Shopify net revenue tracked slightly too low

Why your tracked revenue may differ slightly from your actual net revenue

When is this relevant for you?

Only if you use Shopify and sell products with different VAT rates — for example, groceries (7%) together with cooking accessories (19%), or books (7%) together with stationery (19%).

In this case, there may be a deviation of approximately ±0.5–2% from the actual net value, because we have to calculate using an average tax rate.

For everyone else: exactly zero deviation.

The problem: Shopify withholds the tax from us

Shopify provides us with certain data fields in the tracking pixel. According to the official Shopify documentation, the subtotalPrice field should contain the goods value before taxes and before shipping — exactly what we need. In practice, for many shops, it still includes the VAT. This is a known, open gap in Shopify — with no fix date.

What Shopify additionally doesn't give us: the tax broken down by products or separately for shipping costs. We only receive a single number — the total tax on everything combined.

Our solution

We calculate the net value ourselves — as accurately as possible with the available data:

Tax rate      = Total tax ÷ (Total revenue − Total tax)
Shipping tax  = Shipping costs × Tax rate
Product tax   = Total tax − Shipping tax
Net revenue   = Total revenue − Shipping costs − Product tax

Calculation example (shop with mixed tax rates):

A customer buys:

• 1x olive oil (7% VAT) — €9.99 gross
• 1x frying pan (19% VAT) — €49.99 gross
• Shipping — €4.90 gross

What Shopify gives us:

What we calculate from this:

For comparison — the actual net value:

In this example, the deviation is minimal. The more extreme the ratio between 7% and 19% products, the greater it becomes — but it always stays below 2%.