Ask three people on your team for last month’s revenue and you will often get three different numbers. Not because anyone is wrong, but because everyone is computing it a little differently. Finance nets out returns one way, growth counts gross, ops works off dispatched orders. Same word, three meanings, one very long meeting.

That gap is what metrics and dimensions are built to close. In this short walkthrough I break down how Ocular actually constructs the numbers you report on.

How we compute metrics and dimensions in Ocular - Watch Video

The two primitives

Every report rests on two things:

• Dimensions are the labels you slice by. Channel, SKU, date, region. You group and filter by them. You never add them up.

• Metrics are the values you compute. Gross revenue, net revenue, contribution margin. A metric is produced by a rule, not read off a column.

The trap is treating a metric like a column. It is not. A metric is a definition, written once and computed the same way everywhere. That is the whole point: when the dashboard, the export, and the boardroom all read the same rule, “revenue” finally means one thing.

Why “net revenue” is harder than it looks

On the surface, net revenue is simple arithmetic. Gross minus what came back. In practice that number is assembled from four systems, not one:

• order value from your store

• cancellations from your WMS and courier

• returns from your returns platform

• exchanges, tied back to the original order so nothing is double counted

Stitch those together and the gap between gross and net stops being a mystery. Run the same definition across Amazon, Flipkart, and Myntra, each with its own quirks, and the numbers stay comparable.