What "fixed costs" actually means (and the four kinds owner-operators always miss).

A fixed cost is any cost that doesn't change with how much you sell. Rent, salaries, insurance, software subscriptions, the loan repayment. Whether you do €0 today or €4.000 today, these bills show up. The opposite — variable costs — change with sales (COGS is the main one). Most owners can list three of their fixed costs from memory. Most have at least seven. The gap is where break-even calculations go wrong.

TL;DR

The definition, with the edge cases

The textbook split is binary: fixed (constant) or variable (proportional to sales). In real life there are three:

• Fixed: doesn't change with sales volume in the short term. Rent, salaries of contracted staff, insurance, software subs, depreciation. These are slices in your daily P&L.
• Variable: directly proportional to sales. COGS (more sales = more milk consumed), card transaction fees (more card sales = more fees), commission to delivery platforms.
• Semi-variable / step: mostly fixed but jumps in steps. The extra weekend barista you only need above a certain volume; the second delivery vehicle once you hit a route threshold. Most owners simplify these to "fixed" and adjust quarterly when the steps move.

Don't agonise over the categorisation. The point of separating fixed from variable is to know what your floor is — the daily amount you owe before any sales happen. For that purpose, the step-costs go in "fixed" and you accept the model isn't perfect.

The usual suspects

These are the fixed costs every owner can name. They're also the ones already on the spreadsheet:

1. Rent / lease — the largest line for most shops. Sliced into daily share, this is usually €40-€200/day depending on city and footprint.
2. Salaries — anyone on a contract (not hourly-as-needed). Includes employer-side social security and pension contributions.
3. Utilities — electricity, gas, water. Strictly speaking these are semi-variable (a busy day uses more), but the baseline is largely fixed.
4. Insurance — business liability, content insurance, employer's insurance.
5. Internet / phone — small but constant.
6. POS subscription — Square, SumUp, Lightspeed, whatever.

Total these and most café owners land at €4.500-€8.500/month before they've sold a single coffee. A 30-day month means €150-€285/day in usual-suspect fixed costs. Then come the four kinds owners miss.

The four kinds owner-operators always miss

These are the categories I have to drag out of owners on every onboarding call. Every time they're there; every time they've been ignored.

1. Owner draw / your own salary

The single biggest miss. If you're working in the shop full-time, you have a salary — even if you're not formally paying yourself one. Pretending it's zero gives you an EBIT that flatters the business at your personal expense.

Rule of thumb: log the salary you'd need to pay someone to do your job if you were a passive owner. A full-time barista-manager in Berlin is €2.800-€3.400/month gross. Log that as a fixed cost even if you're currently taking less. The "true" business is the one that pays for itself and the labour you're putting in.

2. Depreciation on equipment

The oven. The espresso machine. The fridges. The shelving. You bought them, they're wearing out, you'll replace them. The cost is real — it just dripped daily rather than landing as one big invoice. Most owners ignore depreciation because they don't see a monthly bill for it. The result: their EBIT looks healthy until the day the oven dies and the replacement quote arrives.

Even a rough number is better than nothing. €2.500/year of total depreciation on a small café's kit (rough average) = €7/day. Small until you remember it stacks with everything else. The depreciation piece walks through the math.

3. Professional fees (accountant, lawyer, bookkeeper)

Owners log the once-a-year invoice from the accountant in the month it arrives, which makes that month look terrible. The truth: the accountant's €1.800/year fee is €150/month, every month. Same with the €300/year of lawyer-on-retainer, the €600/year of bookkeeping software, the €240/year of compliance subscriptions.

Total: €200-€400/month of professional fees that get treated as one-off shocks instead of the steady cost they are.

4. Personal use of business resources (the owner perks)

The coffee you drink. The bread you take home on closing nights. The shop wifi your kids use. The car you bought through the business that's 60% personal use. These aren't technically fixed costs, but they're fixed leakage — they happen every day regardless of sales, and they need to be acknowledged somewhere.

For tax purposes, your accountant will tell you how to handle them. For management accounting purposes, the cleanest move is to log a "owner consumption" line in fixed costs. €5/day of free coffee, €3/day of takeaway food = €240/month that's currently invisible.

Why this matters for break-even

Break-even is the revenue you need each day to cover all your fixed costs (after variable costs have been paid). Get the fixed-cost number wrong and your break-even target is wrong, which means every "good" day might still be losing money.

A worked example. A small café has the following:

The tracked break-even is €176/day. The real break-even is €294/day. A €260 day looks like a win on the spreadsheet and is actually a €34 loss. Across a month of "winning" mid-week days, the gap can be €1.000+ of phantom profit.

How to list yours, in 20 minutes

Open a blank sheet. Three columns: name, monthly amount, category (rent/staff/insurance/etc.). Then walk through:

1. 01
   Bank statements, last 3 months

   Look for recurring direct debits and standing orders. Each one is a fixed cost candidate. Names that recur monthly = on the list.

2. 02
   Annual invoices

   Anything billed yearly (insurance, accountant, lawyer, some subscriptions) — divide by 12 and add. Don't let the annual cadence hide it.

3. 03
   Your own labour

   What would you have to pay someone to replace you, full-time? Add that line even if you're currently not paying yourself.

4. 04
   Equipment depreciation

   For each major piece (oven, fridge, espresso machine, shelving): cost ÷ years of life ÷ 12 = monthly contribution. Sum them.

5. 05
   Owner consumption

   Estimate the daily value of what you take from the business (coffee, food, fuel, whatever). Multiply by 30. This is a fixed leakage line.

6. 06
   Sum and divide

   Total monthly ÷ 30 (or your actual trading days) = your real daily fixed-cost slice. That's the floor your daily revenue needs to clear before any profit shows up.

In nouz you enter each fixed cost once with a start date (and optionally end date). The system slices them into daily amounts automatically, and the daily P&L includes them in EBIT. If you change a cost (rent went up, new insurance policy), edit it — past data stays untouched, new days reflect the change. The setup walkthrough is in the help center.

For one shop owner's before-and-after on this exercise, see Petras Knitwear in Berlin — Petra discovered an extra €580/month of fixed costs in the first month on nouz, which moved her break-even by €19/day. Same shop, more honest number.

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