What Does “Revenue” on Etsy Mean? It’s Tricky!

Etsy stats can be really confusing, and there are a lot of questions about which reports include what detail. The revenue numbers are always something that people have questions about, and what’s included in that number is one of the most common questions.

Etsy revenue numbers usually don’t include the cost of shipping that the customer pays, but in other places, the amounts are lumped in together.

The 1099-K tax form that’s issued at the end of the year includes all income that Etsy collects from the buyer and pays the seller.

On the other hand, the figures in the monthly financial reports are itemized with each charge listed individually.


What Does "Revenue" on Etsy Mean? It's Tricky!

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Does Etsy revenue include shipping?

The short answer is that the revenue number that’s reported in the shop dashboard does NOT include shipping that the customer pays for, and is only the price that they paid for the item itself.

In the seller dashboard on desktop, you can see the revenue number on the right.

sales stats data chart from the etsy dashboard.
Seller dashboard revenue section.

If you click on the revenue number after sorting for the timeframe you want to look at, you’ll see the total amount of revenue that you collected in that time.

For the chart above, I narrowed it down to the day before I wrote this article so that I could see the sales that came in by the hour. The point that I highlighted is the sale of a mini silicone mold, and the cost of the mold was $8.

Receipt for the sale of an $8 mini mold.
Receipt for the sale of an $8 mini mold.

This is the part of the receipt that shows the item sale and the price. That corresponds to the revenue on the stats chart, and it shows that the shipping and sales tax isn’t included in the figure on the revenue stats chart.

So in the stats chart, the revenue is only reporting the money that the customer paid for the item.



Does revenue include discounts?

If the customer used a discount code, the revenue number in the stats would reflect that, and would only show the discounted price that was paid, not the original price.


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Here’s the section of the stats chart that shows that sale:

Stats chart for the discounted sale.

Receipt with the discount included.
Receipt with the discount included.

This shows the same total from the receipt in the item total section after the discount was taken, but it doesn’t include the shipping or sales tax.

So again, this shows that the revenue only includes what the customer paid for the product, not the shipping.



When is revenue lumped together with shipping?

The one time that revenue reporting gets really confusing is when people get the 1099-K tax form at the end of the year, if they do receive one. (There are income limits, so not every seller will receive one.)

On the 1099-K form, the payment transactions that are reported by month include ALL of the money that you earned through Etsy. That includes all of the money that you collected from item sales and shipping, and any taxes that Etsy had to collect on your behalf that you have to pay.

The 1099-K can be confusing because it does include shipping, so it doesn’t line up with the revenue numbers that Etsy reports in the stats section. It can also be slightly off because sometimes the Etsy financial reports say that some transactions that came in at the end of the month were made in the next month.

So the 1099-K form numbers aren’t the same as revenue, but they should be closer to the actual amounts that you took in from Etsy before you take out your expenses.




Where to look for the full revenue picture.

The revenue on your shop dashboard is the total that you took in in product sales, but you might also have collected a shipping fee from a customer, then bought a shipping label that cost less than that. So when everything is said and done and you take out your expenses plus your Etsy fees, you probably earned a different amount for the sale than the revenue number says.

On top of that, you have to then take out your other expenses like materials and overhead, so the revenue number is only the starting point.

If you look in your shop finances section in the shop dashboard, you’ll see the breakdown of every transaction, and you’ll be able to see the actual running total of what Etsy owes you.

To see your actual numbers, you’ll need to download the CSV files from the download data section in your shop. (For more information about Etsy bookkeeping, click here to read the article about that.)

That will itemize out all of your income and Etsy expense numbers so that you can reconcile the 1099-K and make sure that you’re claiming all of your Etsy expenses as far as the cost of shipping labels and fees go.


It’s important to know what all of the numbers that Etsy throws at you actually mean, because they do seem to contradict each other! Just remember that revenue is only one part of the entire picture, and that number isn’t going to be what you’ve actually made at the end of the year after all of your expenses are taken out.

Kara Buntin

Kara Buntin has run a profitable home-based business since 1999, and has a background in art, theater design, and cake decorating. She's a top Etsy seller with over 51,000 sales on Etsy and her own website, and helps other home-based business owners with their business goals and SEO. She founded the Artisan Shopping Directory website to promote the artisans who are members of her EShop Success marketing program.

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