What Is the Shopify Shipping Label Cost Report?
The Shopify Shipping Label Cost Report puts two numbers side by side for each online order: what the customer paid you for shipping, and what the shipping label actually cost you. Because the report is filtered to the Online Store sales channel, it focuses on shipping economics for web orders rather than POS or other channels.
The distinction that matters here is between the Shipping field and the Shipping Label Amount field. Shipping is the amount collected from the customer at checkout. Shipping Label Amount is your real outlay to the carrier for that order. The gap between them, order by order, is your shipping profit or loss.
Merchants use this report when shipping stops feeling like a pass-through cost and starts affecting margin. Free-shipping promotions, flat-rate pricing, and heavy or distant deliveries can all quietly turn shipping into a loss on individual orders, and a single blended total will not reveal it.
Which Fields Are Included in the Shopify Shipping Label Cost Report?
These fields let you tie each order's shipping charge and label cost to a date, a destination, and a shipping method.
You can customize the pre-made report by adding, removing, or rearranging columns so it matches how you review shipping.
Important Insights You Can Find in This Report
Which destinations cost more to ship than customers pay for?
Group the report by Shipping Country or Shipping Province and compare Shipping against Shipping Label Amount within each region. Distant or high-cost destinations often carry label costs that outrun the shipping you collected, especially under flat-rate pricing. Regions where label cost repeatedly exceeds the collected amount are candidates for revised shipping rates, surcharges, or carrier changes for that zone.
Which shipping methods are losing money?
Read Shipping Title alongside the collected-versus-paid gap. A named rate that looks reasonable in aggregate can still lose on individual orders if the label cost varies by weight and distance while the customer charge stays fixed. Sorting by shipping method surfaces which options are priced correctly and which need adjustment.
What is free shipping actually costing you?
Filter to orders where Shipping is zero but Shipping Label Amount is not. These are the free-shipping orders, and the total of their label amounts is the real cost of that offer over the period. Seeing it order by order helps you decide whether a free-shipping threshold is set high enough to protect margin.
THE ANALYST'S READ: The Signal Most Merchants Miss
A store-wide shipping total can look balanced while a small group of orders drags margin down. Averages hide the tail. It is worth reading the report by individual destination rows rather than the summary figure, because a handful of heavy or far-flung deliveries where Shipping Label Amount far exceeds Shipping can offset dozens of profitable orders and still leave a healthy-looking blended number.
The Status field adds a second, easily missed signal. Look for cancelled or returned orders that still carry a Shipping Label Amount. A label purchased for an order that never completed is a cost with no matching revenue, and if those rows recur, they point to a workflow gap worth checking. Compare label spend against order status before trusting any shipping-margin total.
How Can You Automate the Shopify Shipping Label Cost Report?
Open the pre-made Shipping Label Cost Report in Report Pundit. The columns are already set, so you can save it as is or adjust the fields and date range first. Once saved, schedule it to arrive by email on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis, and send it automatically to yourself, your team, or your accountant on the same schedule. You can also export it to Excel, CSV, or PDF, or push it to Google Sheets or Google Drive so the figures land where you already work.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does Shopify show what I paid for shipping labels?
Shopify does not put your customer shipping charge and your actual label cost together in one exportable per-order view. This report places the Shipping field (collected) next to the Shipping Label Amount field (paid) for each online order so the difference is visible directly.
Why is this report filtered to the Online Store channel?
The report focuses on shipping economics for web orders, so it excludes other sales channels by default. This keeps the comparison consistent when you are reviewing shipping charged and label costs for online fulfillment.
What is the difference between the Shipping field and the Shipping Label Amount field?
Shipping is the amount the customer paid you for shipping at checkout. Shipping Label Amount is what you paid the carrier for that order's label. Comparing the two shows whether an order made or lost money on shipping.
Can I see shipping cost by destination?
Yes. The report includes Shipping City, Shipping Province, and Shipping Country, so you can group or sort orders by location and compare collected shipping against label cost for each region.
Can I change the columns or date range?
Yes. You can add, remove, or rearrange fields and set any date range. Save your version once and reuse it, or schedule it to run automatically.