Guide and template
The Amazon weekly business review, and a template to run your own
Download the WBR template (Excel) or a plain CSV
Paste one row per week and the workbook does Monday's work: the 6-12 chart, each channel against last week and last year, and a Discuss column for the channels outside their 8-week range. It opens on 2 years of the fictional Kestrel example, so the chart is drawn before you paste. Also inside: the 17-row scorecard and where each number lives. Opens in Excel, Numbers and Google Sheets.
Sell on Amazon and Shopify? The WBR builder reads both exports, adds up the weeks and draws the chart in your browser, and its weeks paste into this workbook.
Part 1
How Amazon runs the WBR: one deck, named owners, inputs first
- One deck, the same every week. It holds hundreds of graphs, charts and tables, mostly charts with little text.1 The layout doesn't change, so a number that moved stands out.
- Owners explain variances. Every metric has a named business owner. Inside its expected range, the owner says there's nothing to see. Outside it, the owner explains why, or says they're still analyzing.1,2
- Inputs come first. Amazon separates controllable input metrics, the levers a team can pull, from output metrics like revenue, which show the result but can't be acted on directly.2
- Every metric has a lifecycle, the define, measure, analyze, improve and control steps (DMAIC) from Six Sigma.1 For a brand with 3 people that's one test: if a row has never changed a decision, cut it.
Part 2
The 6-12 chart: this week on the left, the season on the right
Do this first
- Chart all-channel revenue for the last 6 weeks, with the same weeks last year beside it.
- Chart the last 12 months the same way, as the average week in each month.
- Put both panels on one y scale, so they read together.
- The left panel shows what happened this week. The right shows whether it matters, because a dip that also happened last year is the season.1
- Each panel plots this year against last year, the trailing 6 weeks and the trailing 12 months side by side.1
- The template draws both panels from your weeks. Paste a new row each Monday and the chart moves on a week, with last year read from the same week, or the same month, a year earlier.
- Or skip the adding up. Paste Amazon's Sales and Traffic by Date and your Shopify orders export into the WBR builder, and it rolls the days into weeks and draws both panels.
Part 3
Inputs and outputs, on each channel
Revenue is the output nobody can change on Monday morning. The right column is what the team controls.
| Channel | Outputs | Inputs you control |
|---|---|---|
| Amazon | Ordered product sales, units, refund rate | Sessions (from ads and rank), unit session percentage, Featured Offer (Buy Box) percentage, average selling price, ad spend |
| Shopify | Net sales, orders | Sessions by source, conversion rate, discount rate, ad spend on Meta and Google |
| Wholesale | Wholesale revenue | Orders, new retailers, reorders, Faire Direct share |
- A WBR of revenue alone says something happened. One with Amazon sessions, unit session percentage and Buy Box beside it says where.
- The method behind both reviews is the Growth Loop, which maps each input to one of 5 levers.
Part 4
The weekly scorecard, and where each number lives
Do this first
- Pull every channel for the same Sunday to Saturday week, Amazon's Business Reports week in Pacific time.3
- Read each row against last week and the same week last year.
- Put a name in the owner column for every row.
- Discuss only the rows outside their normal range.
| Row | Type | Where it comes from |
|---|---|---|
| Net revenue, all channels | Output | The sum of the channel rows, after discounts and refunds |
| Net revenue by channel | Output | Amazon: Business Reports, Sales and Traffic by Date.3 Shopify: Analytics, Reports, Net sales by channel.4 Wholesale: invoices or the Faire orders export |
| Units | Output | Amazon units ordered. Shopify net quantity |
| Sessions | Input | Amazon Sessions - Total. Shopify sessions |
| Conversion | Input | Amazon unit session percentage. Shopify conversion rate |
| Buy Box and price | Input | Amazon Featured Offer (Buy Box) percentage and average selling price |
| Discount rate | Input | Shopify discounts divided by gross sales |
| Ad spend | Input | Amazon Ads campaign reports. Meta and Google Ads |
| Wholesale orders | Input | Faire's Analytics page, or your invoices |
| Refund rate | Output | Amazon Business Reports, Refund Rate |
- The download splits these 10 rows into 17, one per channel, with owner and note columns and the change formulas built in.
Part 5
A worked week: Kestrel Kitchen, week of September 20, 2026
Kestrel Kitchen is a fictional brand we built to show the report. It sells board oil and care kits on Amazon, its Shopify store, subscriptions and wholesale.
| Channel | This week | vs last week | vs same week last year |
|---|---|---|---|
| Amazon | $6,118 | -5.4% | -20.7% |
| Shopify storefront | $4,307 | -3.4% | +124.9% |
| Subscription renewals | $1,936 | -5.2% | +67.4% |
| Wholesale (Faire) | $0 | -100.0% | n/a |
| All channels | $12,361 | -5.9% | +14.6% |
- Against last week only, it's a bad week: revenue fell 5.9% and every channel was down.
- Against last year, the business rose 14.6%, and the story is the mix. Amazon is -20.7% on the year while the Shopify store is +124.9%.
- The Amazon owner explains that variance with sessions and conversion before anyone calls it demand. The monthly report found demand moved from Amazon to the storefront, and the sample report shows the diagnosis.
- Wholesale went from $168 to $0 in a week, normal for a channel that orders in lumps. Read that row monthly.
Part 6
Weekly or monthly?
Do this first
- Review Amazon sessions, conversion, Buy Box, stock and ad spend weekly.
- Move wholesale, ratings and profit by channel to the monthly review.
- If you only have time for one, run the monthly.
- Weekly earns its time where a week holds enough orders to mean something and you can act inside 7 days, which on Amazon means sessions, conversion, Buy Box, stock and ad spend.
- 4 or 5 WBRs catch problems while they're small, and the monthly business review adds up the month, reads it against last year and decides what to change. It's the one that says which channel makes money.
Or send us 2 exports and we'll build the month for you
The template is free and you can run it yourself. Or send us Amazon's Sales and Traffic by Date report and your Shopify orders export, and we'll build this month's review across every channel, with the causes checked and the actions ranked, the way the Kestrel sample is. The first month is free, and we never log in to your accounts.
Sources
- Chin, C. "This is How Amazon Measures Itself." Holistics, March 17, 2021. A summary of the WBR as described in Working Backwards. Read October 7, 2026. Link
- Bryar, C. and Carr, B. (2021). Working Backwards: Insights, Stories, and Secrets from Inside Amazon. St. Martin's Press. Chapter 6, on metrics and the weekly business review.
- Amazon Seller Central. Business reports glossary. Read October 7, 2026. Link
- Shopify Help Center. Sales reports. Read October 7, 2026. Link