Profit and Loss Analysis: Calculating Real Marketplace Profit

Profit-and-loss analysis means seeing, per product, what remains after commission, shipping, the platform service fee, the return share and product cost are deducted from the sale price. Revenue is not profit: losing money on high revenue is common in e-commerce, because some cost lines land after the sale rather than at it.

Why is looking at revenue misleading?

The revenue you see in the marketplace panel is gross sales. Deductions work at different times and in different lines: commission at settlement, shipping per parcel, the service fee per parcel, and return costs weeks later.

That timing gap creates an illusion. Mid-month, revenue looks strong; by month end, once returns and deductions are processed, the picture changes. A seller who cannot see per-product profit may allocate ad budget to a loss-making product and deepen the loss.

The right question is not "how much did I sell" but "how much did each product leave behind".

Which lines belong in the profit calculation?

In order:

1. Sale price (what the customer paid, VAT included)
2. Commission — per category, published VAT-inclusive, no VAT added on top
3. Platform service fee — a fixed amount per shipment
4. Shipping — by desi and against the 350 TL threshold
5. Return share — your return rate × cost per return
6. Product cost
7. Packaging materials
8. Advertising (if any, allocated per product)

Item five is the most frequently skipped. A returned order does not merely come off revenue; outbound shipping, return shipping and any handling charge cannot be recovered from a product that was never sold. That cost has to be spread across the units that did sell.

How do you calculate the return share?

The return share is your return rate multiplied by the cost per return, loaded onto every unit sold.

Formula: Return share per unit = Return rate × (Outbound shipping + Return shipping + Handling charge)

Example: for a product with a 10% return rate and a total cost of 120 TL per return, the return share per unit is 12 TL. That amount rides on the units that sold, even though it was caused by the ones that did not.

Return rates vary sharply by category — size-driven returns are high in apparel and low in stationery. Use your own historical data rather than an industry average; your store's return rate is a more accurate input than any general statistic.

Worked example: a 100 TL product

The figures below are illustrative; substitute your own costs. Assume a 20% commission:

| Line | Amount | |---|---| | Sale price | 100.00 TL | | Commission (20%, VAT-inclusive) | −20.00 TL | | Platform service fee (10.99 + VAT) | −13.19 TL | | Shipping (by desi, assumed) | −45.00 TL | | Product cost (assumed) | −40.00 TL | | Return share (10% × 120 TL) | −12.00 TL | | Result | −30.19 TL |

This product loses money. A seller watching revenue cannot see that; one watching per-product profit can.

Sold at 250 TL, the same product would carry 50 TL commission while the service fee and shipping stay unchanged, and the result turns positive. This shows why fixed lines (service fee, shipping) dominate on low-priced products: because they are fixed rather than percentage-based, they weigh proportionally far more at a low price.

The mathematics of selling low-priced products

Fixed costs create a "floor price" below which no product leaves a profit. Calculating that floor changes your catalog decisions.

A rough rule: if the service fee plus shipping exceeds 25% of the sale price, that product is not one to ship on its own. The usual answer is bundling: sending several units in one parcel splits the fixed cost across them.

This is why successful sellers in low-unit-price categories sell multipacks rather than singles. Raising basket value works; cutting price does not.

Estimated commission versus real commission

Using an estimated rate from the category table when setting prices is normal. Using an estimate when reporting the profit of a completed order is a mistake.

Trendyol's order and settlement API returns the real commission rate and amount for that line. Seller tier, brand agreements and campaign effects are already reflected in it. On low-margin products, the gap between estimate and reality is the gap between profit and loss.

Pazaryeri Bot's profitability module calculates realised profit from that real data, using the category table only for pre-sale estimates.

How do you decide which product to cut?

Not every loss-making product should leave the catalog immediately. Ask three questions in order:

1. Can the price go up? Look at competitor prices and demand. A small increase often reduces volume less than expected.
2. Can shipping cost come down? Shrinking packaging to drop one desi band is less risky than a price rise.
3. Does the product suit bundling? Splitting the fixed cost raises unit profit directly.

If none of the three works, the product is serving no purpose beyond drawing traffic. If it is not playing that role, remove it.

Where to start

If you want to start manually, use the free commission and profit calculator; no account needed. For detail on the commission structure, see the Trendyol commission rates guide.

With a large catalog, per-product calculation by hand is not sustainable. At that point profitability has to be computed automatically from order data — the profit and loss guide explains how the module works.