product_sales not lining up with number of orders

We've created some custom reports via massactions, reports, and also a third party tool (ROCSVI). I've noticed that in the products table, the product_sales value for parent product and variants does not seem to match the actual number of orders placed for the products. Can you tell me what the product_sales value actually reflects and why this may generate a different total?

Thank you,
Dustin

Hi,

This number is incremented each time an order is created. And it is not updated when orders are cancelled / deleted. It is a column of data you can user to roughly sort the products based on the sales on the frontend, to be able to get a "best sellers" products listing. But you can't use it as an accurate source of reporting.
Mass actions and the reports in Orders>Reports on the other end base themselves on the actual orders, based on the statuses, etc so they provide accurate data.