Best Practices

Get the most out of Nummbas by making sure your connected platforms have complete data. The more accurate your source data, the better your dashboard, insights, and reports will be.

Add Cost of Goods to Your Store

This is the single most impactful thing you can do. Without cost data on your products, Nummbas cannot calculate profit margins, product health scores, or dead stock value. The Product Command Center, Industry Scorecard margin benchmarks, and Product Profitability reports all depend on it.

Shopify

1. Go to Products in your Shopify admin
2. Click on a product
3. In the Pricing section, enter the Cost per item field
4. For products with variants, click into each variant and set the cost individually
5. Repeat for all products

To bulk edit, go to Products, select the products you want to update, click Bulk edit, then add the "Cost per item" column using the column selector.

WooCommerce

WooCommerce 10.3 and later includes a native Cost of Goods Sold feature built into core.

1. Go to WooCommerce > Settings > Advanced > Features
2. Tick the Cost of Goods Sold checkbox and save
3. Go to Products and click on a product
4. Under the General tab, enter the Cost of goods field
5. For variable products, each variation inherits the default cost but can be overridden individually

Square

1. In your Square Dashboard, go to Items and services > Items > Item library
2. Click on an item
3. Enter the Unit cost field
4. To bulk edit, select multiple items from the library, click Edit items, scroll to the Unit cost section, enter the costs, and click Update variations

Connect an Accounting Platform Early

QuickBooks or Xero is the backbone for several key metrics. Without accounting data, the following features will show limited or estimated results:

• Cash Runway — falls back to estimating burn from tracked integration costs only, which misses rent, payroll, and other operating expenses
• Net Income and Net Margin — estimated from tracked costs only, with a note that it is incomplete
• Expense Intelligence — cannot show full expense category breakdowns without accounting data
• Owner Compensation Guide — requires accounting data to calculate a safe draw range
• Cash Flow Forecast reports — projections are less accurate without full expense data
• Fundraising Readiness — net income and gross margin scores require accounting data

If you use both QuickBooks and Xero, connect whichever one is your primary books.

Set Your Industry Correctly

Your industry selection directly affects the benchmarks used in the Industry Scorecard. Each industry has different thresholds for what counts as healthy expense growth, marketing spend, shipping costs, product margins, debt ratios, and net profit. Choosing the wrong industry means your scores will be measured against the wrong benchmarks.

You can change your industry at any time in Settings > Organization.

Set Your Business Profile Accurately

Three profile fields affect how insight rules are tuned for your business:

Set these during onboarding or update them at any time in Settings > Organization.

Set Up Conversion Tracking on Your Ad Platforms

This is the most common reason for ad data looking wrong in Nummbas. ROAS, cost per acquisition, and conversion counts all come directly from your ad platform. If conversion tracking is not set up on the platform, Nummbas will show your ad spend and clicks but ROAS will show as zero.

Meta Ads

Meta requires a Facebook Pixel or Conversions API to track purchases:

1. In Meta Events Manager, verify that you have a Pixel installed on your store
2. Check that the Purchase event is firing — go to Events Manager > Your Pixel > Test Events and complete a test purchase
3. If you use a Shopify or WooCommerce store, most themes install the pixel automatically. Verify it under Settings > Integrations in your store admin.

Without the pixel, Nummbas will show your Meta spend and impressions but ROAS and cost per acquisition will be zero.

Google Ads

Google Ads requires conversion tracking to be configured in your account:

1. In Google Ads, go to Goals > Conversions > Summary
2. Make sure you have a Purchase conversion action set up
3. Verify that the conversion action has a conversion value assigned — this is the revenue number that Nummbas uses to calculate ROAS
4. If using Google Tag Manager, confirm the purchase tag fires on your order confirmation page

Without conversion tracking, Nummbas will show your Google spend but ROAS will be zero. Without a conversion value, conversions may show but ROAS will still be zero because there is no revenue to measure against.

TikTok Ads

TikTok requires a TikTok Pixel and properly configured events:

1. In TikTok Events Manager, check that your Pixel is installed and receiving events
2. Verify the Complete Payment event is firing on your store
3. Go to Assets > Events > Manage and confirm the event status is active

Without the pixel, Nummbas will show your TikTok spend but ROAS and conversions will be zero.

Connect all platforms you spend on

If you advertise on more than one platform, connect all of them. Nummbas calculates Blended ROAS as a spend-weighted average across all connected ad platforms. If you only connect Meta but also spend on Google and TikTok, your blended ROAS will be skewed because it only reflects one channel.

Each connected ad platform also unlocks its own set of insight rules (low ROAS, high ad spend ratio) that fire independently per platform.

Set Up ShipStation for Accurate Shipping Costs

Nummbas pulls your actual shipping label costs from ShipStation — not estimated rates, but the real dollars you paid. This powers the shipping cost percentage in the Industry Scorecard and shipping spend tracking in the dashboard.

To get accurate data:

1. Connect at least one carrier account in ShipStation (USPS, UPS, FedEx, or another provider). Without a carrier account, ShipStation cannot generate labels and Nummbas will have no shipping data to pull.
2. Create shipping labels through ShipStation rather than directly through your carrier. Nummbas reads label data — if you print labels outside of ShipStation, those shipments will not appear.
3. If you use multiple carriers, connect all of them. Nummbas shows a carrier breakdown so you can compare costs across providers.

Install the Klaviyo Tracking Snippet

Klaviyo provides email open rates, click rates, subscriber counts, and email-attributed revenue. The engagement metrics (opens and clicks) work automatically once Klaviyo is connected. However, revenue attribution requires the Klaviyo tracking snippet on your store.

Without the tracking snippet:

• Open rates and click rates will show correctly
• Email-attributed revenue will show as zero
• Conversion rate will show as zero

To verify your setup:

1. In Klaviyo, go to Settings > Setup > General
2. Check that the Klaviyo.js snippet is installed on your store
3. If you use Shopify, this is typically handled by the Klaviyo app — verify under Apps > Klaviyo in your Shopify admin
4. In Klaviyo, go to Analytics > Metrics and check that the Placed Order metric is receiving events. If you see recent events, revenue tracking is working.

Track Subscriptions with Recharge

If you use Recharge for subscription billing, connecting it gives you MRR (Monthly Recurring Revenue), churn rate, active subscription count, and failed charge monitoring. No special setup is needed beyond connecting your Recharge API token — Nummbas automatically calculates all subscription metrics from your charge and subscription data.

A few things to note:

• MRR is calculated from active subscriptions, not from charges. It reflects the recurring value of all active subscriptions normalized to a monthly amount, regardless of whether your subscriptions bill weekly, monthly, or on another interval.
• Churn rate is the percentage of subscriptions cancelled in the period relative to total subscriptions (active plus cancelled).
• Failed charges trigger an insight alert if the count is above zero, helping you catch billing issues early.

Monitor Processing Fees with Stripe

When Stripe is connected alongside an ecommerce store, it serves as your payment processing monitor. Nummbas tracks your Stripe processing fees, fee percentage, disputes, and refund rate. This data powers:

• Expense Intelligence — processing fees appear as a cost category
• Business Insights — alerts fire when your fee rate is unusually high, when disputes spike, or when refund rates increase
• Nummbas-FO — processing fee data is included in financial context

Make sure your Stripe restricted API key includes Read access to Charges, Balance, Disputes, and Refunds for the most complete data.

Match Your Currency to Your Primary Transacting Currency

Nummbas does not convert between currencies. All monetary values from your connected platforms are displayed in whatever currency you select during onboarding. If your Shopify store transacts in GBP but you set your Nummbas currency to USD, the numbers will display with a USD symbol but the values will actually be in GBP.

Set your display currency to match the currency your primary store and accounting system use. You can change this in Settings > Organization > Display Currency.

Service-Based and Hybrid Businesses

Many DTC businesses offer services alongside physical products — salons, fitness studios, restaurants, pet groomers, wellness practitioners, and more. Nummbas tracks service revenue the same way it tracks product revenue. As long as the service generates an order or charge on your connected platform, it counts toward your Revenue KPI and feeds into insights, reports, and the Nummbas-FO.

How services are tracked by platform

Hybrid businesses (products and services)

If you sell both products and services through the same platform, no special setup is needed. Both types of revenue flow into the same totals. The Revenue Breakdown chart will show individual service and product line items, so you can see how much revenue comes from each.

For the most accurate picture, make sure every service has a clear name in your platform so it appears properly in the Revenue Breakdown and Product Command Center.

SaaS and Digital Product Businesses Using Stripe

If you sell through Stripe directly (subscriptions, digital products, SaaS) and do not have a Shopify, WooCommerce, Square, BigCommerce, or Wix store, connect Stripe as your primary integration. Nummbas automatically detects that Stripe is your only sales channel and uses your Stripe charges and invoices as your revenue source.

When Stripe is your revenue source, the following features work with your Stripe data:

• Revenue KPI — shows your total Stripe charges for the period
• Revenue Breakdown — paid invoices appear in the chart by product
• Insight Rules — revenue decline, revenue growth, profit margin, and ad spend ratio rules all fire based on your Stripe revenue
• Nummbas-FO — your Stripe revenue is included in financial context
• Business Reports — Stripe data feeds into financial health and investor update reports

You do not need to connect an ecommerce platform. If you do connect one later, Nummbas will switch to using the ecommerce store as the primary revenue source to avoid double-counting.

Recommended Connection Order

There is no required order, but connecting in this sequence gets you the most value fastest:

For ecommerce businesses (physical products)

1. Ecommerce store (Shopify, WooCommerce, Square, BigCommerce, or Wix) — unlocks revenue, orders, products, inventory, and most insight rules
2. Accounting software (QuickBooks or Xero) — unlocks cash runway, expenses, net income, and accurate P&L
3. Ad platforms (Meta, Google, TikTok) — unlocks ROAS, ad spend analysis, and campaign insights
4. Payments (Stripe) — unlocks fee analysis and dispute monitoring
5. Shipping (ShipStation) — unlocks shipping cost tracking and delivery rate monitoring
6. Email marketing (Klaviyo) — unlocks open rate and click rate insights
7. Subscriptions (Recharge) — unlocks MRR, churn, and failed charge monitoring

For service-based businesses (salons, fitness, restaurants, wellness)

1. Square or Shopify — whichever you use for appointments, POS, or online booking. Unlocks revenue, services, and most insight rules.
2. Accounting software (QuickBooks or Xero) — unlocks cash runway, expenses, net income, and accurate P&L. Especially important for service businesses where labor is the primary cost.
3. Payments (Stripe) — unlocks fee analysis and dispute monitoring if you also process payments through Stripe
4. Ad platforms (Meta, Google, TikTok) — unlocks ROAS and ad spend analysis
5. Email marketing (Klaviyo) — unlocks open rate and click rate insights

For SaaS and digital product businesses

1. Stripe — unlocks revenue tracking, payment volume, fee analysis, and most insight rules
2. Accounting software (QuickBooks or Xero) — unlocks cash runway, expenses, net income, and accurate P&L
3. Ad platforms (Meta, Google, TikTok) — unlocks ROAS, ad spend analysis, and campaign insights
4. Subscriptions (Recharge) — unlocks MRR, churn, and failed charge monitoring if you use Recharge for subscription management
5. Email marketing (Klaviyo) — unlocks open rate and click rate insights

Allow Time for Trend Insights

Several insight rules compare the current period to the previous period to detect trends. These rules will not fire until you have at least two full periods of data:

• Revenue decline or growth
• Average order value decline
• Expense spikes

This typically means insights become more useful after 7 to 14 days of being connected.

Keep Integrations Connected

Nummbas syncs data automatically on a regular schedule. If an integration disconnects (for example, an expired OAuth token or a changed API key), that data will stop updating and your dashboard metrics will become stale.

Check the Integrations page periodically to make sure all connections show a green status. If you see a warning or error, reconnect the integration to resume syncing.