Autopsify · Forensic analysis for ecommerce
Find where growth and profit are being lost — and what it is worth.
Forensic analysis of your Shopify store’s economics. We reconstruct what your store actually keeps, investigate where it is under pressure, and rank what deserves attention first — with the arithmetic beside every number. Analysed by Autopsify, reviewed by a person.
- Founding Alpha · 3 brands
- The diagnostic is free. The feedback is the price. Subject to fit.
- Standard Blueprint
- £497 · one diagnostic cycle. Free for the three founding brands, £497 after that.
Read-only Shopify access. Readiness checked before you pay. Applying starts a conversation, not a charge.
Economic reconstruction
Northstar Outdoor · 1 April – 30 June 2026
- Gross sales
- £1,411,263
- Less tax
- −£235,205
- Net sales excluding tax
- £1,176,057
- Less refunds
- −£58,461
- Sales after refunds
- £1,117,596
- Less cost of goods
- −£753,127
- Gross profit
- £364,469
- Less advertising
- −£118,309
- Contribution after advertising
- £246,160
- Net profit
- Not calculable
Northstar Outdoor is a synthetic rehearsal merchant — fictional brand, synthetic data. Not a customer, and not a customer result.
The problem
Your sales can nearly double
while the margin on them quietly gives way.
- Sales moved
- +87.7%
- Contribution moved
- +49.2%
- Contribution margin
- −5.7 pts
Northstar Outdoor · 27.7% → 22.0%. Synthetic rehearsal merchant — not a customer, and not a customer result.
Unit costs rise on the products that keep selling, realised price slips, mix shifts toward the thinner line. Each movement looks small in the tool that reports it, and none of those tools ranks its answer against the others — which is the decision you actually have to make.
What none of your tools settles
- 01Where is profit actually being lost?
- 02Which of it is material enough to act on?
- 03How much is it worth?
- 04What do we fix first?
Autopsify investigates the path from revenue to actual contribution, and answers those four in writing.
What it investigates
Four areas. The boundary of each is drawn.
Shopify orders, products and your cost per item, reconstructed into one economic picture — then interrogated area by area.
Economics
Revenue to contribution
- Contribution on a tax-correct basis, traced line by line
- Refunds and returns — rate, concentration, and what they cost
- Discounting depth, and where it is silently funded
- Product mix — which lines actually carry the margin
Acquisition
Spend against contribution
- Advertising efficiency measured after cost of goods, not against revenue
- Attribution coverage published as a percentage, never as accuracy
- RoadmapChannel-level attribution — what marketing actually caused
Conversion
Where the funnel loses money
- Purchase completion against your own preceding period
- Checkout abandonment, priced in contribution rather than sessions
Operations
Cost structures outside Shopify
- Fulfilment and 3PL cost, as a separate investigation
- RoadmapRetention and repeat — cohort behaviour over time
The evidence model
Autopsify does not need to manufacture certainty.
Every figure in a Blueprint is labelled with how well it is known. That is the whole mechanism, and it is why the rest can be trusted.
Known
Measured directly from your data. The figure and its arithmetic are printed together.
Supported
An interpretation several signals agree on, with its confidence declared on the finding.
Unknown
The evidence does not establish it. The report says so, instead of estimating.
“Net profit — not calculable from the data Autopsify holds.”
“No material profit leaks were identified in this period.”
How the investigation works
Five stages, five working days. About twenty minutes of your time.
- 01
Connect
Read-only Shopify access, orders and products only
About five minutes. No write scopes are requested, and we never ask for customer names, addresses, phone numbers or email addresses.
- 02
Reconstruct
Your economics rebuilt on a tax-correct basis
Gross sales, tax, net sales, refunds, cost of goods, advertising. Cost per item covering about 70% of revenue is the one input only you can supply — roughly twenty minutes.
- 03
Test
Each area interrogated against your own prior period
Movements are graded, not just listed. Areas that are healthy are reported as cleared rather than quietly dropped.
- 04
Quantify
A defensible money range, or an explicit refusal
Every figure carries its formula and the assumption it rests on. Where the evidence will not support a number, the report says so.
- 05
Review
A 45-minute call with the person who read it
Analysed by Autopsify, reviewed by a person. You get the written diagnostic in PDF and web form, from the same underlying data.
We check that your data can support the analysis before you pay. If it cannot, we tell you and we do not charge you. An advertising connection is optional — without it we mark acquisition analysis unavailable rather than estimating it.
The method
The Growth Intelligence Loop.
Today it stops at Measure.
Nine stages turn fragmented commerce and advertising data into a prioritised decision and a reassessment. Seven of them run today. Stage 06 is yours — we do not implement anything. The last two are drawn dashed rather than pretended otherwise:
- 08LearnRoadmap
- 09RepeatRoadmap
Every cycle is designed to make the next one sharper. Designed to — not proven to. Repeated cycles are the foundation those last two stages would be built on, and no merchant has completed one yet. Nothing you buy today depends on them arriving.
What you receive
A forensic diagnostic and a human review. Not another dashboard.
A written document you keep, in PDF and web form, and a 45-minute call to walk it through.
- Findings
- Material findings, each with its evidence, a money range and a declared confidence. Monitoring items kept separate on purpose.
- Impact
- What the movement is worth, with the arithmetic printed beside the claim — or an explicit refusal where the data will not support one.
- Action
- A Fix First page: at most five actions, each with an owner, an effort level and the metric to watch afterwards.
- Limits
- Every area checked and cleared, and every limitation that affected the analysis, stated in the report.
- Eight sources, no agreement
- One economic picture, traced to source
- Every metric flagged as important
- At most five, ranked by what it is worth
- A number with no formula
- The arithmetic printed beside the claim
- A report nobody checks
- A reassessment against a frozen baseline
The cycle, and the price
Diagnose. Act. Measure.
A diagnosis is worth more when someone comes back to check it. This is one diagnostic cycle with two written outputs, both in the price — not a report you read once and file.
- 01
Baseline Diagnostic
Your economic baseline and what deserves attention, with the evidence.
- 02
Your action window
You implement what you choose to. We implement nothing. Length agreed with you, because a fortnight on a low-volume store measures noise.
- 03
Impact Review
Every original finding reassessed: what changed, what did not, and what is now top of the list.
The Impact Review is not designed to prove we were right. It can report that nothing improved, or that you did not act, without editorialising. Where something did improve after you acted, it says the change happened in the period following your change — a sequence, not a claim that we caused it.
Standard price
£497
one diagnostic cycle — all three steps above, Impact Review included. One payment: no contract, no subscription, no renewal.
Request your Blueprint — £497Requesting starts a conversation, not a charge. Readiness is checked before you pay.
The output
Don't take our word for it. Look at the report.
The Blueprint is the product, so here it is. Six of its sections, shown as the engine actually emits them.
Autopsify Blueprint
Northstar Outdoor
1 April – 30 June 2026 · GBP, excluding tax
Executive diagnosis
Sales moved +87.7%. Contribution margin moved −5.7 pts.
Net sales excluding tax were £1,176,057 against £626,724 in the comparison period, and contribution after product cost and advertising was £246,160 against £164,971. The pounds grew. The share of each pound did not — margin fell from 27.7% to 22.0%.
- Gross profit
- £364,469
- +62.2% vs prior
- Gross margin
- 32.6%
- −13.7% vs prior
- Contribution after advertising
- £246,160
- +49.2% vs prior
- Contribution margin
- 22.0%
- −20.6% vs prior
- 2
- material
- 1
- monitoring
- 5
- cleared
- 2
- Fix First
5 of 8 areas examined produced no material finding, and are listed with what was measured in each.
Read this Blueprint worked through in full →
Example report — fictional brand, synthetic data. Not a customer. Northstar Outdoor is a synthetic rehearsal merchant used to demonstrate the report; no figure shown here is a customer result.
That is the report. The question is what it would find in yours.
Founding Alpha: the first 3 qualifying brands receive it free, in exchange for structured feedback. Standard Blueprint: £497.
The investigations
Diagnose first. Go deeper only where the evidence points.
- 01 · DiagnoseAvailable
The Blueprint
The core diagnostic: your economic baseline, the material findings with their evidence, and what deserves attention first.
£497 · one diagnostic cycle
What it includes → - 02 · InvestigateAvailable
Specialist Investigations
Where the Blueprint identifies an area it cannot settle from Shopify alone, Autopsify can investigate it separately — on the evidence that area needs.
A separate engagement, never part of the Blueprint
The one available now → - 03 · MonitorIn development
Continuous Intelligence
Where Autopsify is being built toward: watching your economics continuously and flagging the changes that matter as they happen.
Not available today, and not part of any current offer
Specialist Investigation · Available now
Fulfilment & 3PL Cost Investigation
For Shopify brands using an external 3PL. The Blueprint says plainly what it cannot see, and fulfilment cost is one of those things — it sits in your 3PL’s invoices, not in Shopify. This investigation works from the invoices themselves and reports what the evidence shows, and what it cannot.
- One 3PL, up to two warehouses
- Your last three months of 3PL invoices
- A written report with a technical appendix
- A 45-minute review of the findings
- Delivered within 10 working days of receiving the evidence
Founding price
£599
For the first 5 investigations. A separate engagement — not included in the £497 Blueprint.
It starts with a free fit check. If your invoices cannot support the investigation, we say so before you pay.
More targeted investigations will be added as recurring operational patterns emerge. They appear here when they are available — not before.
Who it is for
For stores that have grown beyond the point where their numbers tell one simple story.
A good fit
- Shopify or Shopify Plus, with more than one product line
- Meaningful paid acquisition
- Costs that move — shipping, returns, discounts, subscriptions
- Commercial data living in more than one place
Probably not
- Pre-revenue stores, or very little order history
- Anyone wanting a guaranteed outcome
- Anyone needing accounting, tax or legal advice
- Anyone looking for a dashboard to check daily
Founding programme · 3 brands
The first 3 Alpha investigations are open.
The diagnostic is free. The feedback is the price.
You don’t need to know where growth is being lost. That is what the diagnostic is for.
We are early, and we are deliberately looking for operators who will argue with the output. If the findings are wrong, that is equally useful to us — and it is the reason the programme exists. We make no promise about what we will find.
What you receive
- A full Baseline Blueprint
- your baseline, the findings, the evidence
- A walkthrough, not a PDF
- we take you through it and you tell us what is wrong
- An Impact Review
- we come back and reassess every finding
- Direct influence
- what you push back on is what gets built next
What we ask
- Read-only data access
- Shopify orders and products, and cost per item — no customer names, addresses, phone numbers or emails
- Honest feedback
- including, especially, where the diagnosis is wrong
- About 45 minutes
- one validation conversation, after you have read the report
- A decision on publication
- whether we may use anything, anonymised or named — your call, per item, revocable
We do not promise an outcome.
Not recovered revenue, not a specific opportunity figure, and not that any finding will turn out to be right. Those are exactly the things the programme is designed to find out. After the three founding brands, the Blueprint is £497 for one diagnostic cycle.
Questions
Answers, before you ask.
What does Autopsify access, and is it read-only?
What do you need from me, and how long does it take?
Is this an automated AI audit?
What exactly do I receive?
What if some of our data is missing?
Do you guarantee it will improve our profit?
Who is the Founding Alpha for, and what happens after I apply?
Does this replace our analytics platform?
It is not
- A real-time dashboard
- An always-on monitoring system
- A live attribution platform
- A replacement for Shopify
- A replacement for your accountant
- A data warehouse
- A subscription
It is designed to be
- A diagnosis of a defined period
- Quantified where the evidence supports it
- Ranked by what deserves attention
- Explicit about what is healthy
- Explicit about what is unknown
- A document you keep
How is this different from the tools we already run?
| Job | Shopify | Profit analytics | Ecommerce analytics | Attribution | Autopsify |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Primary job | Run the store, report on it | Track net profit continuously | Unify data, report and activate | Measure what marketing caused | Diagnose what deserves attention |
| Operating model | Always on | Always on | Always on | Always on | A finite diagnostic cycle |
| Dashboard | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No — a written report |
| Continuous monitoring | Yes | Yes | Yes | Varies | No |
| Profit / margin | Gross margin, once cost per item is set | Core focus | Featured | Marketing profitability focus | Contribution, tax-correct, as the diagnostic base |
| Attribution | Limited | Included | Included | Core focus | Not the core job — coverage published |
| Ranks what matters most | Operator-dependent | Varies | Varies | Varies | Core job |
| Says what it cannot conclude | Not the core proposition | Varies | Varies | Varies | Core design principle |
| Finite deliverable you keep | No | No | No | No | Yes |
Categories are drawn from each vendor's own current public positioning, checked 1 September 2026. Where a capability varies between products in a category, the cell says so. Nothing here claims a product cannot do something.
What happens after the cycle ends?
Find out what your store’s numbers aren’t telling you.
A short conversation first — no data connection, no payment, no deck. If it is not right for you, we will say so.
Readiness is checked before you pay. If your data cannot support the analysis, we say so and do not charge you.