Net ROAS
ROAS counts money that was never yours. Net ROAS counts what you keep — and tells you when an ad is actually profitable.
ROAS — return on ad spend — is revenue divided by what you spent to get it. Spend 2,500 and make 10,000, and your ROAS is 4.0.
The problem is what "revenue" includes.
ROAS counts money that was never yours
Total Sales includes:
VAT, which you collect on behalf of the state and then hand over.
Shipping, which you collect and then pay to a courier.
Orders that came back, which you refunded.
None of that pays for your ads. Net Sales takes it out: it strips tax and shipping and subtracts discounts and returns. Net ROAS is Net Sales divided by spend.
The same month, both ways
A shop on 21% VAT spends 2,500 on ads and takes 10,000 in sales, of which 500 was shipping and 800 came back as returns.
Total Sales
10,000
less VAT
−1,736
less shipping
−500
less returns
−661
Net Sales
7,103
Ad spend
2,500
ROAS
4.0
Net ROAS
2.8
Same ads, same spend, same month. One number is a story you tell at a dinner party; the other is the one your accountant would recognise.
Your break-even Net ROAS
Here is the part nobody tells a first-time advertiser. Net ROAS has a break-even point, and you can work it out in one line:
Break-even Net ROAS = 1 ÷ your gross margin
At a 40% margin you need 2.5 just to break even. At 50%, you need 2.0. At 25%, you need 4.0.
This turns an intimidating dashboard into a decision. The shop above, at a 45% margin, breaks even at 2.2 and is running at 2.8 — profitable, with room to push. Judged on ROAS 4.0 alone, the same owner would have assumed far more headroom than they have.
If you do not know your gross margin, the Products report shows revenue and profit per product once your product costs are set in Shopify.
Break-even here means break-even on the first order. A customer who comes back can justify a lower Net ROAS than this — see Cohorts & LTV for what a repeat buyer is worth.
Where to find it
On the Dashboard, Net ROAS and Net Sales are metric cards and columns in every drill-down table, so you can read them per source, campaign, ad set, ad and country.
On Live Today, Net Sales and Net ROAS are live tiles for the current day.