# Account audit — Ecommerce

The account audit with the checks a store needs: the catalogue feed and what it actually contains, which parts of the range are covered and which are not advertised at all, audience overlap between prospecting and retargeting, and whether the reported revenue matches the store's own.

Everything else is the general audit, unchanged. One row per finding, evidence attached, honest severity, one action, one owner, one date.

## How to use it

1. Copy this file, or the CSV version if you would rather work in a sheet.
2. Work area by area rather than campaign by campaign, so the same check is applied everywhere.
3. Write what was found separately from what should be done.
4. Attach evidence to every finding, with the date range you looked at.
5. Keep severity honest: if everything is critical, nothing is.
6. Agree owners and dates with the people who will do the work, not in their absence.
7. Close findings as accepted where somebody has decided to live with them.

## The columns

**Area** (Text). Which part of the store's advertising this finding belongs to: the feed, catalogue coverage, audiences, creative, tracking, product pages, access. Grouped this way an audit can be split between a media buyer and an ecommerce manager.

**Check performed** (Text). What was looked at, as an action somebody could repeat next quarter: the feed joined to the spend export, the overlap measured, the revenue reconciled. A check nobody can repeat produces a finding nobody can compare.

**What was found** (Text). The observation about the account, with no recommendation in it: this many products in the feed received no spend, the two revenue figures differ by this much. State it so a trading manager can agree with it before anybody argues about what to do.

**Evidence** (Text). Where it can be seen, with the window: the feed export, the spend-by-product report, the date range, the store's own order figures. An audit finding about somebody's catalogue will be challenged, and the export is what ends that.

**Severity** (Text). Spending wrongly now, distorting decisions, or untidy. A campaign spending on a discontinued line is the first; a blended revenue figure nobody has reconciled is the second; a stale campaign name is the third.

**Impact** (Text). What it is costing the store, in orders or in spend, worked out from the account where it can be. Where the number depends on margin nobody has calculated, say so rather than producing a figure the trading team can dismiss.

**Recommendation** (Text). One action a person can start on Monday: add these six lines to a shopping campaign, exclude this audience from prospecting, reconcile the two revenue sources and record which is authoritative. Not review the catalogue strategy.

**Effort** (Text). Minutes, a day, or a project. Adding products to an existing campaign is minutes; restructuring an account built around three seasons of promotions is a project, and saying so stops the row sitting open for a year.

**Owner** (Text). The person who will do it, by name, and usually not the same person for a feed fix as for a campaign change. Agree it with them before the audit is circulated to the trading meeting.

**Due** (Date (YYYY-MM-DD)). When the fix is expected, and for a store that means before the next promotion rather than at some point this quarter. A finding fixed after the peak has cost whatever the peak cost.

**Status** (Text). Open, done, or accepted. Accepted is the one a store needs most: a long tail of products nobody will ever advertise is a deliberate decision, and it should be closed rather than reported again every quarter.

**Reviewed on** (Date (YYYY-MM-DD)). The day this finding was checked. A store's catalogue moves weekly, so a finding about stock, prices or feed contents is older than it looks and is worth re-reading before anybody acts on it.

**Notes** (Text). What the next auditor needs: the integration that generates the feed, the reason a segment is excluded, the custom label whose meaning is not obvious, the promotion that explains a strange-looking campaign.

## The account audit

| Area | Check performed | What was found | Evidence | Severity | Impact | Recommendation | Effort | Owner | Due | Status | Reviewed on | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |
|   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |
|   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |
|   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |

## Before you commit it

- Every finding separates what was found from what should be done.
- The feed has been compared with what is actually receiving spend.
- Audience overlap between prospecting and retargeting has been measured.
- Reported revenue has been compared with the store's own figures.
- Campaigns for discontinued products have been listed.
- Every row has an owner by name and a due date.
- Findings somebody has decided to live with are closed as accepted.