Tracking to a Currency Success Event that eventually results in negative amounts -- possible?

[yuhui_sparkline]

I have a somewhat peculiar situation. I track amounts to a Currency Success Event that could result in the Event having a negative value. But Adobe always reports 0 (zero) instead of the negative amount.

I am tracking an ecommerce store where the customer can modify his order as many times as he likes, as long as his order hasn't been delivered. I've set up a Currency Success Event to track the revenue differences. So this is how a process could go:

1. Original purchase: $100 --> tracked "100" as regular Revenue
2. Modification 1: +$50 --> tracked "50" to Success Event
3. Modification 2: -$80 --> tracked "-80" to Success Event
4. Delivered --> no more modifications allowed

The idea for the above is that I use a Calculated Metric to calculate the actual order value, i.e. Real Revenue = Revenue + Success Event. So in the above case, Real Revenue = 100 + (50 - 80) = 70.

In the above steps, after step 3, the Success Event should be "-30". But when I check a report that includes this metric, it shows "0". In fact, for all orders, whenever the final result is a negative number, Adobe always shows "0" for the Success Event.

I could set up 2 Success Events, one for positive revenue differences, another for negative, then use both with the Calculated Metric. But that seems counter-intuitive.

Does anyone know if Currency Success Events can ultimately have a negative value?

[brian_au · Accepted solution]

Hi Yuhui,

I would recommend allocating two events (one to track positive modifications and one to track all negative modifications). Both events should be positive numbers then as you suggest I would leverage calculated metrics to do the math outright.

An old blog post from Ben Gaines somewhat touches on the subject:

http://blogs.adobe.com/digitalmarketing/analytics/under-the-hood-with-negative-revenue/

Best,

Brian