Inspire

1. What did I sell?

Gross sales before anything was deducted. Not the bank deposit, not the marketplace payout, not net revenue after fees. This is the single most common defect in seller books. A $48,000 sales month that arrives as $31,000 in deposits gets recorded as $31,000 of revenue, and the $17,000 of fees vanishes into a number nobody looks at. Gross sales belongs on its own line, with every deduction visible underneath it.

2. What did the marketplace keep, broken out by type?

Referral fees, fulfillment fees, storage, and advertising should be four separate lines, not one “Amazon fees” bucket. They behave differently and they are controlled differently. A referral fee is a fixed percentage you cannot change. A fulfillment fee responds to packaging and dimensional weight. Storage responds to how long stock sits. Advertising is discretionary.

3. What did the goods cost?

Cost of goods sold, computed from real unit costs including freight and duty, matched to the units that shipped in the period. The test is whether the number moves when your landed cost moves.

4. What is my gross margin by channel?

Amazon, Shopify, Walmart, TikTok Shop and eBay have different fee structures, different fulfillment economics and different return rates. A blended gross margin hides which of them is subsidizing the others. This is usually the most actionable line on the whole statement, and it requires only that revenue and COGS carry a channel dimension.

5. Which SKUs lost money?

Not which sold least. Which sold at a negative contribution after fees, ads and returns. Every catalog has some. The heavy, cheap, frequently returned item that looks fine on a revenue report is usually the culprit, because fulfillment and return costs scale with weight and unit count rather than with price.