Why it happens
Some orders are created without a shopper on your site. Point of sale sales happen in a shop or at a market stall. A draft order marked as paid is made by you or your staff, often for a customer who paid by bank transfer or on the phone. A subscription renewal is made by the subscription app on its schedule, with no visit and no checkout. All of these are real orders and real money. None of them followed an ad click in your online store, so Meta has no browser purchase to count for them.
Other apps and marketplaces add orders too. A marketplace channel, a wholesale app, a bundle or pre-order app and a page builder checkout can write orders into your Shopify admin. Whether they should reach Meta is your decision. Many stores do not want a marketplace sale to count as a purchase from their own ads.
The comparison then starts from the wrong number. If you compare Shopify's total with Meta's Purchase count, the gap looks bigger than it is. You may then change your tracking to chase a gap that was never missing purchases. Or you may stop looking, because you assume a part of the gap is explained when it is not. Counting the right orders first tells you how large the real gap is.
Test orders and cancelled orders also sit in the list. A test order paid with a test gateway is not revenue, and a cancelled order should not be counted as a purchase for your campaigns.
Check it yourself
- 1In Shopify admin, open Orders. Use the filters to set a sales channel and keep the Online Store. Add the payment status Paid and set the dates to the last 7 full days.
- 2Remove what is left that was not placed through your checkout. Open a few orders you suspect and read their details. Draft orders you marked as paid and subscription renewals show where they were created, and you know which of your orders are bank transfers or renewals.
- 3Check the Channel and App filters for Draft Orders, marketplaces and other apps, and decide whether you want to count them. If you do not, leave them out for the comparison.
- 4Leave out test orders and cancelled orders.
- 5Write down the number you have left. Set the time zone to the same one in both tools. In Shopify it is in the store's General settings.
- 6In Meta Events Manager, open Data sources, select your pixel, and open the Overview tab. Read the Purchase count for the same days and the same time zone.
- 7Compare the two numbers. The difference is the gap that is left to explain, and the right place to look for its cause.
- 8Do the same for GA4. Open Reports, then Monetization, then Ecommerce purchases, and read the purchases for the same days.
Which tools can send those orders to Meta is in Meta's Conversions API options for Shopify.
FAQ
Should point of sale sales ever go to Meta?
Meta can take in-store sales through its Conversions API as physical store events. That is a different feed from your online store's Purchase event, and you decide whether you need it. For a comparison of online purchases, leave them out.
Are subscription renewals worth counting?
The first order of a subscription came from a visit and counts. A renewal comes later with no visit and no ad click, so leave it out of the comparison.
What if my store sells mostly through a marketplace?
Compare the online store channel by itself. The marketplace orders will not match Meta, whatever your tracking does.
Do I have to remove orders by hand every time?
For a one-off check, yes. If the same orders keep appearing, look at the source labels once and filter on them from then on.