Cases · Sales report
An online shop's quarter: the partner channel sells smaller and delivers less
Self-initiated case study using synthetic data, built the way clients send files.
Goal
An online shop sent its order export for Q1 2026 and asked how the quarter went, and how its two sales channels, direct and partner, compare.
Challenge
45,917 rows: each time an order's status changed, a new row with the same order number was appended. Dates in three formats; shipping written with a thousands space, a decimal comma or a EUR suffix, some cells unreadable; a free-text comment column; 10 orders with a negative refund.
Solution
Rules agreed before counting: an order counts in its version with the later update time; revenue is delivered orders after refunds, excluding shipping; the comment column stays out. 45,917 rows became 45,000 orders, 44,541 of them in the quarter, and 44,531 once the 10 orders with a negative refund are left out as an export fault. Every figure of the report was recounted from the export by separate code.
Outcome
EUR 3,023,296.61 net revenue from 44,531 orders; all six figures of the report matched the recount. The partner channel sells smaller baskets and loses more of them on the way. One question is open: six orders have two rows with the same update time and a different status, so the rule cannot choose. The report takes the lower row in the file; with the earlier row, net revenue would be EUR 3,022,518.62. The owner has to confirm which. No shipping total: unreadable cells would understate it by an amount the file cannot bound.
From the case
The sample report, 2 pages (PDF)
Service
Sales reports for your own files
The same method on your exports: definitions in writing first, then an independent recount.