What did your shop earn this month? Not what is in the drawer.
Most shop owners know what they sold and not what they earned, because profit is not visible in the drawer: the cash bought stock that sits on the shelves, part of the sales is still owed by customers, and what went home left before the count. This calculator takes the month's sales and the cost of the goods that were sold, from a count at the start and end of the month or from your margin if you know it, then the fixed expenses, and gives gross and net profit, per month and per day, with the sales you must see on the till every day just to cover the expenses.
This month
Fixed expenses per month
Kept in your browser so you need not retype them every month.
Total: 1,710,000
The profit
- Net profit this month
- 1,790,000
- 14.9% of sales
- Per day
- 68,846
- 26 working days
- Gross profit
- 3,500,000
- margin 29.2%
- Left in the shop
- 790,000
- after what you took home
| Sales | 12,000,000 |
|---|---|
| − cost of goods sold | 8,500,000 |
| = gross profit | 3,500,000 |
| − fixed expenses | 1,710,000 |
| = net profit | 1,790,000 |
| − what you took home | 1,000,000 |
| = left in the shop | 790,000 |
Break-even
- Sales that cover expenses — per month
- 5,862,857
- Per day
- 225,495
At a 29% margin the shop needs 225,495 dinars of sales a day before it earns anything. This month you sold 461,538 a day.
The cost of goods sold, from a count
You do not need the cost of every item. Stock at the start of the month at buying price, plus what you bought during the month, minus stock at the end at buying price, equals the cost of what left the shelves. One count at the end of each month becomes the opening count of the next, so one count a month is enough. Sales minus this cost is the gross profit.
Or from your margin
If you know your average gross margin, type it instead of counting and the calculator derives the cost from it. The margin is (selling price − buying price) ÷ selling price. A grocery is usually between 15 and 25%, clothing between 40 and 50%, a pharmacy between 20 and 30%, phones between 10 and 20%. The count is more accurate because it sees damage and loss; the margin is faster.
What counts as a fixed expense
What you pay whether you sell or not: rent, salaries, electricity and the generator, internet, subscriptions, the loan instalment. Yearly costs such as the trade licence and tax are divided by 12 and added as a line. What you take home is not an expense but your share of the profit, which is why it appears after net profit, not before.
Why the profit does not match the drawer
Profit counts what was sold and what it cost; the drawer counts what came in and what went out. Goods you bought and have not sold yet left the drawer but not the profit; a customer who bought on credit entered the profit but not the drawer; a generator bill paid three months ahead left once. So a month can be profitable with an empty drawer, or the reverse. Both numbers are right and answer two different questions.
Break-even: the number to watch every day
The fixed expenses divided by the margin give the sales that cover the expenses and nothing more, and dividing that by the working days gives one number: what the shop must sell in a day before it earns a dinar. Type the profit you want per month and you see the daily sales that reach it. The calculator uses the month's own margin, so the number belongs to your shop, not to a market average.
When you want the number every morning
This calculator needs a count and an expense book every month. In Dashing every sale is booked with its cost at the moment of sale and every expense from the expenses screen, so the owner reads the month's profit, and each branch's, from the books at any time, and gets yesterday's summary every morning: sales, profit and cash. The same arithmetic, without the counting.
Common questions
What is the difference between gross and net profit?
Gross profit is sales minus the cost of the goods sold. Net profit is gross profit minus the running expenses: rent, wages, electricity and the rest. A shop that sells 80,000 a month at a 25% margin makes 20,000 gross; with 14,500 of expenses it keeps 5,500 net.
Do credit sales count as sales?
Yes. A sale is a sale the day the item leaves, whether it was paid or is still owed. The debt belongs to the drawer and to collection, not to profit. If you want a cash-only figure, subtract the new debts from the sales, but that is a different number.
At what price do I value the stock in the count?
At buying price, not selling price. Valuing it at selling price hides the profit inside the stock and makes the month look like a loss. If the buying price changed during the month, use the last price you bought at.
Where did the break-even calculator go?
In the last section of this tool. Instead of asking you to estimate the margin and expenses, it takes both from the month's own figures, so the break-even comes from your data. The old link leads to this page.