VAT, revenue and Contribution Profit

By default, Ecom Forward reports your revenue without VAT / sales tax. The tax you collect at checkout was never your money — you’re holding it for the tax office. Counting it as revenue makes your business look bigger than it is, and every number underneath it (margin, profit, cost percentages) inherits that error.

Why your revenue can read lower than Shopify

Shopify’s “Total sales” includes VAT. We don’t. So on a Dutch store at 21% VAT, a €121,000 Shopify figure shows here as €100,000 — and that’s the correct number, not a missing €21,000. When VAT is being excluded, the tile is labelled Total Revenue (ex VAT)so you always know which basis you’re looking at.

Note

This is the same basis Triple Whale and Eyk use. If you’ve been comparing tools and Ecom Forward looked “lower”, this is usually why — and it’s the number your accountant means when they say revenue.

What Contribution Profit is

The profit tile on your dashboard shows Contribution Profit:

Net revenue (after returns, without VAT)
minus product costs (COGS)
minus ad spend
minus transaction fees
minus shipping costs you track separately

It’s what your sales contribute beforefixed costs like rent, salaries and software. That’s the same definition Triple Whale and Eyk call Net Profit / Contribution Profit, so you can compare like for like. This tile used to be called “Estimated Profit” — the math is unchanged, the name just says what it actually is.

Tip

For true net profit after operating expenses and one-off business expenses, use Finance → Statements(the P&L).

Switching it

Go to Settings → Reporting.
Pick “Without VAT / sales tax” (the default) or “Including VAT / sales tax”.
That’s it — it applies instantly to your dashboard, trends, P&L, Ford and your emails.

It’s one account-wide choice on purpose. Picking it per store would let two screens disagree about the same week, which is worse than either answer on its own.

Two numbers that stay VAT-inclusive on purpose

ROAS and AOV deliberately keep VAT in. Meta, Google and Shopify all report conversion values with tax included, so if we stripped VAT out of ROAS your target in Ads Manager would no longer mean the same thing here. Same for AOV, which is kept on one basis across the Dashboard, Daily Profit and Ford. Your refund rate stays VAT-inclusive too, because refunds are.

“This store still includes VAT”

We only ever take out VAT we can actually see. If a store was connected before we started splitting tax out of order history, its rows don’t carry a VAT figure — so rather than quietly show you a VAT-inclusive number under an ex-VAT label, we name the store on your Revenue tile and leave its figure alone.

Open Finance → Statements → P&L.
Pick the store, then click “Backfill revenue breakdown”.
It re-reads your Shopify orders and fills in tax, shipping and discounts on the old rows. The note disappears once it’s done.

My store doesn't charge VAT. Do I need to do anything?

No. If your order history shows zero tax, ex-VAT and including-VAT are the same number and nothing changes. You won’t see an “ex VAT” label either, because there’s nothing to exclude.

Will this change my historical numbers?

It changes how they’re displayed, not what’s stored. Your underlying order data is untouched — flip the setting back and every number returns to what it was.

Why is my profit lower than it was?

Because VAT left the revenue side. The profit itself is more honest: the VAT in your old profit figure was money you owed the tax office, not margin you earned.

Does my returns figure exclude VAT too?

Not yet. Shopify doesn’t tell us the tax on a refunded line, and we’d rather leave the number alone than invent one. It means net revenue is very slightly conservative — for most stores well under 1% — and it’s on our list to capture properly.