Busy month, thin bank balance
Last month was your best for orders. The marketplace dashboards looked great. Then the partner invoices and card charges came through, the ad spend was billed, a batch of reprints was charged, and the payout was smaller than you expected. You are not sure whether the busy month was profitable, or which part of it was not.
To find out, you would need to line up each order's sale price with its partner cost, shipping, listing fee, transaction fee, payment processing, currency conversion, any ad that led to it, and any refund or reprint that followed. That is a lot of spreadsheets for one question.
Every amount is in a different place
Print on demand has more moving costs per order than most small shops, and each one is recorded by a different party.
- Sale price and marketplace fees are in each channel's reports, in different formats.
- Production and shipping costs are in each print partner's billing, charged per order to your card or wallet.
- Ad costs are reported per campaign or listing, not per order.
- Refunds and reprints happen weeks later and are charged separately.
- Currency conversion happens at payout, not at sale.
Revenue is easy to see. Profit only exists once all of these are joined up, and nobody has joined them.
What not knowing costs
You can grow orders while shrinking profit and not notice until the accounts are done. Promotions and ads are judged by sales they drive, not what those sales earned. A channel that looks strong may be your least profitable once its fees are counted. Decisions about which products to push, which partner to use and whether a discount was worth it are made without the one number that matters.
It also makes planning hard. Without a reliable profit figure per order, you cannot say what you can afford to spend to win one.
The order ledger we build
- Orders are pulled from each channel with sale price, shipping charged, discounts and the fees that channel reports for them.
- Partner charges for each order are pulled from the partners' APIs or billing records and matched to the order, including split orders.
- Ad spend is attributed to orders where the ad platform links them, and otherwise spread by a rule you choose, clearly marked as allocated.
- Refunds, reprints and chargebacks are attached to the original order when they happen, updating its profit.
- Currency amounts are converted at the rate on the payout, so profit reflects what reached your bank.
- The ledger shows profit per order, and totals by day, channel, product, design and partner, with the working visible for each figure.
| Amount | Where it comes from | How it is attached |
|---|---|---|
| Sale and shipping charged | Channel order data | Directly to the order |
| Channel fees | Channel fee reports | Directly where itemised, else by rule |
| Production and shipping cost | Partner billing | Matched by partner order number |
| Advertising | Ad platform reports | Attributed or allocated, marked as such |
| Refunds and reprints | Channel and partner records | Back to the original order |
The ledger is a management view, not your accounts. Your bookkeeper can use it to check figures, but how things are treated in the books is for them to decide.
Knowing what each order earned
At the end of a busy week, you open the ledger and see profit by day and channel. The promotion that drove a spike on one marketplace earned less than a quiet day elsewhere, because of the discount and ad spend. Reprints from one partner are eating into an otherwise strong product. You can make decisions based on what you kept, not what you sold.
When the accounts are prepared, the numbers are already joined up, which makes your bookkeeper's job easier too.
Is this where your profit disappears?
- You know your revenue but not your profit per order.
- Partner costs and marketplace fees are checked separately.
- Ads are judged on sales, not on what those sales earned.
- Reprints and refunds are never linked to the original order.
- Busy months have ended with a disappointing payout.