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Nerve Centre KPIs · Audit Profile · Sentiment Settings Swell is an API-first headless commerce platform for mid-market DTC subscription brands and B2B sellers. This audit answers four questions the merchant can’t easily see on a headless stack: (1) is the recurring revenue engine healthy - MRR, churn, and silent billing failures; (2) are B2B accounts paying on time and not slipping; (3) is the catalogue + inventory clean enough to convert on a storefront where the API is the only source of truth; (4) where does Swell leak revenue when paired with marketplace, ads, email, or monitoring siblings. The subscription + billing areas are the distinctive value - most ecommerce audits stop at one-off order health.

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What this audit checks

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Authentication & access

  • Secret key authenticates over HTTP Basic (store_id as username, secret key as password)
  • Validate-endpoint GET /orders?limit=1 returns 200 with an orders payload
  • Key has read scope on orders, subscriptions, products, accounts, invoices, payments (any 403 = under-scoped key)
  • Store host .swell.store resolves and is not a stale / renamed store
  • Consecutive auth failures alarm - flips the connector to degraded after 3 (key rotated / revoked)

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Subscription economics & billing health

  • Subscription churn rate >8% monthly (unsustainable recurring economics)
  • Cancelled subscriptions outpacing new on a rolling 30D window (MRR shrinking)
  • MRR trend down >5% vsP (recurring revenue contraction)
  • Billing failure rate >5% of recurring charges (expired cards / gateway errors bleeding MRR pre-churn)
  • Past-due / unpaid subscriptions aged >7d with no dunning recovery
  • Recurring decline rate >2x 30D baseline in last 1h (gateway outage / card-network event)

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B2B account & invoicing health

  • Overdue B2B invoices - paid=false AND date_due < now (working-capital leak)
  • Account balance positive and aging >30d on business-type accounts
  • Top-account revenue concentration >50% from <5 accounts (dependency risk)
  • High-value accounts lapsing - no order in 2x median reorder cycle

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Order, refund & payment integrity

  • Refund rate >5% on 30D vsP (product-quality / expectation mismatch - predicts subscription churn)
  • Refund value >8% of revenue (margin destroyer)
  • Cancellation rate >3% (refund + rating impact)
  • Payment decline rate >8% at checkout (gateway config / fraud-filter over-tuning)
  • Unfulfilled paid orders >2x 30D avg (fulfilment backlog)

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Catalogue & inventory hygiene

  • Out-of-stock products with active demand (OOS but still advertised / linked)
  • Low-stock SKUs on top-50 velocity products (stockout imminent)
  • Bundle products sellable with an out-of-stock component (oversell risk - Swell bundle stock derives from components)
  • Active products missing image / description / SKU / price >20% of catalogue (headless conversion suppressor)
  • stock_tracking=false on physical products (inventory blind spot)

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Cross-channel: leak vs Marketplace / Ads / Email / Monitoring (the killer area)

  • Swell SKU OOS but active marketplace listing (Amazon / eBay / Walmart) - cancellation + dissatisfaction risk
  • Active ad spend (Google / Facebook / Amazon Ads) on out-of-stock Swell SKUs - pause immediately
  • Catalogue drift - same SKU, Swell vs marketplace price delta >20% or title/image mismatch
  • Email-attributed revenue share <15% despite active ESP (Klaviyo / Dotdigital) OR drop >20% vsP
  • High-MRR subscribers unengaged on email >90d (retention flow target before cancellation)
  • Revenue at risk per minute during a connected Datadog / New Relic incident (>$0 while incident open)

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Data sources

  • GET https://{store_id}.swell.store/orders - Auth probe + revenue / refund / fulfilment context (limit=1 = cheapest validate)
  • GET https://{store_id}.swell.store/subscriptions - Active subs, MRR, churn, new vs cancelled, past-due detection
  • GET https://{store_id}.swell.store/products - Catalogue completeness, OOS / low-stock, bundle component checks
  • GET https://{store_id}.swell.store/accounts - B2B account spend, lifetime value, balance, lapse detection
  • GET https://{store_id}.swell.store/invoices - Overdue B2B invoice detection (paid=false AND date_due < now)
  • GET https://{store_id}.swell.store/payments - Billing-failure rate, decline rate, recurring-charge spike detection