1. What is OrderSubTotal?
OrderSubTotal represents the total monetary value of an order before applying taxes, shipping costs, or additional fees. It reflects the aggregated value of all the line items in an order at their original prices.
2. Value to Merchants
- Sales Insights:
The subtotal is a key metric to evaluate the total value of products sold, excluding external factors like taxes and shipping. - Customer Spending Analysis:
Helps understand the spending behavior of customers by focusing purely on product value. - Promotions and Discounts:
Comparing the subtotal with post-discount totals provides insights into the effectiveness of discount strategies.
3. Why It Matters to Your Business
- Order Value Trends:
Monitoring subtotals over time helps track changes in customer order sizes and identify trends in product sales. - Discount Strategies:
Analyze how frequently customers reach certain subtotal thresholds to optimize pricing and discount strategies. - Revenue Projections:
Provides a baseline for calculating potential revenue before accounting for additional factors like taxes or refunds.
4. How OrderSubTotal is Calculated
Formula:OrderSubTotal=∑(Price of all line items in the order (before taxes and fees))
5. Currency Context
The calculation for OrderSubTotal is currency-dependent, and the value can be represented in either the ShopCurrency or PresentmentCurrency:
- ShopCurrency: The store’s native currency.
- PresentmentCurrency: The currency in which the order was placed.
6. Practical Examples
- Regular Customer Orders:
A customer’s order contains three items worth $50, $30, and $20. The OrderSubTotal is $100. - Bulk Purchases:
During a bulk sale, a customer places an order for multiple items totaling $500 before discounts. OrderSubTotal allows you to see the total value of items before promotions. - Currency Conversion:
In international transactions, you can view the OrderSubTotal in the currency the customer used (PresentmentCurrency) or convert it to the store’s base currency (ShopCurrency).
7. What is a Healthy OrderSubTotal?
- High Subtotals:
Indicate that customers are purchasing higher-value or multiple items in one order. - Low Subtotals:
Might reflect lower-priced products or customers placing smaller orders. This could be improved with strategies like upselling or free shipping thresholds.
8. Notes on Interpretation
- OrderSubTotal focuses exclusively on the product values in the order. It does not include taxes, shipping costs, or additional fees.
- When comparing the OrderSubTotal to the final order total, the differences highlight the impact of taxes, shipping, and discounts.
OrderSubTotal is a cornerstone measure for understanding and optimizing sales performance.