Anyone ranking products
SKU margin sheet
A SKU margin sheet prices one product per row from its shelf price down to what it contributes: VAT out, goods, parcel and payment fee off. Sorting the finished sheet by contribution rather than by revenue usually reorders the catalogue, sometimes dramatically.
The file
nouz-sku-margin-sheet.csv · 11 columns · one example row
The sheet exists because a revenue ranking and a profit ranking are different lists. Discounts, returns, weight and basket role all hit products unevenly, so the product carrying the month by revenue can be a middling earner, and a quiet full-price line can be paying the rent. Running the arithmetic per product is the only way to find out, and the walk is the same one the profit margin calculator does interactively.
Fill the top twenty by revenue first. They usually carry most of what the store sells, an afternoon covers them, and the reordering they produce is the finding. Two data habits keep it honest: use the price the product actually sells at rather than its list price, and treat an unknown cost as unknown rather than as zero, because a product with no cost recorded reports a perfect margin and floats to the top of the wrong list.
The last column, units in the last thirty days, is what converts a margin into money. A modest contribution on high volume out-earns a beautiful one on ten units, and the ad budget should follow total euros kept, which is exactly what which products actually make money walks through.
How to use it
- 01List your top twenty products by revenue; they carry most of the month.
- 02Strip VAT from the shelf price to get net_price, dividing rather than subtracting.
- 03Enter unit_cost landed, and the parcel and payment fee an order of this product really consumes.
- 04Compute contribution as net_price minus cost, fulfilment and fee, then sort by it.
- 05Multiply by units_30d and re-sort: total contribution is what the ad budget should follow.
What is inside
| Row | sku | product | sell_price_gross | vat_rate | net_price | unit_cost | fulfilment | payment_fee | contribution | contribution_pct | units_30d |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | AW-TEE-BLK-M | Essential tee, black, M | 49.00 | 0.19 | 41.18 | 18.50 | 6.40 | 0.93 | 15.35 | 0.373 | 312 |
| 2 | |||||||||||
| 3 |
Every column, explained
| sku | The variant code, since margins differ by variant. |
|---|---|
| product | A readable name for the row. |
| sell_price_gross | What it actually sells at, VAT included. |
| vat_rate | As a decimal: 0.19 for 19%. |
| net_price | sell_price_gross divided by (1 + vat_rate). Line 16 of the statement. |
| unit_cost | Landed cost of one unit. Line 17. |
| fulfilment | Pick, pack, packaging and carriage. Line 21. |
| payment_fee | The gateway's cut, charged on the gross price. Line 23. |
| contribution | net_price minus cost, fulfilment and fee. The per-unit equivalent of line 25. |
| contribution_pct | contribution divided by net_price. |
| units_30d | Units sold in the last thirty days. |