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Returning Customer Gross Revenue is what repeat orders are worth at list price: line-item price × quantity on every order after a customer’s first, before discounts and refunds, without shipping or tax.

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Formula

Returning Customer Gross Revenue = SUM ( Line-item price × Quantity ) WHERE the order is a returning-customer order

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Formula Components

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How Upstack identifies returning customers

Upstack doesn’t take the new or returning label from Shopify. It works it out from the orders it has synced from your store:
  1. For each Shopify customer, it finds their earliest non-cancelled order. That order is the new-customer order.
  2. Every other order from that customer is a returning-customer order.
  3. If the first order is cancelled, it can’t be the new-customer order, so the customer’s next order takes that role.
  4. An order with no Shopify customer attached is neither new nor returning.
Point 4 is why New Customer Gross Revenue plus this metric can come out a little below Gross Revenue. Which orders count at all follows Settings → Reporting: Count pending orders as revenue, Count voided orders as revenue and Exclusion Filters.

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Example

A supplements brand reviews August: Returning customers also used $9,360 in loyalty discounts and received $5,616 in refunds, so Returning Customer Net Revenue was $172,224. The 8% gap between gross and net is what the loyalty program and returns cost on repeat orders.

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How to interpret it

  • Watch the share as well as the total. Repeat sales growing as a share of gross revenue usually means retention is working, or acquisition slowed. Check New Customers to tell which.
  • Compare it with net. A widening gap between RC gross and RC net revenue means more discounting or more returns on repeat orders.
  • Divide by order count. Returning Customer Gross AOV is this metric per repeat order, so it shows whether repeat buyers spend more per order or you have more repeat orders.
  • Expect it to look low after a big acquisition push. Customers acquired this month only start counting here from their second order.

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FAQ

It looks up the Shopify customer on the order. If that customer already has an earlier non-cancelled order in your store, the order counts as returning. Matching uses the Shopify customer, not the email typed at checkout.
No. It’s line-item sales only. Returning Customer Total Revenue uses the full order total, including shipping and tax.
Orders without a Shopify customer can’t be classified, so they’re counted in Gross Revenue but in neither segment.
See all Revenue metrics →