What a weekly store report should tell you, and what it should not hide

A store you do not operate yourself is a store you know through its report. A good weekly report is short, the same shape every week, and honest about the bad weeks. A bad one is a paragraph of adjectives. This is what to expect, so you can ask for it.

The eight numbers

1. Orders: how many, this week and the week before. The count, not the story.
2. Sales: the gross amount buyers paid, before fees and costs.
3. Fees and costs: what eBay took, what the goods cost, what shipping cost. Net is only honest when these are shown.
4. Net: sales minus fees and costs for the week. If a report shows gross and not net, ask why.
5. Active listings: how many are live, and how many were added or ended. This is the shape of the store.
6. Traffic to conversion: how many people viewed listings and what share bought. It tells you whether the problem, if there is one, is being seen or being chosen.
7. Open cases and returns: how many, and whether any is older than a week. A case is a buyer waiting.
8. Shipping performance: on-time rate and tracking uploaded. This is what eBay grades the account on, and what raises selling limits.

The two it should never leave out

• What went wrong. A supplier that shipped late, a listing that was removed, a case that was lost, a week with no orders. If the report only ever contains good news, it is not a report; it is marketing to a client. Ask for the problems and how they were handled.
• What is being decided next. Prices being adjusted, items being retired, a category being tested, a supplier being replaced. You should be able to see the store change direction before it does, not after.

Reading one in five minutes

Look at net first, then at whether it moved and why (orders, average order, or costs). Look at open cases and anything older than a week. Look at the problems section. Then look at what is being decided and ask yourself whether you agree. That is the job. If it takes longer than five minutes, the report is too long or too vague.

What a report cannot do

It cannot predict next week. A store's numbers move with season, category, competition and eBay's own changes, and a report that extrapolates a good week into a forecast is doing you a disservice. Read it as a record of what happened and a statement of what is being tried. Anything more is a guess wearing a chart.

Beyond the report

A weekly summary is the floor, not the ceiling. If your operator's platform gives you a portal where you can see every listing, order and message on your own schedule, the report becomes what it should be: the five-minute version of something you could check any time. If the report is the only window into the store, ask for a bigger window.