The Billing charts in Paddle’s platform are designed to give you real-time, accurate data on your revenue and transactions. Below, we explain how this is all calculated, so you know which variables are included and which aren’t.
Revenue
The Revenue chart shows the base cost minus discounts of the product sold to the customer, excluding any additional taxes charged to the customer or fees deducted by Paddle. This means adding your sales from:
- Completed subscription payments
- One-off transactions
- B2B Invoicing paid invoices
- Recovered checkouts which complete and pay
- Affiliate revenue (where you are an affiliate through Paddle for another software company and have referred traffic to them that transacts)
Note that this number does not account for any balance adjustments, such as refunds or chargebacks.
Also, because we’re only looking at paid transactions, this number doesn’t include trialing or free subscriptions, or unpaid/overdue B2B invoices.
Transactions
This is the total count of transactions and paid B2B invoices for the selected time period.
Again, this excludes trialing subscriptions, free subscriptions, and unpaid/overdue B2B invoices. It basically counts the same transactions used in the Revenue number above.
Average Transaction
This is essentially the Revenue number divided by the Transactions figure.
In other words, we take all the Revenue you have received within the period, divided by the total count of Transactions for the same period, to give the average value of your transactions.
Refunds
This is the transaction subtotal (base cost minus discounts, excluding taxes charged or fees) for sales refunded to the customer during the selected date period. This is actually different from the amount sent back to buyers, which will include applicable taxes.
Note that this does not include chargebacks.
Chargeback Counts
The total number of chargebacks received during the selected time period. A chargeback occurs when a customer disputes a transaction directly with their bank.
A couple of things worth noting about what's included in this count:
- Pre-chargeback alerts are excluded. These are usually resolved before a chargeback is received.
- Chargeback wins are not deducted from this count. If a chargeback is later overturned (whether because Paddle successfully defended it or the buyer withdrew it) the original chargeback still contributes to the total. While chargeback wins are a good outcome, card schemes and PSPs assess risk based on the number of chargebacks received, regardless of how they're later resolved, so we reflect that here.
You may notice that this figure doesn't match the count used in the chargeback rate exactly. This is intentional - chargeback rate is calculated using a specific subset of transactions and chargebacks, as different card schemes and PSPs assess risk in different ways. Both figures are correct; they're simply measuring different things.
Checkout Conversion
This is the number of converted first-time checkouts divided by the number of first-time checkouts begun in the selected time period. A checkout is considered converted when a payment is successfully completed (including zero-value transactions).
Only first-time checkouts are considered in the calculation (this excludes checkouts created for retain, card updates, or subscription recurring payments) to provide a high-signal benchmark of your checkout’s technical performance, undistorted by secondary payment events.
Chargeback Rate
The Paddle chargeback rate is calculated by dividing the number of qualifying chargebacks received in a given month by the total qualifying transactions for that same period. Because different payment providers monitor risk in different ways, Paddle uses a curated set of qualifying activity rather than every chargeback and transaction - this gives a more accurate and consistent picture of the risk profile.
What is a qualifying chargeback?
Only card-brand chargebacks count towards the chargeback rate. Other types of chargebacks are excluded from the calculation.
What is a qualifying transaction?
A qualifying transaction is any completed transaction, except those sent through PayPal. PayPal transactions are excluded because they manage chargebacks very differently to PSPs.
Chargeback thresholds
Paddle recommends keeping chargeback activity within these limits:
- Fewer than 75 qualifying chargebacks per month, or
- A chargeback rate below 1.2%, if the monthly qualifying chargeback volume exceeds 75
Staying within these thresholds is the best way to keep your account in good standing.