Product contributionPer productLive
Which products make money,
and which only sell.
Contribution per product — revenue after discounts, VAT and the cost of the goods themselves. One margin across the whole shop ranks products by revenue and calls it profit; this uses the cost you entered for each variant, and says which rows it had one for.
Measured, not estimated EU-hosted Read-only by default
01 / The case for it
One cost percentage ranks your products by revenue.
Without it
Apply the same margin to everything and the list that falls out is a list of what sold most, wearing a profit label. A 70%-margin candle and a 12%-margin gadget come out identical, and the top of that list is where the stock money goes.
What Profflow does
The cost you entered, per variant, where you have one.
A real cost wins wherever it exists and the shop percentage covers the rest — and every row says which of the two it used, so you can see how much of the ranking is measured and how much is still an assumption.
02 / What it looks like
The list that decides what to reorder
ProductContributionWhat it means
Merino crew€1,640Third by revenue, first by what it keeps
Wool scarf€1,180Small orders, high margin, almost no returns
Rain shell€940Best seller — and a 14% return rate behind it
Cotton tee€410Discounted twice this month; the discount came out of here
Leather belt€238No cost of goods entered — shown, not assumed
68% of variants carry a measured cost. The rest are marked estimated and are not quietly averaged in.
Ranked by what each product leaves, not by what it takes. The order of this list and the order of a revenue list are rarely the same.
That is the pool every product is ranked inside. What is not in it: advertising, rent and payment fees — none of them a per-product fact, and splitting a monthly bill across line items by revenue produces a number that looks precise and answers nothing.
03 / Worth understanding
Why the best seller is rarely the best product
Revenue per product is a popularity contest
It tells you what people bought. It does not tell you what was left afterwards, and the two lists disagree often enough that reordering from the first one is how a business fills a warehouse with its thinnest margin.
Returns belong to the product that was returned
A 14% return rate does not spread evenly across a catalogue. Put back against the product that caused it, along with the fee that did not come back, it can turn the best seller into the fourth best product.
A discount comes out of contribution, not revenue
Twenty per cent off a price is not twenty per cent off a margin. The goods still cost what they cost, so on a 30% margin a fifth off the price takes roughly two thirds of what the sale would have left.
04 / What it is built from
Product contribution is assembled
from accounts you already run.
01Orders and line items02Discounts given03VAT by line04Cost per variant05Shop-wide cost fallback06Returns by product
Product contribution
Contribution per productReal cost where you have oneEach row says whichCoverage, stated05 / How it is worked out
From the account
to the figure on the screen.
- 01ReadsEvery line item, with what was discounted and what VAT it carried.
- 02CostsEach line against the cost entered for that variant, where one exists.
- 03MarksWhich rows used a real cost and which fell back to the percentage.
- 04RanksBy contribution, not by revenue wearing a profit label.
Asked of the figures
Is my best seller also my best product?
Not here. The top line by revenue carries a 21% contribution margin; the third carries 46% and produces more money on half the units. A single shop-wide cost percentage would have shown them as the same product.
How Profflow reasons06 / What it lets you do
What follows
from getting Product contribution right.
Contribution per product
Revenue after discounts, VAT and goods — the figure that actually differs between products.
Real cost where you have one
A per-variant cost wins wherever it has been entered; the shop percentage covers the rest.
Each row says which
Measured cost and estimate are labelled per line, never blended into one confident list.
Coverage, stated
The table says what share of its revenue is costed for real, so you know how much of the ranking to trust.
Return rate by product
A product that sells and comes back is not the product it looks like on the sales report.
No false precision
Ads, rent and payment fees are not split across line items. Allocating a monthly bill by revenue answers nothing.
07 / How the figure is kept honest
The same four rules,
on every screen.
Profflow observes the accounts it is connected to. It does not write an order, a price, a campaign or a payout back to any of them.
A charge read from an account is labelled measured. Anything modelled — a forecast, a projection, a filled gap — is labelled as such on the screen it appears on.
Follow any number to the dated rows underneath it. A figure nobody can check is a figure nobody acts on.
The product prepares a decision and shows the evidence. Nothing consequential happens until you say so.
Questions
About Product contribution.
- Why is advertising not in the product figure?
- Because it is not a per-product fact. Spreading a campaign across line items by revenue produces a number that looks precise and cannot be checked. Contribution is what genuinely differs between products, so contribution is what is shown.
- What if I have not entered costs?
- The shop-wide percentage is used and every row that used it says so. As you enter real costs the ranking sharpens, and the coverage figure tells you how far along you are.
- Is contribution the same as profit?
- No, and it is not presented as it. Contribution is what a product leaves after its own direct costs. Net profit is what the whole business leaves after everything, and it lives on the P&L.
- Does it handle variants?
- Costs are per variant, because that is the level at which they actually differ. A size that costs more to make is not the same product as one that does not.
One operating system
The rest of the picture,
one view away.
Each part is useful on its own. Profflow holds them in one model, so a figure here carries the context from everywhere else.
See the whole productSee Product contribution on your own figures.
Contribution per product — revenue after discounts, VAT and the cost of the goods themselves. One margin across the whole shop ranks products by revenue and calls it profit; this uses the cost you entered for each variant, and says which rows it had one for.