POS Data Analysis: What it Is & Examples (2025)

The same data-driven approach to growing an online store may not seem possible for your physical store. Sure, you can see how many sales you make each day, but how do you measure your retail store’s contributions to your brand’s overall growth? 

That’s a challenge many merchants face: centralizing all sales channels, operations, backend workflows, and customer-facing shopping experiences to drive growth, efficiency, reduce costs, and create a better overall customer experience. 

True unified commerce can only occur when product, order, and customer data flow from a single source of truth—only possible when ecommerce and point-of-sale (POS) solutions exist on the same core platform. 

When used in tandem with ecommerce data, POS system data unlocks valuable insights that help you be more cost-effective with your inventory purchasing, measure your store’s impact on online sales, customer loyalty and lifetime value, and even suggest when (and where) to expand your network of retail stores.

This guide shares how to leverage your POS data to make smarter, data-driven decisions that grow your business, reduce costs, and improve efficiency.

What is POS data?

POS data is collected by your POS software whenever you process a transaction at your retail store. This can include the products purchased, the customer’s payment method, the amount they’ve paid, and the associate who processed the transaction. 

Once you check out a customer, this data from that transaction feeds into several categories: inventory, sales, product, customer, and staff. 

Types of POS data

There are different ways you can unify ecommerce and POS system data to grow your business. It’s helpful to understand the different types of POS data and why they’re useful. 

POS inventory data

Whenever you receive, sell, return, or exchange a product, the inventory levels of that particular SKU adjust in your POS system to reflect how many units of that item you have and where they’re located. 

Inventory is the backbone of running a retail business. And when you run both an online and physical store, ensuring inventory levels are accurate is even more essential. With accurate inventory levels that adjust automatically as you make sales online or at your store, you can avoid stockouts and let customers know with confidence if you have a product in stock. 

When you use different platforms to run your online and retail stores, inventory discrepancies are more likely to happen as a result of both systems not being in sync with one another. This can lead to more frequent inventory counts.

POS sales data

At the macro level, POS sales data shows your gross and net sales and the total number of units you sold over a given period of time. At the micro level, sales data shows your store’s average order value, average items per order, and net sales for the day.

Sales data can help you run a more profitable business. It helps you know what times of the day or year are your peak sales periods, and quantify how effective your retail team is at converting foot traffic into sales.

Shopify merchant Elite Eleven, for example, used its POS data to drive revenue and sales growth by 82% and 240% respectively. Getting its start online and later expanding into retail gave Elite Eleven two data sets. With Shopify, it was able to unify the data to make holistic, strategic business decisions—that ultimately boosted the bottom line.

POs sales data also feeds into your inventory and product reports, and enables you to reorder your bestsellers before running out of stock, run promotions for products that have been languishing on shelves or in your warehouse for longer than you’d like, and avoid stocking up on products or brands that historically don’t sell well.

💡Pro tip: Check out Shopify’s Sales over time report to see which times of day, days of the week, and months of the year are your peak sales periods across each of your retail stores. This can help you schedule enough store associates and plan ahead for important times of the year, like the holidays. 

POS product data

Product data in your POS system typically falls into one of three categories: cost, sales, or profit. Together, this data feeds into your sales and financial reports and helps you know which items have the highest profit margins, how many units of a product or variant you’ve sold, and the revenue each product generates.

Product data differs slightly from sales data because while sales data helps merchants understand how much sales they’ve made over a given period of time, product data shows your top products by net sales, top products by number of units you’ve sold, and the gross profit of each item you sell. 

💡Pro tip: Refer to Shopify’s Sales by product report to see which products are your bestsellers, the Sales by product variant SKU report to see which variants of your products are your bestsellers (a specific t-shirt size or color, for example), and the Sales by product vendor report to see which of the vendors you buy from are most popular. 

POS customer data

Customer data in your POS system shows you how long someone has been a customer, how often they’ve bought from you, how much they’ve spent, and exactly which products they’ve bought.

Where customer data really gets interesting, though, is when it’s connected to your ecommerce data. Merchants who use Shopify to unify their online and retail stores, for instance, can see how often returning customers shop with them again in-store or online, as well as what they bought, their average order value, and their total lifetime value. Those insights have helped brands like KOTN understand how their omnichannel approach has positively impacted overall sales and customer loyalty. 

Customer data is helpful for:

• Personalizing how you market to your customers.
• Seeing what percentage of your revenue comes from new and repeat customers.
• Pinpointing the difference between the lifetime value of single-channel customers (ones who either shop exclusively in-store or online, but never both) versus customers who shop both in-store and online. 

💡Pro tip: Use Shopify’s First-time vs. returning customer sales report and add the Sales channel by name column to see the total sales attributed to new and returning customers for your online store and across each of your retail locations.

POS staff data

Each time a store associate processes a sale using your POS software, that sale is attributed to their user profile. This is especially valuable for store managers who want to track the sales productivity of their teams and ensure everyone is contributing to the store’s sales goals. 

POS staff data helps store managers track each store associate’s average order value, items per order, gross and net sales, and even the amount of returns or discounts they’ve processed with the point of sale device. That information helps them reward top-performing store associates and identify ones who may benefit from more sales training. 

💡Pro tip: View Shopify’s Retail sales by staff at register report to see the average order value, items per transaction, and total sales value for store associates across all of your retail store locations.

POS payment data

Each time a transaction is processed through your POS system, it records details like the payment type (credit card, debit card, cash, or digital wallet), transaction amount, and any associated fees.

POS payment data tracks how customers pay for their purchases and provides insights into payment methods, transaction trends, and overall financial performance. 

Understanding payment data can help you identify customer payment preferences, optimize your payment options, and manage associated costs. For instance, you can evaluate the adoption of contactless payments or identify which payment methods are most popular during specific periods. This data is also crucial for reconciling daily sales, monitoring cash flow, and ensuring your business operates smoothly.

💡Pro tip: Use Shopify POS to track all in-store and online payments in one platform for unified commerce. Every transaction is automatically synced, so there’s no manual accounting at the end of the day. Review your finances, identify trends, and make decisions faster. Detailed reports give you comprehensive insights of your business, so you can react in the moment.

How to run a POS data analysis

Now that you understand the data your POS software collects, it’s time to explore how you can unify ecommerce and store data and bring data-driven decision-making to your retail store with Shopify.

1. Collect your data 

The first step in analyzing POS data is ensuring you have accurate and comprehensive data. With Shopify, retailers can sync POS data with every other sales channel for 360-visibility into their business. Plus, it’s quick to get up and running: Shopify POS is up to 20% faster to implement relative to the market set surveyed.

2. Start with a hypothesis

Every analysis needs a hypothesis to serve as a lens through which to look at the data. Define a specific question or goal you want to explore. For example, you might want to identify your top-performing products, uncover peak shopping times, or determine which promotions drive the most sales. A clear hypothesis will keep your analysis focused and actionable.

3. Gather the relevant data

Filter your data to include only the metrics that align with your hypothesis. For instance, if you’re analyzing product performance, focus on sales by product, inventory reports, and profit margins. Ideally, you’ll have a single source of truth for this data (i.e. Shopify), rather than multiple disjointed systems.

4. Apply context

Numbers can tell a story, but they need context to be meaningful. Consider external factors like seasonality, market trends, or recent promotions when analyzing your data. For example, a dip in sales might coincide with a slower retail season, or a spike could be tied to a successful campaign.

5. Form your insight

Once you’ve analyzed the data and applied the context, identify actionable takeaways. These could include restocking a bestselling item, adjusting staffing schedules for peak hours, or rethinking strategies for underperforming products.

4 examples of POS data analysis 

1. Understand how physical stores lift online sales and customer acquisition

Rather than measuring the impact of your retail store exclusively on its sales, consider looking at how your store impacts online sales from the surrounding area. Retail stores have a halo effect that can serve as a valuable marketing vehicle that helps acquire new customers and lift online sales as well. 

Allbirds, for example, looks at total online sales and net new customers in the area around their physical stores to measure their impact. In the three months after opening its Boston Back Bay location, web traffic in the area rose 15%, and Allbirds saw 83% more new customers in the neighborhood.

Here’s how to measure this from your Shopify admin:

• Use the Sales by billing location report to measure any lift in online sales in the area surrounding your retail store. 
• View the Customers over time report to analyze how many first-time customers shopped with you for the first time at your retail store. 

2. Improve customer retention and lifetime value 

Customers who shop both online and in-store also tend to shop more frequently with your brand, spend more each time they shop, and remain loyal customers for longer. 

Astrid & Miyu, for instance, uses Shopify's unified commerce capabilities to gain a single view of its customers across everything from search and browsing to purchase and loyalty, both online and in-store. By adopting this approach, they've seen their returning omnichannel customers increase fivefold. What's more significant is their discovery about customer value: customers who shop omnichannel have exhibited a 40% higher lifetime value compared to those who shop exclusively online.

In addition to increasing how much shoppers spend, consider measuring how your store influences repeat purchases, customer retention, and lifetime value.

Use Shopify’s First-time vs. returning customer sales report to:

• Compare the average order value of new and return customers
• Contrast how average order value differs with in-store vs. online shoppers
• Review the percentage of your brand’s in-store and online sales that come from new and returning customers

3. Know when (and where) to expand your network of retail stores

Look at the shipping country, city, region, and even postal code of your online sales. Are a statistically significant number of sales coming from one area in particular? If so, you might want to consider opening a pop-up shop to test the market. 

If the pop-up shop performs well, now you can consider opening a permanent retail location to continue gaining traction in that market.

Use these Shopify reports to prioritize retail locations: 

• View the Sales by billing location report to analyze your online sales data, know where customers are located, and spot if they’re congregated in certain cities or neighborhoods. 
• Use the Sessions by location report to see what countries, regions, and cities your website visitors come from, and to spot trends. 

4. Manage inventory online, in-store, and in your warehouse

For merchants selling online and in retail stores, buying enough inventory without overstocking and running the risk of dead stock is one of their biggest ongoing challenges. US retailers are sitting on about $1.50 in inventory for every dollar of sales they make. That’s why knowing how much inventory you have in your warehouse and at each of your retail stores is so important. 

Merchants using separate systems to manage their online and physical stores often run into inventory discrepancies because, as they make sales via their website or store, inventory levels don’t update in real-time. 

In the case of elph ceramics, it needed to re-count inventory each day and manually adjust the available quantities shoppers saw online to reflect what was in its POS system. But since using Shopify to unify its online and store data, elph ceramics’ inventory adjusts in real-time as products are sold, returned, or exchanged. 

“The amount of times I count inventory is close to never,” says cofounder Sophie Rankine. “I still do them, but before I had to count stock at the end of each day to know how much we sold, reconcile inventory, and update stock quantities customers saw on our website. With Shopify POS, our stock levels sync automatically.”

Rather than manually managing inventory for each of its sales channels each day, elph ceramics can confidently reorder products it’s running low on and avoid overstocking and spending precious capital on unnecessary inventory. 

Use these Shopify reports to manage inventory more effectively:

• Use the ABC data analysis technique to grade and categorize the products you sell based on the percentage of store revenue they’re responsible for. A-grade products account for around 80% of your revenue, B-grade account for 15% of revenue, and C-grade products account for only 5% of your revenue. 
• View the Low stock report to see which products and variants you’re running low on, create purchase orders, and avoid stockouts. 
• Use the Stock on hand report to see the cost and retail value of inventory you have in your warehouse and retail stores. You can filter the data by date range or to view inventory on hand from a specific vendor.
• Set reorder points in Shopify Admin to get low stock notifications and ensure you have enough lead time to replenish inventory of a product before quantities reach zero.

Common challenges with POS data 

Managing POS data effectively is key to running a successful retail operation, but there are a few common challenges that come with it. 

Poor data quality 

Inaccurate or incomplete data can lead to costly mistakes, such as overstocking or understocking inventory, misidentifying top-selling products, or failing to engage customers effectively. Poor data quality often stems from manual data entry errors, inconsistent categorization, or outdated system settings.

Use automated systems and regularly audit your POS data to ensure accuracy and consistency. Platforms like Shopify help reduce manual errors by unifying inventory reporting and sales data automatically across locations and channels.

Lack of unification

When your online and physical store data exist in silos, it’s next to impossible to get a clear view of your business. Separate systems can lead to inventory discrepancies, missed sales opportunities, and an incomplete understanding of customer behavior.

The most effective way to execute on a unified commerce strategy is by opting for a commerce operating system with natively unified POS and ecommerce solutions. This provides a single source of truth for inventory, customer insights, and sales performance, making it easier to identify trends and act on them. Shopify is the only platform that effectively does this. 

No real-time integration

Without real-time integration, businesses may rely on outdated information to make decisions. Delayed inventory updates, for example, can result in stockouts or overselling, while waiting for sales reports can make it harder to react to fast-changing trends.

Invest in a POS system with real-time syncing capabilities to ensure you always have up-to-date information. With Shopify, inventory levels, sales data, and customer information are updated instantly, so you’re never left guessing.

Benefits of POS data analysis

POS data analysis unlocks several benefits for businesses:

• Make smarter decisions. Unifying all your commerce is the only way to make the most informed business decisions. POS data analysis allows you to get the big picture of your complete business, empowering you to make these decisions. 
• Reduce stockouts. Stockouts are costly for merchants. POS data analysis mitigates discrepancies and helps merchants pinpoint inventory issues. 
• Improve the customer experience. POS data analysis allows for personalization on an advanced level. Shopify enhances customer data collection and segmentation for higher return on marketing investment. In fact, Shopify POS enables an 8.9% GMV increase through unified commerce on average.
• Easy implementation. With the right tools, implementing POS data analysis systems and workflows can be simple. Shopify POS has fast deployments with minimal downtime, and a 20% faster implementation time compared to competitors. 
• Operational efficiency. POS data analysis empowers businesses with insights they need to improve operations and reduce associated costs. Operational improvements created by Shopify POS enable up to 5% uplift in GMV, for example.

Unify your POS data with Shopify

Unified commerce is a business strategy that aims to centralize sales channels, operations, backend workflows, and customer-facing shopping experiences. The objective is ultimately to drive growth, efficiency, reduce costs, and create a better overall customer experience. 

True and effective unified commerce comes from ecommerce and POS existing on the same platform. Unlike other providers, Shopify’s commerce solutions are natively built on a single platform, grounded in a common data model. This allows businesses to unlock the full benefits of a unified commerce strategy, whether they are D2C, retail, or B2B.