Why don't my advertising and store reports agree?
Imagine your advertising dashboard reports 100 sales, but your store shows 93 orders. Which number should you trust? Each platform is looking at a different part of the customer experience. One records ad activity and attributed conversions; the other records actual orders. Comparing their totals alone doesn't explain the difference.
Instead of choosing which dashboard to believe, look at the records behind each number.
Follow a sale from the first click.
Suppose someone clicks an ad, visits your store, and buys a product for $129. Your advertising system records the click, while your store records the purchase. When the systems share a reliable reference, TraceKit can help show how those events belong together.
One customer clicks an ad at 9:11 AM and places a $129 order at 9:18 AM. A shared tracking reference—not simply the seven-minute gap—provides evidence connecting the events.
How does TraceKit know which records belong together?
When you click an ad or place an order, the systems involved can assign reference numbers. Think of these like tracking numbers for a package: they help distinguish one event from another. TraceKit uses available matching references to connect the advertising record with the correct order.
These references may include click IDs, network transaction IDs, and merchant order IDs. TraceKit keeps their original values and treats the marketing source and the commercial purchase as distinct records.
What happens when the information doesn't match?
Sometimes a customer purchases without an identifiable ad click, or a platform reports a conversion that can't be matched to a store order. TraceKit's approach is to keep the available records and flag the missing connection for review—not guess or delete the sale.
Missing information should be visible, not quietly filled in.
This is where the technical term unresolved comes in. It means the available evidence isn't enough to confirm the connection. It's an exception worth investigating, not the normal end of every journey.
What does this help your business understand?
When marketing and sales records can be connected, your team can investigate which campaigns and affiliates are associated with actual purchases, where reporting gaps exist, and what happened after checkout. That can help you ask better questions before making budget or partner decisions.
A verified attribution link shows where a sale was recorded as coming from. It doesn't prove the ad alone caused the sale. Measuring that requires additional evidence.
See the complete customer story.
Explore how purchases, upsells, refunds, and other events fit together in an illustrative customer journey.