Profit After Chargebacks: What Your Ads Really Return

Your ad dashboard says 3.0 ROAS. Your bank account says you made less than that sounds like. The gap is not a mystery: refunds, shipping, product cost and, quietly in the background, chargebacks. Each A$25 dispute fee and each lost order comes out of the money your ads were supposed to be earning, and it usually arrives weeks after the campaign has been judged a success. Profit after chargebacks is the number that tells you what your ads really returned.

Profit after chargebacks is what is left from ad-driven sales once you take off refunds, lost disputes, dispute fees, product cost and shipping, and then the ad spend itself. Working it out changes your break-even ROAS, your scaling decisions and the way you think about every dollar of spend.

This guide is for you if:

You run paid ads for a Shopify store in Australia and judge campaigns by platform ROAS.
You have noticed that profit looks thinner than the dashboard suggests and suspect disputes are part of the gap.
You want a simple model for profit after chargebacks that you can run in a spreadsheet in half an hour.

Last updated: 19 October 2026. Written by the ChargeFix team. Reviewed against sources on 19 October 2026. General information, not financial or legal advice.

The 30-second answer (TL;DR)

Platform ROAS ignores refunds, disputes, product cost and shipping. Profit after chargebacks includes them.

A lost dispute costs the order value plus the A$25 fee on Shopify Payments in Australia, and the fee is returned only if you win.

On the worked example below, a 2% dispute rate moves break-even ROAS from 2.17 to 2.29 and trims profit by about 18%.

Disputes can arrive up to 120 days after a sale, so a campaign looks better at day 30 than it will at day 120. Hold a dispute reserve.

Track disputes by campaign or source, so you can see which ads bring profitable customers and which bring costly ones.

Do this today (10 minutes):

Pull last month's ad spend, orders, refunds and disputes (count and value) into one sheet.

Work out profit after chargebacks: revenue, minus refunds, product cost, shipping, lost disputes with fees, and ad spend.

Compare it with the profit your ad dashboard implied. The difference is the number you have been missing.

Ten minutes with a spreadsheet beats months of guessing.

From dispute to decision

Stage	What happens	Your move
Ad click	A customer arrives from a campaign	Tag the order source
Sale	The dashboard counts the revenue	Note it, but do not trust it as profit
Weeks later	A dispute arrives, up to about 120 days after the sale	Log it against the campaign
Outcome	You win, lose or refund	Update profit after chargebacks for that campaign
Review	You decide whether to scale, hold or cut	Use profit, not just ROAS

What is profit after chargebacks, and why does platform ROAS miss it?

Profit after chargebacks is the profit from your ad-driven sales once disputes are counted, and platform ROAS misses it because ROAS only compares revenue to ad spend. ROAS knows nothing about what the goods cost, what you paid to ship them, what you refunded or what the bank took back.

Take a simple example. An ad platform reports A$30,000 of revenue on A$10,000 of spend, a ROAS of 3.0. That looks healthy. But the A$30,000 is before refunds, before the cost of the goods and shipping, and before any chargeback. Strip those out and the answer can be a thin profit or even a loss.

Chargebacks are the item people forget, for three reasons. They arrive late, so the campaign has been celebrated before the first one lands. They are lumpy, so a month with none can sit beside a month with a cluster. And they cost more than the order, because of the fee.

Shopify's help centre says that when a chargeback opens, the disputed amount and the fee are withdrawn immediately, and if you lose, both are gone. In Australia the Shopify Payments fee is A$25, returned if you win. Winning does not remove the dispute from your chargeback rate, which counts disputes filed rather than outcomes.

So the honest question is not "what was my ROAS?" but "what did I keep?". That is profit after chargebacks, and it is the number to build your decisions on.

How do you calculate profit after chargebacks, step by step?

Start with revenue and subtract each cost in the order it arises. Here is a worked example for one month, with made-up numbers. I have left out GST, card processing fees and other overheads to keep the shape clear, and you should add them with your own figures.

Line	Amount	Notes
Spend on ads	A$10,000	From the ad accounts
Orders	400	Average order A$75
Revenue (platform-reported)	A$30,000	ROAS 3.0
Refunds (6% of revenue)	-A$1,800	Paid by you
Product cost (40% of revenue)	-A$12,000	Goods are gone even if a dispute is lost
Shipping (A$6 per order)	-A$2,400	Paid by you
Profit before disputes and ads	A$13,800	Revenue minus refunds, product, shipping
Ad spend	-A$10,000
Profit before disputes	A$3,800

Now add disputes. Suppose 2% of orders end in a dispute, which is 8 disputes. Say 70% are lost, which is about 5.6, and the rest are won. Each lost dispute costs the order value of A$75 plus the A$25 fee, A$100 in all. Each response costs about A$15 of your time.

Dispute line	Amount
Disputes filed (2% of 400)	8
Lost (70%)	5.6
Cost of lost disputes (5.6 × A$100)	A$560
Time to respond (8 × A$15)	A$120
Total dispute cost	A$680
Profit after chargebacks	A$3,120

So profit after chargebacks turns the same A$30,000 of platform revenue into A$3,120 of real profit after chargebacks. The disputes alone took about 18% of the profit before disputes (A$680 of A$3,800). The ad dashboard still says ROAS 3.0.

A note on the product cost line. When a dispute is lost, the goods are usually gone too. The product cost is already in the table, so I did not add it twice. The lost order value is the extra loss, because you were paid and then the money was taken back.

I made these numbers up to show the structure. Your refund rate, margin and dispute rate will differ, so rebuild the table with your own figures.

What does a dispute do to break-even ROAS and profit after chargebacks?

It raises it. Break-even ROAS is the ROAS at which ad-driven sales just cover their costs, and it equals one divided by the contribution margin before ad spend. Every dollar that disputes take out of that margin pushes the break-even up.

Using the example above:

Scenario	Contribution before ads	Margin	Break-even ROAS
No disputes	A$13,800	46.0%	2.17
2% disputes, 70% lost	A$13,120	43.7%	2.29

The contribution before ads is revenue less refunds, product cost, shipping and dispute cost. In the second row, A$30,000 minus A$1,800, A$12,000, A$2,400 and A$680 is A$13,120, which is 43.7% of revenue. One divided by 0.437 is 2.29.

So with a 2% dispute rate, a campaign running at ROAS 2.2 loses money, even though it looks like it is above break-even without disputes. That is a small number in the table and a big difference in the real world: the campaigns you consider marginal may be underwater.

How does the dispute rate change your profit after chargebacks?

Profit after chargebacks falls roughly in a straight line as the rate rises, and a few percentage points can eat a large share of your margin. Here is the same example at different dispute rates, with 70% of disputes lost, A$100 per lost dispute and A$15 of time per dispute.

Dispute rate	Disputes	Lost	Dispute cost	Profit after chargebacks	Share of profit lost
0%	0	0	A$0	A$3,800	0%
0.5%	2	1.4	A$170	A$3,630	4%
1%	4	2.8	A$340	A$3,460	9%
2%	8	5.6	A$680	A$3,120	18%
3%	12	8.4	A$1,020	A$2,780	27%

Two readings of profit after chargebacks. First, in an ad-driven business with a thin margin, a dispute rate that sounds small can take a large bite of profit. Second, the lever is not only winning more. Cutting the number of disputes filed cuts both the cost and the dispute rate, and Shopify counts disputes filed rather than outcomes.

I could not find a verified published figure for typical dispute rates by traffic source, so I will not claim ads cause more or fewer disputes than organic traffic. The honest approach is to measure it yourself, which the next sections show.

Why does profit after chargebacks look better at day 30 than at day 120?

Because they arrive late. Stripe says card disputes typically arrive within 120 days, and that issuers take around 60 to 75 days to decide. Shopify says the card company's review can take up to 75 days after you submit. So the full dispute bill for October's campaign may not be known until February.

Time since sale	What you know
Day 7	Refunds and early complaints
Day 30	Most refunds, some inquiries, a few disputes
Day 60	More disputes, and the first decisions
Day 120	Close to the full picture

This is why profit after chargebacks for a campaign judged at day 30 can look 10 or 20 percent better than it will at day 120. The honest answer is a reserve: put a percentage of ad-driven revenue aside for disputes you have not seen yet. If your history says 1.5 percent of revenue ends up lost to disputes and fees, hold that back from your reported profit until the window closes.

Shopify's help also mentions that reserves, which hold part of your sales for a period, can be triggered by elevated chargebacks, refund rates, long delivery times or volume surges. One example in the notes I used was 10 percent held for 120 days. I did not verify any numeric trigger, but the point stands: a bad run of disputes can hit your cash as well as your profit.

How do you see profit after chargebacks by campaign?

Tag every order with its source, then log every dispute against that order. Once you can join the two, you can see which campaigns bring profitable customers and which bring costly ones. Without it you are guessing from a blended number.

Here is a made-up month split into three campaigns that add up to the totals above: A$10,000 of spend, 400 orders, A$30,000 of revenue and 8 disputes (2%). Refunds 6% of revenue, product cost 40%, shipping A$6 an order, and each dispute costing an expected A$85 (70% lost at A$100, plus A$15 of time).

Campaign	Spend	Orders	Revenue	ROAS	Disputes	Profit before disputes	Dispute cost	Profit after chargebacks
Prospecting	A$5,000	180	A$13,500	2.7	4	A$1,210	A$340	A$870
Retargeting	A$2,000	120	A$9,000	4.5	1	A$2,140	A$85	A$2,055
New country	A$3,000	100	A$7,500	2.5	3	A$450	A$255	A$195
Total	A$10,000	400	A$30,000	3.0	8	A$3,800	A$680	A$3,120

Look at the profit after chargebacks column against the ROAS column. The new-country campaign has a ROAS of 2.5 and looks nearly as good as prospecting at 2.7. But disputes take 57% of its profit, leaving A$0.07 of profit for every dollar spent. Prospecting keeps A$0.17 per dollar, and retargeting A$1.03. The dashboard barely distinguishes the first two, but profit after chargebacks does.

I made these figures up, and I do not claim that new-country traffic always disputes more. I could not find a verified source on dispute rates by traffic type. The point is that your own tagged data will show you, and a table like this one is how.

What do you need to track to see profit after chargebacks?

Four fields per order, plus one per dispute. A spreadsheet is enough to start.

ORDERS TAB
Order # | Date | Source / campaign | Revenue A$ | Refunded A$ |
Product cost A$ | Shipping A$ | Country

DISPUTES TAB
Order # | Date opened | Reason | Amount A$ | Fee A$ | Outcome |
Time spent (min) | Campaign (lookup from orders)

Add a tab that sums profit after chargebacks by campaign: spend, orders, revenue, refunds, product cost, shipping, dispute cost, and profit after chargebacks. Then add a column for profit per A$1 of spend.

Two tips. First, use whatever source tag your store already records, such as UTM parameters or order tags. Second, log the dispute the day it arrives, not at month end, so you never lose the link back to the campaign. The disputes tab should carry the due date, since a missed response almost always means an automatic loss, as Pay Advantage notes.

How should profit after chargebacks change your scaling decisions?

Use profit after chargebacks as the filter before you scale. A campaign that looks good on ROAS but poor on profit after chargebacks is a campaign where growth multiplies the problem.

Here is a simple decision rule, with thresholds you should set yourself after a few months of data.

Signal	Reading	Action
Profit per A$1 above your target, dispute rate low	Healthy	Scale carefully, check again in two weeks
ROAS fine, profit per A$1 low, dispute rate high	Disputes are eating the margin	Hold. Fix delivery promises, listings or targeting first
Profit per A$1 negative after allowing for the reserve	Losing money	Cut or rebuild
Small sample, a single dispute	Noise	Wait for more orders before reacting

The last row matters. A single dispute on a small campaign can swing the numbers. Do not cut a campaign on one A$25 fee. Look at a few weeks of orders, and keep the reserve in mind, since disputes can arrive up to 120 days after a sale.

If you scale spend, remember that profit after chargebacks does not always scale evenly. Shipping, support and disputes can lag behind a spike in orders. A campaign that doubles overnight can produce its disputes next month, when you have moved on to the next test.

How do you cut disputes to protect profit after chargebacks?

To protect profit after chargebacks, fix the causes at the source: honest promises, clear delivery, recognisable charges and fast contact. Shopify's own list for preventing chargebacks is a good starting point: a recognisable descriptor set in the admin, shipping fast, accurate delivery estimates, tracking and delivery confirmation, contacting the customer if there is a delay, receipts at payment, easy contact information, a clear return policy, refunding quickly and replacing damaged items fast.

Fix	Why it helps ad-driven orders	Cost
Ads and product pages that match the product	Cuts "not as described" claims	Free
Honest delivery estimates at checkout	A missed promise is a common cause of "not received"	Free
A clear billing descriptor	Cuts "I don't recognise this" disputes from cold buyers	Free
A dispatch email with tracking	Gives you a timestamp and reassures the buyer	Free
Tracked service on higher-value orders	Gives you delivery proof	Extra per parcel
Reviewing suspicious orders in fraud analysis	Stops some fraud at source	Time
Refund-first on small complaints	Avoids the A$25 fee and the dispute rate	Order value

A trade guide I used suggests comparing the delivery estimate you show at checkout with the actual transit time. For paid traffic, where buyers are new and have no relationship with you, a missed estimate is the fastest route to a bank call. If your average transit is over your promise, change the promise.

Cold traffic is also the place where an unfamiliar descriptor does most harm. A first-time buyer who sees a name on their statement they do not recognise may dispute it. ChargeFix has a separate guide on billing descriptors, linked below.

What is a sensible dispute reserve for profit after chargebacks?

In profit after chargebacks, a reserve is a percentage of ad-driven revenue you treat as not yet yours, until the dispute window closes. A simple way to set it is from your own history, using this method.

Take the last six months of ad-driven revenue.
Add up the disputes lost and fees paid on those sales, including those that arrived late.
Divide the second number by the first. That is your historical dispute leakage.
Set the reserve a little above it, and review each quarter.

Here is a made-up example. If A$60,000 of ad-driven revenue led to A$900 of lost disputes and fees, the leakage is 1.5%. A dispute reserve of 2% on new revenue means A$600 held back from every A$30,000 until the window passes. That keeps your reported profit honest and stops a good month from turning into a bad quarter.

Month	Revenue	Reserve at 2%	Reported profit (before)	Reported profit (after reserve)
October	A$30,000	A$600	A$3,800	A$3,200

The reserve for profit after chargebacks is an accounting habit, not a bank account. You do not have to move money, though some owners do. The point is not to spend profit you have not yet earned.

What does a profit after chargebacks review look like, day by day?

Here is a plan for closing October 2026 and deciding November's spend. It takes about two hours if your tracking is in place.

Date	Task	Output
Fri 30 Oct	Export orders, refunds and ad spend for the month.	Raw data
Mon 2 Nov	Log every dispute against its order and campaign.	Disputes tab current
Tue 3 Nov	Build the campaign table: profit before and after disputes.	Campaign view
Wed 4 Nov	Apply the reserve. Compare profit per A$1 across campaigns.	Decision table
Thu 5 Nov	Make the spend decisions: scale, hold, cut.	Budget set
Fri 6 Nov	Check due dates for every open dispute.	Dates in the calendar

The last row is not an accounting task, and it is the one that protects the numbers. A missed due date turns a winnable dispute into a loss, and Shopify Payments sends whatever is on file on the due date.

How do GST, fees and surcharges change profit after chargebacks?

They change profit after chargebacks in ways I could not fully verify, so treat the model as a framework and add them with your accountant. I left GST, card processing fees and other overheads out of the examples to keep the structure clear.

Some Australian points that affect margin:

Surcharging. NAB's summary of the Reserve Bank's changes says that from 1 October 2026 surcharging on debit, prepaid and credit cards ends, across eftpos, Mastercard, Visa, American Express and UnionPay, for domestic and foreign cards, in-store and online. Fees not tied to a payment method, such as genuine delivery or service fees, are still allowed, and renaming a surcharge as an admin or card fee does not avoid the ban. So the cost of taking cards has to live in your prices and margins.
Foreign cards. NAB also notes lower interchange caps for foreign-issued cards from 1 April 2027.
Currency. Shopify says a currency conversion fee applies on non-domestic currency, and a cross-border processing fee applies on cards issued outside the store's country. It does not state the Australian rates on the pages I opened.
GST. ChargeFix has a separate guide on GST, BAS and lost chargebacks, linked below. I did not research the detail for this post.

If you sell to other countries, the dispute fee also varies by market. ChargeFix has a guide on dispute fees by country, linked below.

How does contribution margin change profit after chargebacks?

Your product margin decides how much room disputes have to hurt you. The same 2% dispute rate that dents a healthy margin can push a thin-margin store under. Here is the same A$30,000 month with A$10,000 of ad spend, 6% refunds, A$2,400 of shipping and the A$680 dispute cost, at three product-cost levels.

Product cost	Contribution margin without disputes	Break-even ROAS without disputes	Contribution margin with 2% disputes	Break-even ROAS with disputes	Profit after chargebacks
25% of revenue	61.0%	1.64	58.7%	1.70	A$7,620
40% of revenue	46.0%	2.17	43.7%	2.29	A$3,120
55% of revenue	31.0%	3.23	28.7%	3.48	-A$1,380

Read the bottom row twice. At a 55% product cost, the store is already losing about A$700 at ROAS 3.0 before disputes, and loses A$1,380 after them. The dashboard says 3.0 either way. Contribution margin is the share of each sale left after product cost, refunds, shipping and disputes, before ads, and it is the number that tells you how much a dispute rate can hurt.

If your margin is thin, a small improvement in disputes is worth more to you than to a high-margin store. If it is generous, you have room to test, but profit after chargebacks still tells you which campaigns are carrying the rest.

Is it better to win more disputes or have fewer of them?

Fewer. Preventing a dispute saves the fee, the order value, your time and a mark on the chargeback rate, while winning one only recovers the money. Here is the same month, comparing the two levers.

Scenario	Disputes	Share lost	Lost	Dispute cost	Profit after chargebacks
Baseline (2% disputes, 70% lost)	8	70%	5.6	A$680	A$3,120
Win more (same 8 disputes, 40% lost)	8	40%	3.2	A$440	A$3,360
Prevent more (4 disputes, 70% lost)	4	70%	2.8	A$340	A$3,460
Both	4	40%	1.6	A$220	A$3,580

Dispute cost is lost disputes times A$100 plus A$15 of time for every dispute filed. Winning more saves A$240 here. Halving the disputes saves A$340. And halving the disputes also halves the number that count toward your chargeback rate, because Shopify says the rate counts disputes filed, not outcomes.

I would not choose between them. Better evidence habits are cheap, and so are honest delivery promises and a clear descriptor. But if you can only fund one project this quarter, put it into prevention.

What should you ask your media buyer or agency to report?

Ask for profit after chargebacks next to ROAS, by campaign, every month. If someone else runs your ads, they only see the platform. The numbers that matter live in your store, so you have to share them.

Send them the campaign table once a month, with these columns: spend, orders, revenue, refunds, product cost, shipping, disputes (count and cost) and profit after chargebacks. Agree two things in advance:

Which number is the target. Profit per A$1 of spend after the reserve is a clearer target than ROAS.
How long to wait before judging. Disputes can arrive up to 120 days after a sale, so give new campaigns a dispute reserve and a review at 60 and 120 days.

A short note you can send:

Hi [name],

From this month I'll send you a campaign table showing profit after
chargebacks, not just revenue. It includes refunds, product cost,
shipping, disputes and fees.

Please look at profit per A$1 of spend alongside ROAS when you suggest
scaling. Where a campaign's dispute rate is well above the store average,
let's look at the creative and the delivery promise before adding budget.

An agency that sees only ROAS is not being careless. It has been given half the picture. Giving it the other half is one of the cheapest improvements you can make to a campaign.

What is different for Australian merchants?

General information, not financial or legal advice.

Fees and process

On Shopify Payments in Australia the dispute fee is A$25, returned if you win. The response window is usually 7 to 21 days and the card company's review can take up to 75 days after you submit. Stripe lists A$25 for a dispute received and A$25 more if you counter, on its own accounts, for disputes since 17 June 2025.

Banks and rules

Pay Advantage says chargebacks in Australia are governed by the ePayments Code, administered by ASIC, and apply to most Australian banks and to Visa, Mastercard and American Express. It advises tailoring evidence to the reason, sending PDFs, keeping records for 12 to 18 months and using 3D Secure for higher-risk orders.

Advertising and pricing law

From 1 July 2027, reforms to unfair trading practices and drip pricing take effect, with penalties for non-compliance. Mandatory transaction-based charges must be shown with the base price, while optional charges, payment surcharges and taxes are excluded. This matters if your ads quote a price. I read a law firm summary of the passed Bill, not the Act, so check the primary source.

What I could not verify: typical dispute rates by traffic source, GST treatment of lost disputes, Shopify Payments international card fee rates, and any numeric chargeback threshold for a payout hold.

What are the common mistakes in measuring profit after chargebacks?

Most mistakes with profit after chargebacks come from trusting a single number.

Judging campaigns on platform ROAS alone.
Counting a campaign as profitable at day 30, before disputes have arrived.
Forgetting that a lost dispute costs the order plus the A$25 fee.
Adding the product cost twice, or not at all, on a lost dispute.
Not tagging orders by source, so disputes cannot be traced to a campaign.
Cutting a campaign on one dispute.
Scaling a campaign with a high dispute rate because the ROAS looks fine.
Treating a won dispute as if it never happened, when it still counts toward the chargeback rate.
Ignoring the reserve, then being surprised when profit shrinks later.
Missing due dates, which almost always means an automatic loss.

If you fix only the first, you already read your ads better than most.

Frequently asked questions

What is profit after chargebacks?

It is the profit from your sales once refunds, lost disputes, dispute fees, product cost, shipping and ad spend are all taken off. It tells you what ads really returned, which platform ROAS cannot because ROAS only compares revenue to ad spend.

How do chargebacks affect my ROAS?

They do not change the platform's ROAS, but they change your real return. A lost dispute removes the order value and adds the A$25 fee on Shopify Payments in Australia. In the worked example, a 2% dispute rate moves break-even ROAS from 2.17 to 2.29.

How do I calculate break-even ROAS with disputes included?

Divide one by your contribution margin before spend, after refunds, product cost, shipping and dispute cost. If revenue is A$30,000 and the costs leave A$13,120, the margin is 43.7% and break-even ROAS is 2.29. Without disputes it would be 2.17.

Why do disputes make my campaigns look better than they are?

Disputes arrive late. Stripe says they typically arrive within 120 days, and the card company can take up to 75 days to decide. A campaign judged at day 30 has not yet shown its full dispute bill, so hold a reserve.

How big should my dispute reserve be?

Set it from your own history: take lost disputes and fees as a share of ad-driven revenue over six months, then reserve slightly above that. If the leakage was 1.5%, a 2% reserve is reasonable. Review it each quarter as your numbers move.

Do ads cause more chargebacks than organic traffic?

I could not find a verified source on dispute rates by traffic type, so I will not claim it either way. Tag every order by source and log disputes against them. Your own data will show whether a campaign brings costly customers or cheap ones.

Should I stop a campaign with a high dispute rate?

Not on one or two disputes. Check a few weeks of orders, look at the reasons, and try the fixes first: honest delivery promises, a clear descriptor and accurate listings. Cut only when profit after chargebacks stays poor with a decent sample.

Does winning a dispute help my profit after chargebacks?

Yes, because Shopify returns the order value and the fee, so a win costs you only the time. But winning does not remove the dispute from your chargeback rate, which counts disputes filed. Preventing the dispute is still better than winning it.

Does the card surcharge ban affect my margins?

NAB's summary says surcharging on debit, prepaid and credit cards ends from 1 October 2026, and renaming it as an admin or card fee does not avoid the ban. So card costs have to be built into your prices and margins, not added at checkout.

How often should I review profit after chargebacks?

Monthly for the numbers and weekly for open disputes. Close the month, tag the disputes to campaigns, update the reserve and decide where to put next month's budget. Check due dates every week, since a missed response almost always means an automatic loss.

Start free trial with ChargeFix

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Profit after chargebacks: what your ads really return for an Australian Shopify store