Profit per Order Calculator

How the profit per order waterfall works

Start at the top with your average order value and subtract every cost that exists only because that order exists. With the defaults: €80 AOV, minus €28 product cost, €7 shipping, €2.50 fulfillment and packaging, €2 payment fees (2.5% of AOV), €3.20 returns cost (a 4% return rate averaged across all orders), €20 marketing and €2 other. Total variable cost €64.70, which leaves €15.30 per order, a 19.1% contribution margin.

The formula chain:

payment fees = AOV × processing %
returns cost = AOV × returns rate
profit per order = AOV - sum of variable costs
margin = profit per order ÷ AOV

Why CPA compresses when you scale

One line in this waterfall moves against you as you grow. Product cost and shipping stay roughly stable per order. CPA does not. When you push spend up, you exhaust the cheapest audiences first and every extra order costs more than the last one. A brand earning €15 per order at a €20 CPA has €15 of headroom, so at a €35 CPA the profit is gone while the dashboard still shows sales rolling in. That is why accounts look great at €3,000 a month and bleed at €15,000: the shape of the waterfall changed and nobody re-ran the numbers.

Run it monthly

Every line drifts. Carriers reprice shipping, processors adjust fees, return rates creep when you enter new markets or push looser audiences, and CPA moves with auction competition and seasonality. The discipline is simple: once a month, pull real numbers from your store and your ad accounts, run this waterfall, and compare it against last month. If margin dropped, the row that moved tells you exactly where to look. Ten minutes of arithmetic beats a quarter spent scaling a store that loses money on every order it wins.