To judge a free-shipping threshold, compare gross profit per order and order count in comparable periods with and without the offer (or in a holdout region or customer group), and include the full shipping cost you absorb. If you use the "limit free shipping" cap, the subsidy per order is bounded by that cap; product cost and other variable costs still apply.

Measurement for the Routine

Primary: Estimated Profit as a share of discounted revenue, per campaign and per store, adjusted for refunds.
Guardrails: discount given as a share of revenue; share of campaign revenue with cost data.
Baseline: the same ratios in prior periods; store-wide sales from Shopify to see whether campaign revenue is growing the store or shifting full-price sales into discounted ones.
Change or stop: a campaign that stays yellow or red after its cost data is complete and refunds are considered gets a parameter change or an end date.

Common Mistakes

Reading the dashboard as whole-store health; it covers discounted orders only.
Treating the weekly email's revenue as revenue the campaigns caused.
Waiting for alerts that do not exist instead of reviewing margin colors on a schedule.
Reading shipping ROI as profit or as fully incremental.
Comparing stores without combining their separate dashboards on the same definitions.
Trusting profit while many lines lack Shopify cost per item.

Frequently asked questions

Does Discount Prime's dashboard show my whole store's health?

No. It covers orders that carried a Discount Prime campaign: revenue, Estimated Profit, discount given, discounted orders, revenue mix by campaign type, top campaigns with margin colors, and recent orders. Use Shopify analytics for total sales, sessions, and conversion. Each Shopify store has its own dashboard, so combining several storefronts means reading each one or rolling them up in a spreadsheet or BI tool.

Will Discount Prime alert me when a campaign starts losing money?

No. There are no margin alert emails and no health score. Campaigns and orders are colored red, yellow, or green on the dashboard using thresholds you set in Settings (defaults: below 0% red, below 20% yellow), so schedule a weekly review. The weekly email counts all orders in the last seven days, not only discounted ones, so it is a reminder, not a measure of campaign impact.

How should I read the shipping promotion ROI figure?

As a rough signal. It compares the shipping subsidy with how far each subsidized order exceeded your average order value from the 30 days before the campaign. That is revenue, not profit, and orders that meet a spend threshold are larger by construction. To judge a free-shipping threshold, compare gross profit per order and order count in comparable periods with and without the offer.

Which numbers should a weekly promotion review start with?

Estimated Profit as a share of discounted revenue, discount given as a share of revenue, and the margin color of each campaign, compared with the previous period. Then check cost coverage (lines without Shopify cost are left out) and refunds, which the dashboard does not subtract, before changing or ending a campaign.