The profit calculator and every setting

You look up a kitchen blender, ASIN B0EXAMPLE1. Amazon’s Buy Box is $30.00, an FBA seller holds it, and you can buy it for $12.00. The profit calculator says the profit is “$3.36” and the ROI is “28.0%”. ROI is the profit compared with what you paid, as a percent. This page goes through each card on Account > Features, then every fee in that $3.36. The bar, Desk, restock, Purchases, and Vault cards don’t move the profit. Most Profit calculator settings do. Only the account owner sees Features. A team member working in your account does not. On a wide screen, ON THIS PAGE sits on the right. It lists ALERTS, AUTOMATION, and SETTINGS, and each card says ON or OFF. Profit calculator is in the list and has no on or off.

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The bar

Say you never open Scout. Hover the lit Scout tile, and it says Move to profile menu. Click it. The tile goes dark, and Scout moves to the menu behind your picture. Hover a dark tile, and it says Add to the bar. Navigation bar is the card. Its line says these are the pages that ride the floating bar, and a page you turn off moves to your Profile menu. The Desk tile stays lit. Its hover says Desk always stays. These tiles start on the bar: Alerts, Vault, Scanner, Scout, Purchases, Recovery, and Sales. Scanner is Gate Scanner. Health and Expenses start in the menu. Sales stays in the menu when your plan does not include it. On Premier after the trial, its hover says Sales is included on Pro. Expenses shows when your plan includes Sales or Capital Recovery. Press E on any page to open it. On the phone app, two more tiles always stay on the bar: Calculator and Box photos. A computer does not show them. The card’s count reads like “8 OF 10 ON”. It counts lit tiles over all tiles, and the Desk tile counts as on. Your picks are saved for your login, so they follow you to each computer.

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The Desk

Health starts off the bar, and Health strip on desk starts off too. The card’s line says these are widgets on your Command desk. Health brings its strip and its alerts. Turn that tile on, and Account Health takes the place of the Needs you card on the Desk. The hover says so. Turn it off, and Needs you comes back. Health needs Pro, Flagship, or a Premier trial. On other plans the tile turns on, but the Desk stays the same.

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Restock reminders

You bought 40 blenders. 12 sold in the last 30 days, and 8 are left. Restock reminders are on, which is how they start. The card title is Restock reminders. Under it, the status reads “At 10% left · Profitable only · Alerts page, Phone”. Open the card, and its parts are PRODUCTS, WHEN, and SEND TO. Profitable products only starts checked. Under it, ROI at least has a box that starts at “5”. ROI here is the ROI so far in Capital Recovery. A product at exactly 5% still gets a reminder, and one under 5% does not. With the box checked, a product with no ROI yet gets no reminder. That happens when some of its units sold with no cost. Uncheck the box, and every product can get one. A product that sold fewer than 3 in 30 days never gets a reminder. Neither does a batch that started fewer than 7 days ago. The ? next to the checkbox names the first rule. WHEN starts on the percent choice. The line is When “10” % of the units I bought are left. The card prints its own example: you bought 200 and 20 are left, so you get a reminder now. Your blender uses the same rule. 10% of 40 is 4, so you get a reminder when 4 or fewer are left. 8 left is 20%, so no reminder yet. Switch to the days choice. The line is When stock left lasts fewer days than lead time + “7” days. My usual lead time starts at “21” days. Lead time is how long a new order takes to go on sale at Amazon. The 12 sales are over 30 days, so the pace is 0.4 a day. 8 left last 20 days, and 21 plus 7 is 28. 20 is under 28, so you get a reminder now. The badge says Reorder. The window’s title says “Reorder”, the product’s name, and “today”. Suggested order is “15”. That is about 30 days of sales after the box arrives, less what will still be left when it arrives. It is rounded up to the next 5, and never under 5. Your 8 sell out in 20 days, before the 21 days of lead time end, so none are left. 30 days of sales is 12, and 12 rounds up to 15. The note says it is enough for about 30 days of sales after it arrives. You can set the percent from 1 to 99. Lead time runs from 1 to 180 days. The extra days run from 0 to 60, and the ROI box runs from 0 to 1000. SEND TO always includes Alerts page, which is locked. Email starts off. Phone notification starts on. If Email is on but your optional emails are off, the card says no reminder emails go out. If Phone notification is on but phone alerts are off, it says to turn on phone alerts on the Alerts page first. On a product’s Reorder window, you can press Don’t remind me. The product then sits under Products you turned off. Remind me again puts it back. Turn the card off, and the choices stay saved. Nothing is sent, and the status says Off. Restock reminders need Capital Recovery. Without it, the card says they come with Capital Recovery, included on Pro. The same list is the Reorder soon filter in Capital Recovery. In percent mode, it shows products down to that percent of what you bought.

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Purchases that never arrive

You ordered 10 blenders 30 days ago. You never marked any received or sent, and Amazon does not have those 10 either. With the switch on, SourceDock cancels that order and tells you. The card title is Purchases. The switch is Auto-cancel purchases that never arrive. It starts off, and the status says Off. Turn it on, and the line Cancel after “30” days opens under it. 30 is the start, and you can type 14 through 365. 14 is the day an order can first read Never arrived. The ? uses your day count in its example. SourceDock checks two things. Nothing on the order is marked received or sent, and Amazon does not already have those units. So an order that came but was never marked received can still be cancelled. You can Uncancel it. That puts the order back, and its units count in Capital Recovery again. When you turn it on, a box opens. The title is Turn on auto-cancel? With no old orders, it says “No orders are past 30 days now.” Press Turn on or Go back. Say 2 orders are already past 30 days. The box says 2 orders are already past 30 days with nothing marked received or sent. You can press “Turn on and cancel these 2”, Turn on for new orders only, or Go back. Go back leaves the switch off. Turn on for new orders only leaves the old orders alone. The toast says auto-cancel is on for new orders, and orders already past 30 days were left as they are. If you cancel them now, the box says “2 orders cancelled. They wait in Write-offs under Waiting for refund.” Press Done. Each cancelled order gets a notice. It names the order day, the units, and the product. Purchases history says “Cancelled by SourceDock after 30 days”. The card then says “Cancels after 30 days”. The day count is saved for this store, and another store has its own switch. A new day count that would cancel orders now asks first, with a title like “Cancel after 20 days?”. You press Save or Go back. Some stores can’t be checked. After you turn the switch on, a line under it says it cancels nothing there, and why. A Mexico store says it runs on your US and Canada stores. A plan without Capital Recovery says auto-cancel comes with Capital Recovery, and your plan doesn’t have it.

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New purchases in the Vault

You add the blender to Purchases at $12.00. Auto Add Purchases to the Vault is on, which is how it starts. The card title is Vault, and the status says New purchases are added. The blender joins the Vault if Amazon still sells it. Its cost is the cost per unit on your latest purchase. The row is marked From purchases. Turn the switch off, and the status says Off. SourceDock adds nothing new, and costs stop following new purchases. Rows already in the Vault stay. Turn it back on, and the next run adds what you bought while it was off.

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The blender, line by line

The settings for this walk are in the Profit calculator group on Account > Features. It has four parts: COSTS, GOALS, PRICING, and EXTENSION. Use peak storage fees sits under EXTENSION, but it changes the Vault’s profit too. The same settings feed the Chrome extension, the phone app’s Profit calculator, and the Vault’s profit. Change a box in that group, and it saves by itself. The newest save wins on every device. The phone page asks for an Amazon link, ASIN or UPC. You can Look up, Scan a barcode, or find it with a Photo of the box. See the phone app, in depth. The package is 12 × 12 × 6 in and 2 lb. That is standard size, and it is 0.50 cubic feet. This walk is a US store in October, with the settings at their start except the ones named below. You set Prep per item to “$0.40”, Inbound shipping per lb to “$0.60”, and Sales tax on cost (%) to “8”. Months in storage stays “1”. Inbound placement stays Minimal shipment splits, and Use peak storage fees stays off. Amazon’s fee answer for this sale is a $4.50 referral fee and a $5.40 FBA fulfillment fee. The referral fee is Amazon’s cut of the sale. The FBA fulfillment fee is what Amazon charges to pick and ship one unit. Those two come from Amazon, and SourceDock adds the rest. The $5.40 is this story’s made-up quote. A real box this size and weight costs more. Open Total fees on the Profit calculator. The lines, in order: You get is what Amazon pays you after its fees. It is the sale, minus the referral fee, the FBA fee, and storage. While Amazon charges its low-stock fee, that comes off too. It does not take off prep, placement, inbound shipping, tax, or your cost. $30.00 − $4.50 − $5.40 − $1.20 = “$18.90”. Profit is the sale, minus every fee line, minus your cost: $30.00 − $14.64 − $12.00 = “$3.36”. The rows above Total fees, in order, are Your cost, Sale price, Fulfillment, Months in storage, Profit, ROI, and Max cost. Below it are Margin, Break-even price, and You get. Fulfillment is FBA, which means Amazon stores it and ships it. ROI is “28.0%”: $3.36 ÷ $12.00, shown with one decimal. This is Buy Cost Only. It is the start when the product is not in the Vault, or when its ROI Method was never changed. Margin is “11.2%”. Margin is the profit compared with the sale price: $3.36 ÷ $30.00. Profit, ROI, and Margin are yellow. Yellow means the sale makes money, but a goal is missed. The goals start at 30% and $5.00, and 28.0% and $3.36 are both under them. A loss is red. Both goals met, with the profit above $0, is green. You get is green when it is above $0. Max cost is “$10.48”. It is the most you can pay for one item and still meet both goals. The $5.00 profit goal is the tighter one here. Pay $10.48 and the profit is $5.00. Pay $10.49 and it is $4.99, under the goal. Break-even price is “$26.05”. Sell for less, and you lose money. This uses the referral rate for the blender’s category in SourceDock’s fee table. Home & Kitchen is 15%. When SourceDock doesn’t know the category, it uses the rate in Amazon’s answer instead. Here that is 15% too, because $4.50 is 15% of $30.00. SourceDock rounds that fee to the cent and never puts it under $0.30. At $26.05 the referral is $3.91, so the floor does not change it. Leave Your cost blank, or type “$0.00”. The profit still shows: “$16.32”, because tax is $0 with no cost. ROI shows a dash, ”—”, until a cost is typed. Until then, only the profit goal colors the numbers. $16.32 is above $5.00, so the row is green.

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What each cost setting changes

Prep per item starts at $0.00, and the Prep line still shows. At $0.40 the profit is $3.36. Raise prep to $1.00, and the profit falls by $0.60, to “$2.76”. ROI becomes “23.0%”. Sales tax on cost (%) starts at 0. At 8%, tax is $0.96. Set it back to 0, and the profit rises to “$4.32”, with ROI “36.0%”. The tax is rounded to the cent. 8% of $12.00 is exact, but a percent that is not exact can move the answer by one cent. This percent also fills the Sales tax (%) box on the extension’s Add purchase form. Inbound shipping per lb starts empty. An empty box is not a rate you set. SourceDock then uses your store’s own cost per pound from recent US boxes, when it has one and the weight is known. Say that rate is $0.45. The note under COSTS says “Shipping to Amazon: $0.45/lb, from your recent boxes.” Inbound shipping becomes $0.90, and profit rises to “$3.66”. Type $0.00, and that is your rate. It wins over the boxes, so inbound shipping becomes $0.00. Clear the box to go back to the store’s figure. No weight and no rate of your own means the inbound line is $0.00. A rate above $0 that you set, with no weight known, leaves the profit blank until you type Weight (lb). Months in storage starts at 1. You can type 0 through 36, including part of a month. The same box is on the calculator and under GOALS, and it is one setting. Storage is cubic feet times Amazon’s monthly rate. Standard size is $0.78 a cubic foot from January through September, and $2.40 in October, November, and December. Bigger than standard size is $0.56 and $1.40. October uses $2.40 even with Use peak storage fees off. So this blender’s one month is $1.20 either way. In January, with the switch off, one month is $0.39, and profit becomes “$4.17”. Turn Use peak storage fees on, and January uses $2.40 too. Storage goes back to $1.20, and profit goes back to “$3.36”. Set the months to 0, and the storage line hides. Profit rises by $1.20, to “$4.56”. No size, with months above 0, hides the profit. The line says there is no size, so storage can’t be added. The placement fee needs a size too, so it hides the profit as well, unless your recent boxes show a placement fee. To see a profit, set the months to 0 and pick Amazon-optimized shipment splits ($0). A store outside the US works the same way, because SourceDock does not have those rates yet. Inbound placement has three choices. Amazon-optimized shipment splits ($0) makes the fee $0, and the line hides. Profit rises by $0.98, to “$4.34”. Partial shipment splits is for bulky items only, so on this blender SourceDock uses the Minimal rate, $0.98. Minimal shipment splits is the start, because small shipments are rarely five matching cartons. The fee is the highest rate Amazon lists for the size and weight. This blender’s shipping weight is 6.22 lb, so the band is $0.40 to $0.98, and SourceDock uses $0.98. Amazon sets the real fee when the shipment is created. The line says estimated until your own boxes can teach it. If your recent US boxes already show a placement fee, that fee wins. Say they show $0.32 a unit. The note says “Inbound placement: $0.32 a unit, from your recent boxes. This choice counts only when there are none.” The dropdown does not move the $0.32. Profit becomes “$4.02”, and ROI becomes “33.5%”. Sale price used for profit picks the sale price for profit and Max cost. Its choices are Buy Box, FBA sellers only, Buy Box, any seller, and Lowest FBA. It starts on Buy Box, FBA sellers only. Its ? says FBA sellers only uses the Buy Box price when an FBA seller has it. Any seller uses the Buy Box price whoever has it. With no Buy Box, it uses the lowest FBA price, then the lowest FBM price. Lowest FBA uses the lowest price an FBA seller offers, even when someone has the Buy Box. In the Vault, you can pick a different one for one product. Buy Box, FBA sellers only uses the Buy Box price when an FBA seller holds it. When no FBA seller holds it, the calculator uses this product’s Sell in your Vault, then the lowest FBA offer. The sale price’s hover then says No FBA seller has the Buy Box, so this uses this product’s Sell in your Vault. or No FBA seller has the Buy Box, so this uses the lowest FBA offer. With neither, it says No FBA seller has the Buy Box. Type a sale price. Buy Box, any seller uses the Buy Box price, whoever holds it. With no Buy Box, it uses the lowest FBA offer, then the lowest offer from a seller who ships it. Lowest FBA uses the lowest FBA offer, even when someone holds the Buy Box. With no FBA offer, it uses the Buy Box, any seller order. The hover then says No FBA seller offers it right now, so this is the Buy Box price. Say the lowest FBA offer is $27.00 and you pick Lowest FBA. The sale price becomes $27.00, and at the same 15% rate the referral is $4.05. The FBA fee stays $5.40. You get becomes “$16.35”. Profit becomes “$0.81”, and ROI becomes “6.8%”. The Vault’s sell price follows the same setting. On one Vault product’s edit, Sale price used for profit can stay on Use my setting or take one of the three choices for that product alone. The line under it says A sale price you typed still wins. Lowest ROI you want (%) starts at 30. Lowest profit you want starts at $5.00. A goal of 0 means that goal is off. These two do not change the profit. They color it, and they set Max cost. They also set the Vault’s Max landed buy cost, shown below. With both goals, Max cost is $10.48. Set the profit goal to $0.00, and only the 30% goal remains. Max cost rises to “$11.82”. At $11.82 the ROI is just over 30%, and at $11.83 it drops under 30%. On the Vault product, ROI Method can be Buy Cost Only, Total Cost, or Sell Price. The calculator uses that product’s method. Total Cost divides the profit by the cost plus prep, placement, inbound shipping, and tax. That base is $15.54, so ROI becomes “21.6%”, not 28.0%. Sell Price divides by the sale price, so ROI matches Margin, “11.2%”. With Sell Price and both goals, Max cost falls to “$6.78”, because 30% of $30.00 is $9.00 of profit. Close Seller Central after a check starts on. It closes the Seller Central tab that Verify opened, and tabs you opened stay. Show “You” in Offers starts on. It puts a green You on your offer. Off, that offer looks like any other seller’s. Neither switch changes the dollars. Click Show stock under Offers to see how many units each seller has. Nothing loads until you click. The extension’s own Settings have one more choice, Where the panel shows on Amazon. It starts on Docked above the Buy Box, or you can pick Only in the side panel. This one stays on that computer and does not sync. It is not on Account > Features, and it doesn’t change the dollars.

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FBM, the same blender

Press FBM under Fulfillment. FBM means you ship it yourself. SourceDock saves this pick, so the calculator opens on it next time, on every device. The sale price becomes the lowest offer from a seller who ships it. Say that is $28.00. SourceDock’s fee table says the referral fee is $4.20. The Closing fee is $0.00, and its line still shows. Your shipping is what it costs you to ship one to the buyer. Leave it blank, and SourceDock uses the FBM shipping cost saved in your Vault. With none saved, it counts $0, and the box says Not counted. The profit then leaves out shipping. Type $4.00. FBM does not use storage, placement, or inbound shipping. The months box still sits on the screen, but it does not change this profit. Total is $4.20 + $0.00 + $4.00 + $0.40 + $0.96 = “$9.56”. Profit is $28.00 − $9.56 − $12.00 = “$6.44”. ROI is “53.7%”, and margin is “23.0%”. Both goals are met, so the rows are green. You get is “$19.80”: the sale, minus the referral fee, the closing fee, and your shipping. Max cost is “$13.33”. Break-even price is “$20.42” at the same 15%. FBM profit shows for stores that sell in US dollars.

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What the Vault uses

The Vault profit hover is How this profit adds up. The line names match the calculator, and the cost line is Buy cost. Prep, months, peak storage, inbound shipping, and placement all feed the Vault. A row with its own prep above $0 uses that prep, not Prep per item. A row with its own shipping cost above $0 uses that, not the per-pound rate. On the hover, press Change to set prep, inbound shipping, or placement for one product. Press Use default to go back. The calculator does the same for a product in your Vault: it uses that row’s own prep, shipping, and placement choice. The Vault’s profit does not use Sales tax on cost (%). It uses the tax dollars saved on the row. A blender row with $0 tax shows “$4.32” of profit, not $3.36, if every other line matches. ROI is then “36.0%”. The Vault’s profit does not use the goals either, but a product’s price history window in the Vault does. Its Max landed buy cost is the most you can pay and still meet both goals. It uses the lower of today’s Buy Box and its usual price over 90 days. The line under it starts “Clears 30% ROI and $5.00 profit”, with your own goals. A Low-stock fee line appears only while Amazon charges its low-inventory fee. Both supply counts must be under 28 days, and at least 20 units must have shipped in 7 days. For this blender, under 14 days of supply, that fee is $1.11. It is added on top of the FBA fee. Profit falls to “$2.25”, and ROI becomes “18.8%”. You get falls by $1.11 too, to “$17.79”. Grocery does not pay it, and the line hides when the fee is $0.