Calculating fulfilled orders by date for accounting purposes

[sethbra]

We're having a difficult time figuring out the exact dollar amount of the total orders we've fulfilled in a given month. We need this number to know how much revenue we can recognize from our holding account. Our business builds its products to order, with a 2-4 week lead time, and we're prepaid for 99% of our orders. Because of this, there's a delay that we have to account from when we make a sale (which Shopify easily reports) to when when we fulfill the order (which Shopify doesn't appear to report; we've only found fulfillment reports that show # of orders in a chosen time period).

We don't recognize revenue in our books until the orders ship, so we need to be able to identify exactly what we shipped in a given month and the money associated with those orders. We can sort the orders by fulfilled vs unfulfilled, but we can only sort dates based on the order date, not the fulfilled date. We've used the Report Pundit app, in which we've built a "Fulfilled orders" report that includes the fulfilled date. It has been helpful but we can tell that the number isn't 100% accurate, which we're hoping for.

What solutions have you found to solve this accounting problem?

Thank you!

[CloudlabSam]

Can I ask what makes you think your current report isn't accurate? The challenge you might face is how to handle refunds or any actions that happen subsequent to the sale, but before the fulfillment.

[sethbra]

The report wasn't pulling items that were added after the order was created. Something customers call and add something to a product or add another product. The report captures items that have been removed, but not additions. 

I just talked with my bookkeeper and she's finding the refunds to be correctly reporting. 

I'm definitely open to the idea that our processes around creating orders needs to be improved. For instance, maybe we need to cancel an order and create an entirely new one if a change is made. Any insight on best practices is welcome.

[CloudlabSam]

Is it safe to assume that the new items are being added prior to fulfillment?

[sethbra]

Yes indeed, any additions are happening before fulfillment 99.99% of the time.

[CloudlabSam]

Then you should be able to get a final sales number for each order that is fulfilled in a period. We have a reporting app called Report Toaster that would be able to provide the report. Feel free to take a look and we can help you get setup if you use the Live Chat.

[BetterReports-K]

Hi @sethbra,

Keanna here from the Better Reports support team. I would recommend our app Better Reports for this! 

We can create a custom report showing sales by fulfilled at date according to the date each line item is fulfilled. This will work even for items that were added later to an order as it looks at the individual items date of fulfillment. 

In addition to custom reporting capabilities, Better Reports offers more than 60 built-in reports that cover your most common reporting needs including sales, current inventory, refunds, payouts, and more. Our reports can even be scheduled to send at a set frequency to your email or Google Drive!

I encourage you to install Better Reports and start your free 14-day trial and I'll be happy to set this up for you.