How StateWise counts your sales
Every figure this app shows you comes from an order you can point at and a rule you can read. This page is the arithmetic in between. If a number here disagrees with what you see on your own map, the map is the thing to trust, because it is computed from your orders and this page is prose.
The two numbers, and why there are always two
Most tools show you one number per state. StateWise shows two, side by side, on every state, in every plan, including the states where they are identical.
| What it means | |
|---|---|
| Total into this state | Every dollar you shipped there, all channels, no filtering |
| Counts toward the threshold | The subset that state's own rule actually measures |
They differ for one main reason: marketplace-facilitated sales. When Amazon, Etsy, eBay or Walmart collects and remits the tax on a sale for you, most states still count that sale toward your registration threshold. Some do not. So the same $180,000 can be comfortably under one state's line and over another's.
A worked example, one seller, two states, same year:
| Georgia | Massachusetts | |
|---|---|---|
| Total into this state | $122,400 | $122,400 |
| Counts toward the threshold | $122,400 | $122,400 or $46,900 |
| The state's line | $100,000 | $100,000 |
Georgia counts marketplace sales toward your threshold, so both numbers are the same and the seller is over. Massachusetts is one of two jurisdictions where published sources genuinely disagree about whether they count. StateWise does not pick for you: it shows both readings and names the disagreement, because resolving it silently in either direction is the one thing a monitoring tool must not do. Registering where you did not owe buys permanent filing obligations in a state you barely sell into.
The full per-state picture, with the source and the date each rule was last checked, is the jurisdiction table.
What counts as a sale
Gross, not net. The default basis is gross sales, which is the conservative reading and what most states specify. Refunds are recorded and shown, and they are not subtracted from the threshold arithmetic, because most states measure gross receipts rather than what you kept.
Shipping destination decides the state, from the ship-to province code on the order. When an order has no shipping address at all, the billing province is used instead and the value is tagged as a billing fallback so you can see it was inferred rather than read.
What does not count, and how you see it
Nothing is quietly dropped. Every order the arithmetic refuses to count carries a reason, the reasons are totalled, and the count and dollar amount appear on your Channels screen, on the state detail, and in both exports. Silence here is how a seller's real exposure disappears.
The reasons, exactly as the app labels them:
- Test order
- Cancelled
- Local pickup, no shipping destination
- Digital, no shipping required
- No usable ship-to address
- Shipped outside the US
- A US region StateWise does not monitor
- Not priced in US dollars, and StateWise does not convert currency
- Possible duplicate of another channel
Digital and local-pickup exclusions are exact for connected Shopify data. CSV exports do not expose those signals consistently, so StateWise does not guess them from a blank shipping address. Such a CSV row is still classified from the geography and other fields the export actually provides.
Three of those deserve a note.
Currency. A non-USD order is excluded rather than converted. There is no exchange-rate source in this version, and a guessed rate moves a threshold verdict by more than the threshold's own precision, so the honest answer is to leave the order out and show you that it was left out.
Duplicates. If you sell the same item on Shopify and a marketplace, an order can appear in both exports. StateWise flags a possible duplicate rather than deciding, because only you can tell a genuine double-count from two real sales.
Which clock
Two different clocks, and confusing them is a real source of wrong dates.
Your day is your store's day, in your store's own timezone. A sale at 11pm on the 31st belongs to the 31st where you are, not wherever a server happens to be.
A state's measurement window is its own clock, and there are eight distinct kinds. Some states measure the current or previous calendar year, some a rolling twelve months, some the preceding four quarters. Each state is evaluated on its own window, not on a single shared year.
Rules are dated, and history is measured against the rule that was in force
This is the part most tools skip. A rule table is not a list of current thresholds, it is a list of thresholds with the dates they applied. When StateWise works out whether you crossed a line in 2025, it evaluates 2025 against the rule that existed in 2025.
A repeal does not reach backwards. Kentucky removed its 200-transaction test on August 1, 2026, and a seller who met that test in 2025 still met it: the obligation attached when it attached. The Kentucky arithmetic is written out in full here.
Every crossing date is stored with the rule version that produced it, so a later rule change cannot silently rewrite your history.
Where each value came from
Every value carries its own source, and the app renders the label from that field rather than guessing. Four sources exist:
shopify, read from your orderscsv, from a marketplace export you importedmanual, a value you enteredbilling_fallback, the billing province used because the order had no shipping address
A value you entered by hand is never overwritten by anything automatic.
How far back it can see
That depends on what Shopify grants the app, and the app tells you rather than assuming. With extended order-history access, the direct Shopify backfill reaches 24 months. Without it, it reaches 60 days. Either way, the date your history actually starts is rendered on your map, taken from what the import really reached rather than from a number in a document.
This matters more than it sounds. Most states measure a full calendar year, so if the app's view starts more recently than that, a state can be over its line on sales the app has not seen. That is what CSV import is for, and it is why the starting date is on screen instead of buried.
Physical presence has no threshold
Everything above is about economic nexus, which is triggered by volume. Holding inventory in a state, employing someone there, or keeping an office there can create an obligation with no dollar amount at all. Amazon FBA is the common case, because inventory gets distributed across warehouses without asking you. You can record physical presence in Settings, and the states you record are treated as having no threshold rather than a large one.
What this app does not do
- It does not file, remit, or register you anywhere, and it never will on your behalf.
- It does not calculate tax at checkout or look up rates. Shopify Tax does that.
- It does not model home-rule local taxes: Colorado cities, Alaska municipalities and Louisiana parishes each set their own rules and sit outside this arithmetic.
- It does not cover international VAT or GST.
- It does not decide whether what you sell is taxable in a given state.
- It does not tell you that you owe tax. Crossing a threshold is the point at which a state expects you to look into registering, and that decision has lasting consequences in both directions.
What it reads about your customers
Close to nothing, deliberately. The short version is a two-letter state code and a dollar amount.
The complete list, both what is read and what is never read, is its own page: what StateWise reads, and what it ignores. It is kept in one place on purpose, so there is a single list to check rather than several that can drift apart. The privacy policy is the binding version.
Related: the jurisdiction table, more guides, and what StateWise does.