Profit formula

Hi cas91,

Welcome to the forum,

To best describe or illustrate your problem you would be better off attaching a dummy workbook, the workbook should contain the same structure and some dummy data of the same type as the type you have in your real workbook - so, if a cell contains numbers & letters in this format abc-123 then that should be reflected in the dummy workbook.

If needed supply a before and after sheet in the workbook so the person helping you can see what you are trying to achieve.

Doing this will ensure you get the result you need!

Profit is tough to calculate accurately. You might think that buying at $10 and selling at $15 means $5 profit, but this doesn't take into account cash flow at all.

If you buy 20 items at $10...you've spent $200. You're in the red by $200.

If you sell 10 of those items at $15, you've generated $150 income.

You could say you've earned $50 profit, but in my office that wouldn't be true. For our purposes, we've still not made any profit because we originally spent $200. Until we make back our original outlay, we don't consider anything profit.

So for us it would be:

20 x -$10 = -$200
10 x $15 = $150

Current cash flow is -$50, so we consider that still in the red. Until our income on that item matches our outlay...

How do you wish to calculate profit? If all you want to do is indicate how much more you sold an item for than you bought it for, that's merely:

# sold x (selling price - purchase price) = profit

10 x ($15 - $10) = $50

This is a very basic layout. It still doesn't take into account your operating expenses.