Chapter 30
Which product actually makes me money?
The item that sells the most is not always the item that earns the most, and this report is the only place in the shop where the two are told apart.
It compares what each product actually brought in against what it actually cost, over a period you choose, and ranks the result — so a slow-moving item with a wide margin can outrank a fast-mover that barely clears its own cost.
Two ways to be misled by this report, and how it avoids them
A product given away as part of a promotion shows as a loss on this report, and that is correct rather than a mistake — the goods genuinely cost money and the promotion genuinely brought in nothing for that line. Read a loss here as "this is what the offer cost", not as a product to drop.
A line whose cost could not be worked out for some reason is left out of the ranking and counted separately, rather than silently treated as free — a product would otherwise look far more profitable than it really is simply because a number was missing, which is the direction of error that costs a shop money without it ever noticing.