Track Your Shopify Profits & Expenses For Free!

Running a Shopify store means you need to know your numbers. Without a clear picture of your profits and expenses, you’re basically flying blind. This guide will show you how to get that clarity using a free app called Sellerboard.

Key Takeaways

• Sellerboard is a free app for Shopify that helps track profits, expenses, and customer lifetime value (LTV).
• The app syncs with your Shopify store to pull in sales data.
• You can customize the dashboard to view data by day, week, month, or custom ranges.
• It provides detailed profit and loss (P&L) statements, including product-specific data.
• Sellerboard allows you to track LTV, which is vital for understanding customer value and ad spend.
• You can input product costs, shipping costs (including free shipping scenarios), pick and pack fees, and payment processing fees.
• The app also lets you add indirect expenses like software subscriptions or office supplies.
• Integration with ad platforms like Facebook, Google, and TikTok is available to calculate Return on Ad Spend (ROAS).
• You can generate reports in Excel or CSV format for bookkeeping or sharing with accountants.

Getting Started With Sellerboard

To start using Sellerboard, you just need to add the app to your Shopify store. You can find it by searching in the Shopify App Store or by clicking the first link in the video description. Once added, you’ll need to confirm your email address. It might take a few minutes for all your store’s data to sync up.

Understanding The Dashboard

Once synced, you’ll land on the dashboard. This is where you get a quick overview of your store’s performance. You can see data for today, yesterday, this month, and even a forecast for the rest of the month. You can also look at last month’s performance or set custom date ranges. The dashboard can be viewed in different ways: as tiles, a chart, a P&L statement, or trends. Each view offers a unique perspective on your business.

Product Performance

Scrolling down the dashboard, you can see how your individual products are performing. It shows units sold, gross profit, net profit, and profit margin. If you connect your ad accounts, you’ll also see your Return on Ad Spend (ROAS). For example, if you spend $10 on ads and make $30 in sales with a $29 profit, the app will show your ROAS.

Detailed Financial Views

Sellerboard offers more detailed financial breakdowns. The P&L view, for instance, shows data for the last 12 months, broken down by month. It includes sales, units sold, returns, advertising costs, shipping costs, payment fees, cost of goods sold, taxes, and overall profit. You can adjust this view to look at data over three months, monthly, or a custom period. This saves you the hassle of manually tracking everything in spreadsheets.

The trends screen provides another way to analyze your data over different date ranges.

Customer Lifetime Value (LTV)

Understanding your Customer Lifetime Value (LTV) is super important. LTV tells you how much revenue you generate from a single customer over time. For example, if you spend $5 to get a customer who buys a $10 product, and then they come back a month later and buy another $10 product, their total LTV is $20. Sellerboard tracks this, showing you average revenue per customer, units bought per customer, orders per customer, and profit per customer over different timeframes (3, 6, 12, 24 months). Knowing your LTV helps you figure out how much you can afford to spend on acquiring new customers while staying profitable.

Managing Product Costs and Shipping

In the products tab, you can see information like tags and cost of goods sold (COGS). COGS is usually imported from Shopify if you’ve set it up there. If not, you can input it directly into Sellerboard.

Shipping costs are also factored in. By default, it might assume the shipping cost equals what the customer pays. However, if you offer free shipping, you’ll need to set up a custom shipping profile. You can name it ‘free ship’, select which products it applies to, and then specify how to calculate the shipping cost. For example, you could input package weight and the associated cost, ensuring your free shipping costs are accurately tracked against your profits.

Other Expenses to Track

Sellerboard also accounts for other business expenses:

• Pick and Pack Fees: If you have a warehouse and incur fees for picking and packing orders, you can input these costs here. This is important for accurate profit calculation.
• Payment Fees: Common payment gateways like Shopify Payments and PayPal are often pre-filled. You can adjust these percentages or fixed fees if needed, as they directly impact your profit margin.
• Indirect Expenses: This section is for costs not directly tied to sales, like monthly software subscriptions (e.g., QuickBooks for $50/month) or one-time purchases (e.g., $150 for office supplies). You can categorize these expenses and set them as recurring or one-off.

Accurately inputting these expenses ensures your overall business profitability is tracked correctly.

Reports and Integrations

Sellerboard allows you to generate reports in Excel or CSV format. You can create reports based on days, months, products, or sales per product per month, choosing any date range. These reports are great for bookkeeping or sharing financial information with your accountant.

For a complete financial picture, you can integrate Sellerboard with your ad platforms. It supports Facebook, Google, TikTok, Snapchat, and Pinterest. Connecting these accounts allows the app to accurately track your ad spend and calculate your ROAS.

Final Thoughts

Sellerboard is a powerful and free tool for any Shopify store owner looking to get a handle on their finances. It provides detailed insights into profits, expenses, and customer value, helping you make smarter business decisions. If you’re not already tracking these numbers, it’s definitely worth checking out.