What Stripe metrics should I check daily for my e-commerce store?
Five essential Stripe metrics for daily monitoring with 3-minute checking routine covering success rates, revenue, declines, disputes, and system health.
Most e-commerce founders spend 15-30 minutes daily clicking through Stripe dashboard sections looking for problems or interesting trends. Three-quarters of that time provides zero actionable insights—checking metrics that haven’t meaningfully changed, reviewing granular details that don’t influence decisions, or exploring data out of curiosity rather than necessity.
You need five core metrics checked daily in under 3 minutes. These five numbers reveal payment system health, catch problems early, and surface optimization opportunities while ignoring vanity metrics and noise that waste time. This guide identifies exactly which Stripe metrics matter for daily monitoring, how to check them efficiently, and what action to take when numbers look problematic.
Five daily Stripe metrics that actually matter
1. Successful payment rate
What it is: Percentage of payment attempts that completed successfully yesterday.
Why it matters: Single number capturing overall payment system health. Rate of 94% means 6% of customers who wanted to buy couldn’t—direct revenue loss from payment friction. Sudden drop from 94% to 88% signals problem requiring immediate investigation. Gradual decline over weeks indicates slowly degrading system needing attention.
Where to find it: Stripe dashboard home page typically shows success rate prominently. Or navigate to payments section and view authorization rate for previous day.
What’s good: Above 92% is healthy. 88-92% is acceptable but improvable. Below 88% indicates significant problems worth investigating immediately.
What to do: If rate dropped 3+ percentage points from your normal baseline, check decline reasons to diagnose cause. If steady at low rate (under 90%), prioritize systematic payment optimization. If above 93%, just monitor—no immediate action needed.
Time: 15 seconds to check.
2. Total payment volume and revenue
What it is: Number of successful payments and total revenue processed yesterday compared to day before and same day last week.
Why it matters: Revenue up versus last week = growth. Revenue flat = stable. Revenue down = investigate why. Context matters—Monday being 20% lower than Sunday is normal weekend pattern. Monday being 20% lower than last Monday for three consecutive weeks indicates real problem.
Where to find it: Stripe home dashboard shows volume and revenue with period comparisons. Switch date range to view yesterday versus relevant comparison periods.
What to do: Compare yesterday to same day last week (accounts for day-of-week patterns). If down 15%+ consistently across multiple weeks, investigate traffic sources, conversion funnel, and payment performance. If up significantly, identify what’s working and amplify. If within 10% either direction, normal variance—no action needed.
Time: 20 seconds to check volume and revenue, note comparison.
3. Top decline reasons
What it is: The 2-3 most common reasons payments failed yesterday.
Why it matters: Not all declines are equal. "Insufficient funds" is unavoidable—customer has no money. "Incorrect card number" is fixable—your checkout form should validate before submission. Top decline reasons reveal whether failures are unavoidable baseline or fixable problems.
Where to find it: Stripe payments section, filter by declined status, view decline code distribution for yesterday.
What to look for: If "insufficient funds" or "generic decline" dominate (60%+ of failures), mostly unavoidable customer-side issues. If "incorrect card details" or "processing error" represent 20%+ of declines, fixable through checkout improvements or technical investigation.
What to do: When fixable decline codes (incorrect details, processing errors) exceed 15-20% of total declines, prioritize fixes—better form validation, improved error messaging, technical debugging. When unavoidable codes dominate, accept current baseline and focus optimization elsewhere.
Time: 30 seconds to scan top 3 decline reasons.
4. Dispute and chargeback count
What it is: Number of payment disputes filed by customers yesterday or this week.
Why it matters: Disputes cost money directly (lost transaction plus fees) and create account risk. High dispute rates trigger payment processor intervention—held funds, increased fees, account restrictions. One dispute daily is concerning. Multiple daily disputes indicate serious product, shipping, or fraud issues.
Where to find it: Stripe dashboard typically shows dispute notifications prominently. Or navigate to disputes section to view recent activity.
What’s good: Zero disputes is ideal but unrealistic for active stores. One dispute per 500-1,000 transactions is normal e-commerce baseline. More than one dispute per 100 transactions indicates problems.
What to do: If disputes spike suddenly (3+ in single day when normal is 1 per week), investigate immediately—fraud attack, product quality issue, or shipping problem. Review dispute reasons: "product not received" suggests shipping communication issues, "unauthorized charge" suggests fraud, "product not as described" indicates disconnect between marketing and reality.
Time: 10 seconds to check dispute count, 30 seconds to review reasons if any disputes exist.
5. Processing performance and errors
What it is: Whether Stripe systems are operating normally or experiencing elevated error rates.
Why it matters: Stripe occasionally has technical issues affecting payment processing—network timeouts, elevated decline rates from specific card networks, or slow authorization times. These external problems affect your conversion but aren’t fixable on your end. Knowing about them prevents unnecessary troubleshooting of your checkout when problem is upstream.
Where to find it: Stripe status page (status.stripe.com) shows current system health. Check for ongoing incidents or elevated error rates. Some dashboards also show processing error counts for your account specifically.
What to do: If Stripe reports elevated errors or incidents, understand that temporary success rate drops aren’t your fault. Wait for Stripe to resolve. If processing errors appear on your account without Stripe status page showing incidents, investigate your integration—possible API misconfiguration, webhook failures, or implementation bugs.
Time: 15 seconds to check status, 30 seconds to investigate if issues exist.
The 3-minute daily Stripe routine
Check these five metrics every morning before starting work:
Success rate (15 sec): Above 92%? Move on. Below 90%? Flag for investigation.
Revenue (20 sec): Compare yesterday to last week same day. Within 10%? Normal. Down 15%+? Investigate.
Decline reasons (30 sec): Scan top 3. Mostly unavoidable? Accept it. Fixable issues prominent? Note for optimization.
Disputes (10-40 sec): Zero or normal? Move on. Spike? Investigate reasons immediately.
System health (15-30 sec): Stripe status normal? Move on. Incidents? Understand impact on your metrics.
Total time: 90 seconds if everything looks normal, 3 minutes if something needs brief investigation.
Document findings in simple format: "Dec 15: 93% success (+1% vs baseline), $12.4k revenue (-5% vs last week, within normal), no disputes, systems normal." Takes 20 additional seconds, creates historical baseline for trend analysis.
When to do deeper analysis
Daily 3-minute check catches obvious problems. Save deeper analysis for when metrics trigger concern:
Success rate below 88% for 2+ days: Spend 15-20 minutes investigating decline patterns, payment method performance, and potential technical issues. Something is broken and costing revenue daily.
Revenue down 15%+ versus prior week for 3+ consecutive weeks: Spend 30 minutes analyzing traffic sources, conversion funnel, and payment performance. Systematic revenue decline requires systematic diagnosis.
Multiple disputes in short period: Spend 20-30 minutes reviewing dispute patterns, checking product quality feedback, verifying shipping processes, and examining fraud indicators. Dispute spikes often signal bigger operational problems.
Fixable decline codes exceed 20% of failures: Spend 1-2 hours implementing fixes—improved form validation, better error messaging, mobile checkout optimization. This is high-return time investment recovering lost revenue.
Metrics to check weekly instead of daily
Some metrics matter but don’t require daily monitoring:
Payment method distribution (weekly, 5 min): Has usage shifted between Visa/Mastercard/Amex/digital wallets? Significant shifts might indicate demographic changes or technical issues with specific methods.
Geographic payment patterns (weekly, 5 min): Are international payment success rates declining? New geographic markets emerging? Helps inform payment method expansion strategy.
Processing costs and fees (weekly, 5 min): Review total fees paid to Stripe. Calculate as percentage of revenue. If fees creeping up, investigate why—method mix shifting toward more expensive options? Volume discounts no longer applying?
Customer payment behavior (monthly, 15 min): Do returning customers reuse saved payment methods? Are new customers completing payments at similar rates to historical baseline? Monthly trends inform longer-term optimization.
Automating daily checks
Three-minute daily routine is sustainable for most founders. But if you prefer zero manual checking, automated reporting delivers key metrics via email automatically.
How automation works: Connect Stripe to analytics service, configure daily email delivery with five core metrics, receive 2-minute email every morning with yesterday’s performance. No dashboard login required. Team members can receive same email simultaneously—everyone sees identical data without coordination overhead.
When automation makes sense: Team of 3+ people needing shared visibility. Non-technical founders uncomfortable navigating Stripe dashboard. Remote/distributed teams wanting effortless synchronization. Time savings justifying $30-60/month tool cost (3 minutes daily = 15 hours yearly; at $50/hour opportunity cost, ROI is 12-25×).
Frequently asked questions
Do I really need to check metrics daily, or is weekly enough?
Daily 3-minute checks catch problems within 24 hours. Weekly checks mean problems exist 7 days before detection—potentially thousands in lost revenue. But weekly is infinitely better than monthly or never. Choose frequency matching your operations: stores processing $100k+ monthly should check daily; stores under $30k monthly can check 2-3 times weekly; stores under $10k monthly can check weekly.
What if success rate fluctuates daily—how do I know what’s normal variation versus problem?
Establish baseline over 2-4 weeks. If your normal range is 91-94%, daily fluctuation within that range is normal. Drop to 88% is signal, not noise. Think in ranges, not exact numbers. Three consecutive days below your normal range indicates trend requiring investigation.
Should I check Stripe metrics or my e-commerce platform analytics?
Both, for different purposes. E-commerce platform (Shopify, WooCommerce) shows total store performance including traffic, conversion, and sales. Stripe shows payment-specific health including authorization success, decline reasons, and payment method performance. Stripe metrics reveal payment friction that e-commerce platform can’t diagnose. Check both—platform for overall business health, Stripe for payment optimization.
What if I notice a problem but don’t know how to fix it?
Document the problem first: what metric is wrong, by how much, since when. Then research: Google the specific decline codes, check Stripe documentation, search for similar issues in Stripe community forums. Many common problems have documented solutions. For technical issues beyond your expertise, hire Stripe-experienced developer for 2-4 hours troubleshooting—usually $200-400 solving problem that might cost thousands in lost revenue if ignored.
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