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Black Friday sales tracker: a free daily results log and post-sale review

The best time to plan next year's Black Friday is the week after this one, while you still remember what happened. A simple daily results log makes that possible.

Your store platform and ad accounts show plenty of numbers, but they are spread across different screens and they change as refunds come in. Writing down a few key figures once a day gives you one clean record you can compare with last year. This guide covers what to log, the formulas to use and the questions to answer once the sale is over.

What to log each day

Pick a fixed time to record the previous day, such as 9:00 am the next morning, and stick to it. Keep the list short enough that you actually do it.

• Date and what was happening: "Black Friday, 25% off sitewide, email 2 sent"
• Sessions or visitors, from your store analytics
• Orders
• Revenue, before refunds
• Units sold of your top three products
• Ad spend, across all ad accounts
• Emails or SMS sent that day, and the main result for each
• Discount codes used, if you track codes separately
• Problems: a broken code, a slow site, a product that sold out
• Last year same day, for revenue and orders, if you have it

Where to find each number

• Sessions, orders and revenue: your store's analytics or sales report, filtered to one day. Use the same report every day so the numbers are measured the same way.
• Ad spend: each ad account's daily total. If you run ads in more than one place, add them up in a small side table first.
• Email and SMS results: your email tool's campaign report. Orders attributed to an email are an estimate, so treat them as a guide rather than an exact count.
• Last year: the same reports, set to the matching days last year. Write these in before the sale starts so they are ready.

Set it up before the sale

1. Copy the log into a spreadsheet and fill in the dates for the whole sale period, from a few days before Thanksgiving to a few days after Cyber Monday.
2. Add last year's numbers for each matching day.
3. Write your plan in the Notes column for each day: which offer is live and which email or SMS goes out.
4. Put a daily reminder in your calendar for the time you will fill it in.
5. Decide who fills it in if you are busy packing orders.

Writing the plan into the log first makes the review easier. You can see straight away whether a busy day matched a planned send, or whether something else happened.

Formulas for the key numbers

With sessions in column B, orders in C, revenue in D and ad spend in E:

• Conversion rate (F2): =IF(B2=0,"",C2/B2), formatted as a percentage
• Average order value (G2): =IF(C2=0,"",D2/C2)
• Return on ad spend, ROAS (H2): =IF(E2=0,"",D2/E2)
• Change against last year (J2): =IF(I2=0,"",D2/I2-1), where I2 is last year's revenue for the same day
• Totals row: =SUM(B2:B7) for sessions, orders, revenue and spend, then work out conversion, AOV and ROAS from the totals rather than averaging the daily percentages

That last point matters. An average of six daily conversion rates is not the same as total orders divided by total sessions, and the second one is the number you want.

Compare days fairly

Black Friday falls on a different date each year, so compare by day of the event, not by calendar date. Black Friday 2026 (27 November) lines up with Black Friday 2025 (28 November), not with 27 November 2025. Note any big differences too: a different discount, a new product, a bigger email list or a site change. They explain a lot of the gap between years.

Questions for the post-sale review

Within a week of Cyber Monday, set aside an hour and answer these in writing. Keep the answers with the log.

1. Which offer brought the most orders, and which brought the most profit after costs?
2. Did any offer lose money once discounts, shipping and fees were counted?
3. Which email or SMS got the most orders, and what was different about it?
4. Which products sold out, and when? Which ones were left over?
5. Did ad spend pay back, by ROAS and by profit?
6. What broke: codes, checkout, shipping, customer service?
7. What questions did customers ask most?
8. How did new customers compare with returning customers?
9. What did the team find stressful, and what would make it easier?
10. What should start earlier next year?
11. What is the one thing you will do differently?

Tips

• Log refunds and cancellations a few weeks later, and note them next to the original days.
• Screenshot your main dashboards on each key day. Platforms sometimes change how they report.
• Keep the margin numbers next to the sales numbers. Revenue alone can look good while profit is thin; the discount margin check shows how.
• Save the file where you will find it next October, with the year in the name.