Upcoming Enhancements to Earnings Reports – We Want Your Feedback and Suggestions!

[Heather]

Hi Creators,

Thank you so much for submitting your questions about the recent changes to our Terms of Use and the launch of the Ambassador Program. We’re reviewing your feedback and please don’t hesitate to continue sharing your questions to the form. 

As part of your feedback, we’re working on improving Earning reports to make them clearer to understand and more transparent. We’d really appreciate hearing your specific requests, thoughts and suggestions on what you'd like to see in the backend Earnings reporting so we can ensure we’re meeting your needs as a Creator. 

Feel free to share your feedback directly in this thread; we ask that you stay on topic regarding the backend Earnings reporting to help us compile actionable feedback. 

Thank you for helping us shape the Creator experience. 

Best,

Team Creator

[ChristineK]

It would help me a lot if there was an easy way to see which item was canceled when we have a cancelation. Currently I have to go through pages and pages of orders to figure it out, and even then I sometimes can't find the canceled item. 

[LMGildersleeve]

Just a thought, have you tried Earnings > Royalty History > Edit Filters > Cancellations

[ChristineK]

No, I actually didn't even realize that was there! I would still like more details, but this is definitely a help. Thanks!

[LoraSeverson]

We need to be able to filter cancellations by the date that they cancel not the order date. With the current way of filtering cancellations, we still have to page through to try to find it. 

[PenguinPower]

I would definitely like to see a quick select for earnings of the day. 

[ClareS]

Oh that would be good - I write down my lifetime earnings every day and then subtract from yesterday's to get today's earnings. But it should be possible to see earnings for today, this week, this month, custom period like you can with other programs.

[Cat]

It would be super helpful if the reports could give us totals for the chosen time period. I'd especially like to have the ability to see a "month to date" total of my earnings. As it is you have to "guestimate" it from the pending and balance amounts. 

[Sara_H]

A few things I'd love to see:

Time filters for sales: Today, This Week, This Month, Custom Range (This would make it much easier to track performance in real-time)

Reasons for cancellations/refunds - with date of cancellation (Show reasons for cancellations or refunds—knowing why something was canceled helps us improve our products.)

Highlight if sale was referred by Zazzle (eg through email marketing, google ads, etc.). This would help us understand which sales are driven by Zazzle’s efforts versus our own)

Allow filtering by: Store (for multi-store creators) Product type/ Sales channel (US, international, mobile app, etc.)

Add CSV export for sales/referrals with full details (all visible columns, like product titles, earnings, sale date, zazzle 3rd party/ self promotion/ ambassador referral/etc)

Thanks for listening

[AirTwin]

Reasons for cancellations, why, and if they got to keep the item would be great. Yes it would help.

[SheaPrints]

I agree that knowing the reason for cancellations would be really helpful. I contacted Zazzle support about this in 2023, and they explained that data protection prevents them from sharing details about customers' orders. That's understandable, and there are many reasons that are beyond our control. However, knowing if the cancellation was due to a correctable design issue (e.g., colors) would be very useful.

[DiamondWillow]

I'd also like to see customers have to return their products and not keep them as a freebie when they cancel.  How disappointing to se;; 50 wedding invitations then have it get cancelled and they can keep and send out anyway.  Not fair to us, they could write the designer and say what is wrong I will never know.   Reviews are few and far between.  It would be nice to know what to fix that the customer didn't like.  I hope they enjoyed the invitations they got for free!!

[Laura]

Please keep the existing CSV format(s) - I'd love to see new fields added, but please add them after the existing columns (like it was done when the transfer design option was introduced and the original product the item was transferred from was added as a new column in/at the end of the CSV report).

[SJoy]

I wish for better breakdowns of our royalties per product with it showing what all was subtracted/added to get to the final amount that I would be paid.  I also wish for an analytics tab to be added in the backend (maybe between the Ambassador and Earnings tabs) that shows more in depth information where we can view analytics for all stores, a specific store, and on a per product level. The current "insights" on the product drop down menu doesn't really offer much information at all and is hardly ever helpful. This would really help when deciding our next actionable steps to move forward for our shops and products.

[Connie]

I would like to see exactly how much of our royalties are being deducted in fees. So we could have a column for Gross Royalties, and then Net Royalties after fees. Also, like other people have asked for, it would be super helpful to get more information for cancellations. The way Spoonflower does it, they list the date of the cancellation, and then note that it was ordered on such and such a date.

[LJ]

I’d like to see exactly what deductions were made from each royalty (amount and % of: excess royalty fee, secondary content, marketing fee, etc). As it would take a lot of space, it could appear in a small popup when hovering over the royalty amount on the Royalty history page.

[Elke_Clarke]

In addition to the requests already mentioned, I'd like to see:
1.  Earnings, deductions, and referrals on one line item per order in one place.
2. The referral path, on one line, per customer order along with details / reasons based on the Zazzle referral terms that have been programed into the backend to designate whether it stays a self-referral or not. 

For example: It comes in as a self-referral sale. Then it gets cancelled. Then it gets reordered minutes later (same order same price) but now it's third party. Why?

[LindaS1]

I'm wondering if this happens when someone clicks on a cash back link like Capital One or Rakuten after entering the site via one of our referral links - does that then override our self-referral? 

[ClareS]

That makes a lot of sense for pre-March 31 sales. It shouldn't happen post April 1 - because according to Zazzle's new Ambassador terms our self referral cookie is now supposed to be protected from override for 14 days. We should not be seeing that cancel self/order 3rd party at all anymore. TBH I haven't checked to see if its still happening.

[MaggieA]

I would very much like to know where the 3rd referrals from (like Pinterest, FB or an URL). That would help to focus marketing efforts to the place where chance of getting a sale referred is most likely.

And I also want to know the answer to the question asked above; 
"For example: It comes in as a self-referral sale. Then it gets cancelled. Then it gets reordered minutes later (same order same price) but now it's third party. Why?"

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[AirTwin]

I want to know about that order cancel loop too. I got so sick of seeing it years ago, I stopped looking at stats. It seems like someone or a group of people was harassing my account, after a time I assumed it was a bot... maybe it's that scammer Honey. Now I see I'm not alone.

[Cat]

For cancellations, I'd like to see a separate line or entry for the cancellation, rather than it changing the original line to cancelled. It would be good if it could refer back to the original transaction, but the cancellation should be recorded as its own ledger line with its own date etc. just like you'd make a separate journal entry in any standard accounting system.

[LoraSeverson]

yes please

[Connie]

Yes, that's what Spoonflower does. The cancellation has it's own line, but it says something like "from Order # whatever on such and such a date."

[JerryLambert]

In addition to the suggestions above, we will need a column for deducted fees. I suggest that you replace the Volume Bonus area with a monthly report of all fees taken from our royalties with a drop down menu sorting the different types of fees deducted with a downloadable CSV report. Alternately, these fees could be added to the Earnings & Transactions History in our reports. Or preferably both. 

[NHW]

I'd love to see cancellations in the earnings report as a new entry on the date of the cancellation. Being able to see total orders vs. cancellations by product would be very helpful, so we can identify potentially problematic designs.

[LindaS1]

Allow us to see exactly where our self-referrals are coming from via the tracking code for our stores, collections, and individual products, and reinstating something similar to the old Insights where we could see where our traffic is coming from. Also some level of transparency as to which of our self-referral links generated sales.

[ColsCreations]

Currently, on the Royalty History report, the "Referred?" column shows one of only three possibilities:
None
Self
3rd Party

My absolute top #1 want would be to see that expanded to be more informative & transparent, like

None
Self [Cross-Over]
Self [Self-Promotion]
3rd Party [Zazzle]
3rd Party [Other]

In all of the new FAQs being presented, it is repeatedly stressed how much Zazzle's marketing expense has increased as the reasoning for the increased "carve-out" i.e Marketing Royalty Fee. So for transparency and trust, it is now more than ever essential for Zazzle to identify themselves when they are taking credit as the 3rd Party referrer.

[JerryLambert]

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@ColsCreations wrote:

So for transparency and trust, it is now more than ever essential for Zazzle to identify themselves when they are taking credit as the 3rd Party referrer.

---

Not only is it essential for transparency but proper authentication is necessary and required for accurate bookkeeping. Documentation of any fees that directly or indirectly reduce our taxable income is obligatory. 

I only hope that Zazzle makes it simple and organized so we don't need to spend hours a month clicking through a spreadsheet. 

[LauraLee]

@ColsCreations , excuse my stupidity here, but what now is a Self [Cross-Over]?  Did I miss reading something?  I'm wondering now, what's the difference between a Self [Cross-Over] and a Self Referred [Self-Promotion] ?  

[ColsCreations]

Self [Cross-Over] is when you earn the 15% because you used an RF# link
Self [Self-Promotion]  is when you earn the 35-50% because you didn't

Your own products can be sold either way so it would be helpful to see the distinction on the Royalty Report instead of just "Self", not just for the at-a-glance convenience but for easily being able to sort by either type when you download the .cvs.

[Connie]

If you are redoing all the earnings tabs, something that would be very helpful on the "royalty by product" tab would be the number of ORDERS for a product, not just the total ordered. If I see 500 invitations ordered, was that one order of 500, or 10 orders of 50? Also, being able to download that page as CSV would be amazing, too.

[AirTwin]

If this counts. I'd like to see "Royalty Totals" stores, have a sort by option that we can order most to least in each column.

[ClareS]

I would love to be able to filter the visual reports by time period (like you can with the earnings reports)

The visual digital reports need to be fixed - there is no way to run a sort that only shows the stats for digital products - instead it shows the whole store sort but hides the non-digital products

[SJoy]

Adding another suggestion here. When an order is canceled (or a customer receives a refund) I would like to see a small note as to why. As of right now we don't know why it happened.  Was it something on Zazzle's side like the quality of the product, shipping, etc. or was it a problem with the design? I feel like we should have a heads up on this so if it has something to do with the design we can fix it. It doesn't have to be in depth, just a small note to give us a little more info would be much appreciated.

[DiamondWillow]

Yes!  I just wrote about this above after a cancellation of 50 wedding invitations.  I will never know did something look bad, was it something Z did with the order.  I'd like to be able to fix the problem.  AND the customer should be required to return them, not keep and use anyway for FREE

[Lea]

We definitely need columns showing each of the deductions - the marketing referral fee, the excess royalty fee. That's pretty crucial for transparency. It would also be nice to see whether the 3rd party is an ambassador or Zazzle getting the cut. Helpful to know who's driving our sales.
I'm glad you all are soliciting feedback but it is pretty frustrating to see "coming soon" on the earnings page and then learning it's still in the planning stages. Having this entirely new fee system implemented without giving us a way to track it or fully understand it only creates more confusion.

[LMGildersleeve]

"I'm glad you all are soliciting feedback but it is pretty frustrating to see "coming soon" on the earnings page and then learning it's still in the planning stages. Having this entirely new fee system implemented without giving us a way to track it or fully understand it only creates more confusion."

Agreed. While I'm grateful our suggestions may play a part in the decision to how new Earning page(s?) will function, I find this was a pretty amateurish way to implement it.

[Lea]

Yeah with that note on the earnings page, I really thought/hoped that the improvements were imminent - any minute it will switch over. They set an expectation and probably would've been better served to not put that message on there at all if it's still in the early stages.

[Boki]

It would be good if you could enable us to set the "Royalty" in percentages at once for each store, and not as before only for the entire account or manually separately for each product. I think that would make tuning a lot easier too ?