Orders: sales, cancellations, refunds
Revenue: payment and discount allocation
Costs: product, fulfillment, platform
Time: order, payment, settlement
Output: product, channel, campaign
Define the accounting boundary first
Margin may mean product margin, contribution margin, or post-settlement margin. If promotion, freight, commission, and refunds enter different definitions, reports can reach opposite conclusions.
Specify the analysis object, time basis, order status, revenue and cost items, and who funds each discount.
Separate order and fee facts
Order lines describe products, quantities, prices, and state. Refunds, discounts, commissions, logistics, and ads arrive at different grains and times. Flattening them can duplicate allocations.
Model order, line, refund, and fee facts with stable keys. Document allocation rules and any unallocated balance.
Time basis changes the trend
Order date explains campaign conversion, payment date cash confirmation, settlement date platform remittance, and refund date after-sales impact. The right basis depends on the question.
Keep event and accounting dates, and display cutoff and refund observation window.
Reconcile before diagnosing
Reconcile total revenue, refunds, discounts, costs, and fees, then segment by product, channel, campaign, and customer type. Separate price, mix, cost, refund-rate, and fee-rate changes.
Association is not causation. Validate campaign effects with history, untreated products, or experiments.
Accept with difficult samples
Reconcile normal, partial-refund, full-refund, cross-period, bundle, and platform-funded cases line by line. Finance and operations should jointly approve definitions.
BI0.AI can be evaluated as an integrated collection-to-analysis path. Connector, allocation, and historical backfill support require source-specific verification.
Public references
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