Ratios and unit economics · P&L lines 21, 23
Cost per order
What an order costs to serve, regardless of its size.
Where it lives in nouz
The P&L, line 21 and the fixed part of line 23.
Cost per order is what serving one order costs before the goods: picking, packing, packaging, carriage, the fixed leg of the payment fee and any return handling it eventually causes. Because it does not scale with basket size, it is the cost that decides whether small orders are worth having at all.
It is the reason a falling average order value damages a store whose product margins never moved. The same 6,40 euro parcel is 7,5% of an 85 euro basket and 32% of a 20 euro one, and no discount policy or supplier negotiation changes that arithmetic.
Split shipments are the quiet multiplier. An order that ships in two parcels pays twice for the label, the picking and the box, and any figure computed per order rather than per parcel hides it entirely.
It also sets the floor under promotional decisions. A discount that takes an order under the sum of its goods and its cost per order is selling below the line at which the sale makes the store poorer, however good the volume looks.