Your Meesho ad spend is 18% higher than your dashboard shows
Meesho reports ad cost in two columns, before and after GST. Most tools read the wrong one, so every ROAS figure comes out flattering.
15 August 2026 · 3 min read
A seller checked their dashboard and saw ₹133.37 in ad spend for the month. Their bank saw ₹157.37.
Neither number is wrong. The dashboard is just reading the wrong column.
Two columns, one truth
The Ads Cost tab of the Meesho payout sheet has both:
| Column | Amount |
|---|---|
| Ad Cost | ₹133.37 |
| GST | ₹24.00 |
| Total Ads Cost | ₹157.37 |
Total Ads Cost is what Meesho deducted. The first column is the pre-tax figure, useful for your books, useless for knowing what you spent.
Why this matters more than it sounds
Ad spend is the denominator of ROAS. Understate it and every campaign looks better than it is.
Same orders, same revenue. One of these tells you to scale, the other tells you to be careful.
The second problem: the dates
The Ads Cost tab has two date columns and they are rarely the same.
Deduction Duration is the day the spend happened. Deduction Date is the day Meesho collected it, often weeks later, and usually all in one go.
One seller's sheet showed spend across 28, 29, 29 and 30 June, deducted on 27 July. Their dashboard grouped by deduction date, so the daily-spend chart showed a single bar and reported:
Total Days: 1 · Avg Daily: ₹133.37
Four days of spending, collapsed into one, with an average that equals the total. The chart is a line graph with a single point, so no line renders at all.
If your ad chart shows one bar and an average identical to your total, the tool is grouping by the wrong date column. Your real daily average was ₹39.34.
The third problem: ROAS across months
Because Meesho deducts in arrears, the ad spend in a July file is often for June activity. Meanwhile the orders those ads produced may sit in a July or August file.
Divide one by the other and the answer is meaningless.
One dashboard we tested divided June's spend by a single July order and printed ROAS 0.65x in red. One order. A seller acting on that would switch off a campaign based on a sample of one and a mismatched period.
Ek order dekh ke campaign band mat karo. Number tab tak matlab nahi rakhta jab tak dono cheezein ek hi mahine ki na hon.
The honest answer, when spend and orders come from different months, is to say so and wait for the next payout sheet.
The column everyone throws away
Campaign ID is right there in the same tab. One seller's two campaigns:
One campaign took 94% of the budget. Aggregate that into a single number, as every tool we tested does, and there is no way to know which campaign to cut.
What to check today
- Open the Ads Cost tab of your latest payout sheet
- Sum
Total Ads Cost, notAd Cost - Compare it to what your dashboard shows
- Then group by
Campaign IDand see where it actually went