"Is the shop making money?" sounds like a question with an obvious answer. Customers are coming, goods are leaving, there's cash at the end of the day. But plenty of shop owners in that position are slowly getting poorer, and they only find out when they can't afford to restock.

The reason is that sales aren't profit, and neither is cash. To know your profit you need three numbers and about an hour at the end of each month.

The three numbers

Sales. Everything you sold in the month, at selling price, whether paid by cash, transfer, POS or on credit.

Cost of goods sold. What those goods cost you to buy. Not what you bought this month. What you sold this month.

Expenses. What it cost to keep the shop open: rent, salaries, power, transport and the rest.

Then:

  • Sales minus cost of goods sold is your gross profit.
  • Gross profit minus expenses is your net profit. This is what the shop really earned.

Cost of goods sold is the tricky one

Most people get this wrong by using the month's purchases. If you bought ₦1.5 million of goods in October, that isn't the cost of what you sold in October. Some of it is still on the shelf, and some of what you sold was bought in September.

The fix is a stock count at the end of each month, valued at cost.

Cost of goods sold = opening stock + purchases − closing stock

Opening stock is what you had at the start of the month. Closing stock is what you counted at the end. Both are valued at what the goods cost you, not what you sell them for. More on these two in opening stock and closing stock.

A worked example

Here is one month for an imaginary provision store. Every figure is made up.

Amount
Sales for the month₦1,800,000
Opening stock, at cost₦2,400,000
Purchases in the month₦1,500,000
Closing stock, at cost₦2,450,000

Cost of goods sold = 2,400,000 + 1,500,000 − 2,450,000 = ₦1,450,000

Gross profit = 1,800,000 − 1,450,000 = ₦350,000

That's 19.4% of sales. For every ₦100 a customer hands over, about ₦19 is left after paying for the goods.

Now the expenses.

ExpenseAmount
Rent (yearly rent divided by 12)₦50,000
Salaries₦90,000
Fuel and electricity₦35,000
Transport and loading₦25,000
Data and airtime₦8,000
Levies and permits₦7,000
Damaged and expired goods₦15,000
Total₦230,000

Net profit = 350,000 − 230,000 = ₦120,000

So a shop that took ₦1.8 million in the month earned ₦120,000. If the owner had judged by the drawer, they'd have guessed far higher.

Things people leave out

Rent. It's paid once a year, so it's easy to forget in the other eleven months. Divide by 12 and include it every month.

Your own pay. If you work in the shop, decide what a manager would cost and count it as an expense. Otherwise the shop looks profitable only because you're working for free.

Goods taken for the house. The tin of milk and bag of rice that went home are sales the shop never got paid for. Record them at cost. Either count them as your drawings or pay for them.

Losses. Breakage, expiry and shortage are real costs. If you don't list them, they hide inside a lower gross profit and you never see their size.

Credit not yet paid. A credit sale counts as a sale, but the money isn't yours until it arrives. Keep a debtors book and watch the total.

Why the cash doesn't match the profit

At the end of that month, the owner might have much more than ₦120,000 in hand, or much less. Both are normal.

Cash can be higher than profit because you sold down your stock without replacing it, or because a supplier gave you goods on credit.

Cash can be lower than profit because you bought extra stock, because customers owe you, or because you took money out for school fees.

That's why "there's money in the account" tells you so little. A shop can be profitable and short of cash, or losing money with a full drawer for a while. Only the calculation tells you which.

What to do with the answer

Compare month to month. One month means little. Three in a row show a direction.

Watch the gross profit percentage. If it drops from 19% to 15% while sales stay level, either your costs went up and your prices didn't, or goods are leaving without being paid for. Check your pricing with markup vs margin, then your stock counts.

Look at expenses as a share of sales. In the example they are about 13%. That means any product sold at less than a 13% margin makes this shop nothing.

Decide what you can take out. Your drawings should come from net profit. Take more than that for long and you are eating the stock.

What you need to do it

Four records, kept through the month:

  1. A daily sales record book, for the sales figure.
  2. Your supplier invoices, for purchases.
  3. A list of expenses paid.
  4. A stock count at month end, valued at cost. The method is in how to take stock in a shop without closing for the day.

The count is the part people skip, and without it the profit figure is a guess. If a full count each month is too much, count and value your top 50 items exactly and estimate the rest, then do a complete count each quarter.