How we work out real profit.
Six costs stand between revenue and what reaches you. One of them, in Europe, is inside the price rather than on top of it. The arithmetic behind every figure Profflow shows, one line at a time.
Shopify reports what came in. Profflow reports what stayed. The difference is six costs, and the order in which they are taken out matters, because one of them is not a cost at all — it is money that was never yours.
The six
- VAT. In Europe it sits inside the price. A €119 order in Germany is €100 of sale and €19 owed to the tax office. It comes out first, before anything is called revenue.
- Refunds and returns. The order that came back. Revenue counted it; the bank did not.
- Cost of goods. What the item cost, plus what it cost to reach the customer — shipping, packaging and, now, duty on imports.
- Payment and platform fees. Stripe, PayPal, Klarna, Shopify: small percentages on every order, invisible until they are added up.
- Advertising. Meta, Google, TikTok — usually judged against revenue, and properly judged against what the orders it bought actually left.
- Fixed costs. Rent, software, the salary you pay yourself. They do not move with sales, which is why a quiet month is the one that hurts.
One month, worked through
The month every panel on this site uses: €7,940 of sales. Take out €167 of refunds, €1,429 of VAT, €2,103 of goods, €135 of payment fees, €1,180 of advertising and €405 of fixed costs. €2,521 is what stayed — a 31.8% margin. Every line is on the dashboard, and the last line is the first one minus all the rest; nothing is rounded away to make it tidy.
7,940 − 167 − 1,429 − 2,103 − 135 − 1,180 − 405 = 2,521.
Measured, and estimated
Each line says where it came from. Refunds and VAT are read from the orders. Payment fees are measured when the processor is connected and estimated from your rate when it is not. Cost of goods is measured for every product with a cost entered and estimated from your percentage for the rest. The dashboard prints which is which beside every figure, because an estimate that looks like a measurement is how a store owner is told a number they cannot trust.
What it is not
It is not accounting software and it does not file your return. It is the operating view: what the business kept this week, why it moved, and what to do about it — with the working shown, so the answer can be checked against the bank.
