How to tell if your store is profitable (without Excel)

1) 🤯 The real problem: you're looking at the wrong dashboard

Almost every founder goes through this phase:

• Phase 1: “We sold a lot, we're growing, ROAS looks good, everything must be OK.”
• Phase 2: “We have revenue, but there's never money left in the account. What's going on?”
• Phase 3: “Something doesn't add up between Mercado Pago, Tiendanube, Mercado Libre, Ads and the spreadsheet. Nobody knows which number is true.”

The cause is simple: we confuse activity with a healthy business. Lots of sales doesn't mean lots of margin. A high ROAS doesn't mean you make money.

👉 First mindset shift: your goal isn't to sell a lot, it's for every sales cycle to leave you more money than goes out.

2) The 4 layers of numbers you absolutely have to understand

To get your head straight, think of your numbers on 4 levels. If you stay in the first two, you'll always be flying blind:

1. Vanity metrics (ego numbers): visits, followers, likes, open rate, “clicks to the site,” etc. Useful for marketing, not for finance.
2. Gross revenue: what you “sold.” What Tiendanube, Mercado Libre or Shopify shows you. Nothing serious has been subtracted yet.
3. Margin (contribution margin / real margin): revenue minus direct costs for product, shipping, fees and Ads. This is where the truth starts.
4. Cash flow: when money comes in and when it goes out (suppliers, Mercado Pago, taxes, salaries). You can be profitable on a spreadsheet and still go under on cash flow.

Most LATAM e-commerce stores get stuck between point 2 and point 3. They see revenue, but they don't calculate real margin.

3) Step-by-step framework: was your store profitable this month?

Let's make this concrete. Say you want to analyze the last full month. Here's a script you could follow literally with your team:

Step 1 — Define the period and the source of truth

No more checking “a bit in Mercado Pago,” “a bit in Tiendanube” and “a bit more in the spreadsheet.” Pick:

• Period: for example, the 1st to the 30th of last month.
• Working currency: pesos, dollars, whatever you use to make decisions.
• Main sales source: Tiendanube/Shopify/Mercado Libre.

This sounds obvious, but a huge number of people mix months, currencies and sources. That's where the “inconsistencies” come from.

Step 2 — Calculate the revenue you collected (not just what you billed)

Key difference: what you sold isn't the same as what you collected.

• Take the sales that were actually paid out to Mercado Pago / your banks in that period.
• Split by channel: Tiendanube, Mercado Libre, direct sales, etc.
• If you have lots of long installment plans, write down how much was paid out this month, not the full ticket.

With just this, many stores discover something uncomfortable: “we sold X, we collected quite a bit less.”

Step 3 — Add up your variable costs per sale

These are the costs that go up when you sell more:

• Real product cost (supplier price).
• Shipping (including reshipments and returns).
• Mercado Pago / payment gateway fees.
• Installment and financing costs.
• Mercado Libre or other marketplace fees.
• Packaging (boxes, filler, labels, etc.).
• Discounts and coupons (what you actually gave up).

Ideally you'd have this per SKU, but if you're not at that level yet, at least build an average calculation per order.

Step 4 — Add up your ad spend

Add up everything you spent on:

• Meta Ads.
• Google Ads.
• TikTok Ads.
• Paid influencers (if it was direct sales traffic, not branding).

Don't just look at the ROAS each platform shows; look at the real money that went out.

Step 5 — Calculate your Contribution Margin

Simple formula:

Contribution Margin = Revenue Collected – Variable Costs – Ads

A quick, very simplified example:

• Revenue collected this month: 10,000.
• Variable costs (product, shipping, fees, installments, etc.): 6,000.
• Ads: 2,000.

Contribution Margin = 10,000 – 6,000 – 2,000 = 2,000.

That 2,000 is the money left available to pay your fixed costs and, if there's anything left over, to be profit.

Step 6 — Subtract your fixed costs

Typical fixed costs in an e-commerce business:

• Salaries / team.
• Office / warehouse.
• Tools (apps, SaaS, email, CRM, etc.).
• Utilities (electricity, internet, others).
• Professional fees (accountant, administrator, etc.).

Continuing the example above:

• Contribution Margin: 2,000.
• Fixed costs for the month: 1,500.

Final result for the month = 2,000 – 1,500 = +500.

What does that mean? That month you were profitable, but just barely. If the margin were negative, you'd be funding the business out of your own pocket.

This is the minimum snapshot every founder should have, month after month.

4) The next level: good sales vs bad sales

Once you understand whether the month was profitable, the really interesting part begins: not all sales are equal.

Some sales:

• Leave a good margin, even with discounts.
• Have reasonable shipping costs.
• Come from healthy campaigns with positive real ROAS.

And others:

• Have a very high product cost.
• Come from zones that are very expensive to ship to.
• Use lots of installments with heavy fees.
• Get returned or exchanged often.

Those are the bad sales. They give you revenue, but they eat your margin.

👉 A very powerful exercise: pick your top 10 SKUs and calculate:
selling price – product cost – average shipping – average fee – discounts.

You'll be surprised how many of your “workhorses” barely make money or lose it outright.

5) Early signs you're losing money (even while you sell)

Some red flags I see constantly in LATAM e-commerce:

• There are always sales, but never any cash: the bank and Mercado Pago are empty at the end of the month.
• You live “patching” things with outside capital: loans, advances, credit cards to cover gaps.
• You don't know your real cost per order: you only have a “rough” idea.
• You can't answer: “if I double sales, how much money do I actually keep?”
• You have a never-ending spreadsheet that only one person on the team understands… and it's always behind.
• You have no clarity by channel: Tiendanube vs Mercado Libre vs Ads vs organic.

If you see yourself in several of these, you're not alone. It's the “normal” state of most stores. But it doesn't have to be that way.

6) What if all you have today is Excel? A minimalist mini-system

Even though the ideal is eventually to automate everything, you can start with something very simple. Here's a minimum system you can put in place this week:

A) One master file with these tabs:

• Sales by day: date, channel, revenue collected.
• Variable costs: product, shipping, fees, installments.
• Ads: daily spend by platform.
• Fixed costs: monthly list.

B) A very simple monthly routine:

• Block 60–90 minutes at the start of each month.
• Fill in last month's numbers (even if approximate, as long as they're consistent).
• Calculate: Revenue collected – Variable costs – Ads – Fixed costs.
• Compare with the previous month: did margin get better or worse?

It's not perfect, but it's infinitely better than deciding on “gut feel” alone.

And when this manual system starts breaking under volume, that's your sign you need to move to something automated.