What does the net-sales bridge show?
For any date range, the bridge starts at gross sales, subtracts the discounts given, subtracts the returns, and lands on net sales. It is drawn as a waterfall so the size of each subtraction is visible next to the size of the total. A brand with strong gross and weak net sees exactly where the difference went.
The figures are the analytics engine's, computed from order lines, discount allocations and refund lines in the engine's own database. Nothing is estimated and nothing is pulled live from the store admin at page load, which is why the bridge renders in milliseconds for a year of history.
Why does headline revenue mislead?
Store admins report gross or a partial net that treats discounts as a marketing line and returns as a later event. A month can be reported as a record while the discounts given that month and the returns that followed it took a meaningful share back. The owner is celebrating a number the business did not keep.
The commerce engine treats the bridge as the honest headline. The net figure at the end of it is the one that flows into margin, into the money-at-stake strip and into the Executive Report, so every other surface on the platform speaks from the same kept number.
The discount step is realised discount, not the code's rate
A code says fifteen off. Stacked with a second code, a price rule and a staff-entered manual discount, the discount actually realised on the order can be very different. The bridge's discount step is the realised amount, allocated to the lines it touched, which is the only version that reconciles to the money that did not arrive.
Clicking the step opens the discount monitor, where the same amount is split into automatic and staff-entered manual, drilled from company to location to employee to transaction to item, with policy alerts for oversized, over-limit, stacked and outlier discounts.
How is the returns step valued?
Returns in the range are valued as the refund lines the store recorded, matched to the orders they came from, so the bridge shows what was given back rather than an estimate of a return rate. Exchanges are handled as what they are: a return and a new sale, not a wash.
Clicking the step opens returns analytics: why products come back, the profit lost per product after the cost of handling, sizing defects, category breakdown, and the page fix each product needs. The bridge shows the size of the problem; the analytics show its shape.
How does the bridge fit the rest of the Dashboard?
The bridge sits under the money-at-stake strip and the KPI tiles, and above the what-changed-and-why decomposition. Read top to bottom, the page says what is at stake, how the headline numbers moved, what was kept, and why it moved. The bridge is the middle step, the one that turns a revenue number into a kept number.
Because it is one calculation, the net figure in the bridge is the same figure the product analyst uses for net sales per product and the same one the Executive Report cites. There is no second bridge in another tool to reconcile against.
What to do with a bridge that surprises you
If the discount step is larger than expected, the discount monitor's per-code verdicts show which codes gave margin to customers who were buying anyway and which drove incremental purchase. If the returns step is larger than expected, returns analytics show which products and which sizes are responsible and which page fixes would reduce them.
On ftes.ai the Controller FTE reads the bridge as part of true margin, the Pricing Officer FTE owns the discount step, and the Returns Officer FTE owns the returns step. Each proposes the action behind its step and waits for the owner's signature.