Unique Orders and Customers Per Month
EasyUpdated: Aug 2, 2025
Practice on:
Problem
Table: Orders
+---------------+---------+
| Column Name | Type |
+---------------+---------+
| order_id | int |
| order_date | date |
| customer_id | int |
| invoice | int |
+---------------+---------+
order_id is the column with unique values for this table.
This table contains information about the orders made by customer_id.
Write a solution to find the number of unique orders and the number of unique customers with invoices > $20 for each different month.
Return the result table sorted in any order.
The result format is in the following example.
Examples
Example 1:
Input:
Orders table:
+----------+------------+-------------+------------+
| order_id | order_date | customer_id | invoice |
+----------+------------+-------------+------------+
| 1 | 2020-09-15 | 1 | 30 |
| 2 | 2020-09-17 | 2 | 90 |
| 3 | 2020-10-06 | 3 | 20 |
| 4 | 2020-10-20 | 3 | 21 |
| 5 | 2020-11-10 | 1 | 10 |
| 6 | 2020-11-21 | 2 | 15 |
| 7 | 2020-12-01 | 4 | 55 |
| 8 | 2020-12-03 | 4 | 77 |
| 9 | 2021-01-07 | 3 | 31 |
| 10 | 2021-01-15 | 2 | 20 |
+----------+------------+-------------+------------+
Output:
+---------+-------------+----------------+
| month | order_count | customer_count |
+---------+-------------+----------------+
| 2020-09 | 2 | 2 |
| 2020-10 | 1 | 1 |
| 2020-12 | 2 | 1 |
| 2021-01 | 1 | 1 |
+---------+-------------+----------------+
Explanation:
In September 2020 we have two orders from 2 different customers with invoices > $20.
In October 2020 we have two orders from 1 customer, and only one of the two orders has invoice > $20.
In November 2020 we have two orders from 2 different customers but invoices < $20, so we don't include that month.
In December 2020 we have two orders from 1 customer both with invoices > $20.
In January 2021 we have two orders from 2 different customers, but only one of them with invoice > $20.
Solution
Method 1 – Group By and Filtering
Intuition
We need to count unique orders and unique customers with invoice > $20 for each month. We can filter, extract the month, and group by month.
Approach
- Filter orders with invoice > 20.
- Extract the month from order_date (e.g., 'YYYY-MM').
- Group by month, count distinct order_id and customer_id.
Code
MySQL
SELECT DATE_FORMAT(order_date, '%Y-%m') AS month,
COUNT(DISTINCT order_id) AS order_count,
COUNT(DISTINCT customer_id) AS customer_count
FROM Orders
WHERE invoice > 20
GROUP BY month;
PostgreSQL
SELECT TO_CHAR(order_date, 'YYYY-MM') AS month,
COUNT(DISTINCT order_id) AS order_count,
COUNT(DISTINCT customer_id) AS customer_count
FROM Orders
WHERE invoice > 20
GROUP BY month;
Complexity
- ⏰ Time complexity:
O(n)— Each row is processed once. - 🧺 Space complexity:
O(1)— Only a few variables for aggregation.