Profit Dashboard Walkthrough
Your profit dashboard helps you monitor both the daily fluctuations and long-term trends of your business by aggregating all of your P&L metrics into one screen. The dashboard is the first thing you see upon logging in and can always be accessed under the "Profit & Loss" drop-down menu in the top banner of your window.
This guide will explain how each of your metrics is defined and calculated and will teach you how to adjust your report settings to better assess short and long-term developments in your business.
P&L metrics definitions
Primary metrics
The top row of your profit dashboard (and the graph immediately below) displays four of your business’s primary metrics. By default, the report calculates these figures based on the last 30 days of sales data.
- Revenue - Your revenue is calculated as the total sum of your sales excluding discounts, refunds, and taxes, but including all shipping costs paid for by customers.
- Product costs - This is the total cost of all goods sold within the timeframe. These values map directly to the Spotify Cost and Lifetimely Product Cost columns in the Product Costs tab.
- Marketing costs - This figure sums your total ad spend across all marketing accounts that are integrated with Lifetimely.
- Net profit - Your net profit is your revenue minus all costs that you’ve entered or integrated into Lifetimely. This includes product costs, shipping costs, handling costs, transaction costs, custom costs, and marketing costs.
All metrics
You can find a composite of all your other P&L metrics further down in your dashboard (below the graph).
| Metric | Definition |
| Custom costs | Total custom costs (based on costs manually entered in the "Custom costs" tab in Lifetimely) |
| Discounts |
Total discounts applied to orders |
| Gross margin | Gross profit (see below) divided by revenue |
| Gross profit | Sales minus refunds, taxes, product costs, shipping costs, handling costs, and transaction costs. Marketing costs and custom costs are not deducted. |
| Handling costs | Total handling costs (calculated according to rates set in the "Handling costs" tab in Lifetimely) |
| Marketing costs | Total ad spend across all marketing accounts integrated with Lifetimely and/or manually entered as a marketing cost in the "Custom costs" tab |
| Marketing cost per order | Marketing costs (see above) divided by number of orders |
| Net margin | Net profit (see below) divided by revenue |
| Net profit | Sales minus all costs (refunds, taxes, product costs, shipping costs, handling costs, transaction costs, custom costs, and marketing costs) |
| Number of orders | Total number of orders processed |
| Product costs | Total cost of goods sold (based on Shopify's "cost per item" field and/or costs entered in the "Product costs" tab) |
| Profit per order | Net profit divided by number of orders |
| Refunds | Total value of refunds granted |
| Revenue | Sales after both refunds and taxes have been deducted (i.e. sales - refunds - taxes) |
| Sales | Total sales after refunds have been deducted (i.e. sales - refunds) |
| Shipping charged | Total shipping costs paid for by customers |
| Shipping costs | Total custom costs (calculated according to rates set in the "Shipping costs" tab in Lifetimely). Read more here. |
| Taxes | Total taxes assessed on orders |
| Total inventory value | Total value (based on product costs) of all items in your inventory |
| Transaction costs | Total transaction costs (calculated according to rates set in the "Transaction costs" tab in Lifetimely) |
How to adjust timeframes
By default, the metrics in your dashboard are calculated for the preceding month. This can be adjusted at any time by clicking on the "Time period" window in the top left corner of the report, where you can either select a preset timeframe or specify a custom range of dates.
Whenever you select a new timeframe, your dashboard will update in the following three ways:
1. All of your metrics will be recalculated based on the new timeframe.
2. The percentages underneath each metric will also update based on the new settings. These percentages calculate how your metrics compare to previous time periods.
- If this number was red with an arrow facing down, it would mean that revenue decreased 33.8% compared to the 30 days prior.
- If you changed your report settings to show the last 180 days of sales data, then the percentage would give you a comparison to the total revenue for the 180 days prior to that.
3. The x-axis of your graph will expand or contract to help you visualize how your four primary metrics are fluctuating within the selected date range.
How to export your data
To download your metrics to a CSV file, click on the "Export to CSV" button in the top right of your report.
When copied into a spreadsheet, your metrics will be arranged as below:
