What Is Order Value? What One Order Includes

What Goes Into One Order's Value

Any order breaks down into the same few parts. Add them up and you've got the order total:

Order total = items subtotal − discounts + shipping + tax

The items subtotal is just each price times its quantity, added up. But "order value" can stop at different points along that line. One report counts only the items after discounts. Another counts everything the customer paid. And both of them call it order value.

Example: one order from a kitchen knife shop

Chef's knife: 1 × $90 = $90
Honing rod: 1 × $30 = $30
Items subtotal: $120
10% welcome code: −$12
Shipping: $8
Sales tax (8% of $108): $8.64

Order total = $120 − $12 + $8 + $8.64 = $124.64.

That gives you three fair answers for one order: $120 before the discount, $108 after it, or $124.64 with shipping and tax. None of them is wrong. They just count different things.

Where Shopify Shows Order Value

In your Shopify admin, the Orders page lists every order with its total. Click into one and the payment summary splits it into subtotal, discount, shipping, taxes and total.

Shopify's average order value report doesn't work the same way. It uses gross sales minus discounts, so shipping and taxes are left out. On the knife order, that's $108, not $124.64.

That average has a name of its own. Average order value (AOV) adds up order values over a period and divides by the number of orders. So order value is about a single order, while AOV averages lots of them.

Order Value in Store Rules and Offers

Plenty of store rules check how big an order is, like a free shipping minimum or a "spend $100, get 10% off" tier. If a rule says "orders over $100," find out which version it's counting. Say a cart has $95 in items and $8 shipping. That's $103, so it clears the bar on the total but falls short on items alone.

Post-purchase offers are often sized against the order too. Our post-purchase upsell guide suggests keeping the extra offer at or under 25% of the order, which is $20 or less on an $80 order. With Growth Suite, our app, you can start a post-purchase upsell funnel based on the order value.

If you want bigger orders and not just a clearer number, read our guide to raising average order value on Shopify.

Order Value Isn't What You Keep

It's tempting to read the order total as money you earned. A good chunk of it isn't yours, though. Go back to the knife order:

Order total: $124.64
Sales tax you pass on: −$8.64, leaving $116
Shipping label (you charged $8, it cost $11): −$11, leaving $105
What you paid for the knife and rod: −$52, leaving $53

That leaves about $53 out of a $124.64 order, and payment fees still come out of that. A refund or return later on can cut it further. If you're judging profit, look at gross profit per order, not order value.

Related Terms

Cart Value: what's sitting in a shopper's cart before checkout.
Order Subtotal: the items total before shipping and tax.
Average Transaction Value (ATV): an average per transaction, used a lot in retail.
Gross Profit: what's left of sales after product costs.
Free Shipping Threshold: how much a shopper has to spend to get free delivery.