Free calculator

Ecommerce break-even calculator

How many orders this month has to bring in before it covers what it costs to run. Computed the way a P&L does it, after goods, shipping, payment fees and advertising, not on gross margin alone.

Free, nothing to sign up forLines 14 to 33 of a nouz P&L

Orders before the month pays for itself

493orders

14Revenue needed

€41.905,00

25Each order adds

€44,68

Safety margin

30,2%

orders you could lose

Your month

What you sell

What each order costs you

What the month costs you

Treat ad spend as

A committed number for the month. It joins your fixed costs in the block that has to be covered, and every order contributes its CM2.

↑ ↓ to nudge, Shift for ten. Commas or dots both work.

One order, and the month

16Average order, net of VAT€85,00
17Cost of goods−€32,30
21Shipping and packing−€6,40
23Payment fees−€1,62
25CM2 per order€44,68
31The month to cover: fixed costs and ads€22.000,00

The month, day by day

Day 1Break-even on day 22Day 31

Hatched is paying for the month. Solid is profit.

Break-even here is the day cumulative CM3 covers the month’s fixed costs, not the day revenue equals costs. Those are different days and only the first one means anything.

You are doing 706 orders, which is 213 above the line, and finishing the month €9.541,60 up.

Run this on my real orders

An estimate from flat rates. In nouz every order is priced from the costs of its own day.

What this calculator does

What it does

An ecommerce break-even calculator works out how many orders a month needs before contribution covers fixed costs. It divides what the month costs to run by what one order leaves after goods, shipping, payment fees and advertising, and turns that into an order count, a revenue figure and a day of the month.

The formula

Break-even is a day, not a revenue figure.

A store breaks even on the day the contribution its orders have made so far covers what the month costs to run. That is a different day from the one where revenue equals costs, and only the first one means anything, because a large part of revenue was never yours to keep.

Work down from the top of an order. The customer pays; VAT comes out, because it belongs to the tax authority. What is left is net revenue. The goods come out of that and you have CM1. The parcel and the payment fee come out and you have CM2, which is what the order genuinely contributed. Advertising comes out and you have CM3, which is what the customer contributed. Only then is there anything to put against the rent.

So the break-even question is: how many CM3s does it take to pay for a month. Everything else in the calculation is detail about how big one CM3 is.

Where it goes wrong

Four inputs that quietly move the answer by weeks.

Break-even is arithmetic, so a wrong answer is always a wrong input. These are the four that do the most damage, in the order we see them.

VAT left inside the revenue figure

The commonest European error by a distance. A merchant takes the number Shopify shows and puts it in as revenue, but that figure includes 19% or 20% of money that belongs to the tax authority. At German rates, gross revenue overstates contribution by roughly a sixth, which pulls break-even several days earlier than it really is and makes a losing month look like a thin one.

Use net revenue: what is left after returns and after tax. It is the denominator of every percentage on a real P&L for exactly this reason.

Fixed costs that are not fixed

A cost is fixed if it does not move when you ship one more parcel. Rent, salaries and software subscriptions are fixed. Pick and pack, packaging, the shipping label and the payment fee are not, however regular they look on a bank statement, and putting them in the fixed block counts them twice: once in the block, and once inside the margin you are dividing by.

The test is not how predictable the cost is. It is whether the next order changes it.

Ad spend treated as a law of nature

A monthly ad budget behaves like a fixed cost right up until the moment you want to grow, at which point it is the most variable cost you have. Both treatments are honest and they give different answers, which is why the calculator asks rather than assuming.

Treat it as a budget when the number is committed and you are asking whether this month works. Treat it as a ratio when you are asking what happens if you scale.

Cost of goods taken from today's price list

Most tools, including Shopify’s own cost field, hold one unit cost per variant. Change it and every past order is silently re-priced at the new number, so last month’s break-even moves every time a supplier raises a price.

An order should be costed at the price that was in force on the day it was placed. That is what effective dating is, and it is the difference between a closed month staying closed and a figure that drifts every quarter.

Break-even point, definedFixed costsEffective dating

Worked example

A store doing €60.000 a month

The calculator’s own defaults, not a customer’s books: a DACH apparel shop turning over €60.000 of net revenue a month on an €85 basket, so about 706 orders. Goods take 38%. A parcel costs €6,40 to pick, pack and ship. The gateways take 1,9%. The ad budget is €15.000 and the fixed costs are €7.000.

One order is worth €85. The goods take €32,30, leaving CM1 of €52,70. The parcel takes €6,40 and the gateway takes €1,62, leaving CM2 of €44,68. That is what one order actually contributes, and it is 15% less than the gross margin suggested.

€22.000 of fixed costs and ad budget, divided by €44,68 an order, is 493 orders. At 706 orders a month the store passes that on day 22 of a 31-day month and finishes about €9.500 up.

The safety margin is 30%: nearly a third of the month could disappear before the store stops paying for itself. That is a far more useful sentence than “we did €60.000”, and it is the one a merchant can actually act on when a supplier raises a price or a channel stops working.

In the app

nouz works this out from every order, every day.

A calculator works from flat rates you type once. nouz prices every single order from the cost rules that were in force on that order's own date, and rebuilds the same statement every night from your own orders and your own ad spend.

  • Every cost at the rate of its own day. Product costs, parcels and payment fees per order, so a price change never rewrites last month.
  • Ad spend comes in by itself. Meta, Google and TikTok through their official APIs, plus anything you add by hand or by CSV.
  • The same lines, per product. What is left after product costs, after shipping and payment fees, and after ads, for every product you sell.
See all 34 lines
app.nouz.co/pnl
Lines 19 to 34 of the profit and loss statement in the nouz app, this period against the one before.
Lines 19 to 34 of the P&L in the app: this period against the one before, each margin marked against its target.

Questions

Break-even, answered.

Still unsure? Write to support@nouz.co.

What is the break-even point for an online store?
The point at which the contribution your orders make covers what the month costs to run. For a store that means CM3, the margin left after goods, shipping, payment fees and advertising, covering your fixed costs. It is not the point where revenue equals costs, because revenue includes money that was never yours: VAT, and the cost of the goods you shipped.
How many orders do I need to break even?
Divide what the month costs by what one order contributes after every variable cost. If your fixed costs are €7.000, your ad budget is €15.000 and an order contributes €44,68 after goods, shipping and payment fees, you need 493 orders. The calculator above does this and also tells you which day of the month you reach it at your current pace.
Should ad spend count as a fixed cost or a variable one?
Both answers are defensible and they give different break-even points, which is why the calculator asks. If your budget is set for the month and will not move, it behaves like a fixed cost and joins the block to be covered. If you scale spend with orders, it is variable and comes out of every order before it contributes anything. Most stores are somewhere in between and closer to the budget answer than they think.
Why is my break-even higher than my accountant's?
Usually because the textbook version stops at gross margin. It takes price minus unit cost and divides fixed costs by that, which ignores shipping, picking, packing, payment fees and every euro of advertising. Those are real per-order costs and they can be a quarter of the contribution you thought you had.
Does VAT belong in the revenue figure?
No, and this is the most common European mistake in a break-even calculation. VAT is collected on behalf of the tax authority and passed on, so it was never margin. Put net revenue in, not the gross amount the customer paid. At 19% German VAT, using gross revenue overstates your contribution by about 16% and moves break-even several days earlier than it really is.
What is a safety margin?
The share of your current orders you could lose before the month stops paying for itself. At 706 orders against a break-even of 493, the safety margin is about 30%: a third of the month could disappear before you are into a loss. It is the most useful single number for deciding how much risk a new ad budget or a price change actually carries.

More calculators

Four that go with this one.

Each one is a different question about the same statement. All 32 are free, and none of them asks you to sign up.

All calculators

See the real day, from your own orders.

nouz recomputes this every night from what your store actually sold and what you actually spent, so the break-even day is a fact rather than an estimate.

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